Many people tied to both Jewish tradition and modernity have said that the Six Day War introduced a tension into the observance of Tisha b’Av. On the one hand, the ninth day of Av is a long-established day of mourning to commemorate the destruction of both ancient Temples in Jerusalem, and Jewish catastrophe more broadly. On the other hand, after the 1967 war and the reunification of Jerusalem, it struck many that history was perhaps coming full circle.
Think about the iconic photos of that war, featuring soldiers moved to tears while standing beside the very site of the Temple we mourn. This juxtaposition of ancient loss and modern recovery intimates that the pain and bereavement of collective memory were being healed – one might even say, reversed. Especially in Jerusalem, there was often a decidedly bitter-sweet aura to Tisha b’Av commemorations after 1967. One could hear the recitation of Eichah (Lamentations) not from a far-off place of diasporic longing, but overlooking the Old City from the surrounding hills, or even beside the Western Wall itself.
‘Like most potent symbols, the dynamics at the Wall emblemize broader issues’
But today, 50 years after the reunification of Jerusalem and the recovery of the sacred space, the fiasco of a promised and then withheld development of an enhanced prayer space for women, liberal Jews and egalitarian minyanim at the Western Wall reveals just how much that site attests not to the reunification, but to the fracturing of the Jewish People.
Like most potent symbols, the dynamics at the Wall emblemize broader issues. Growing rifts – not only between Israeli and Diaspora Jews, but among different types of Jews – are exacerbated and exploited by a leadership, both religious and secular, that’s more interested in consolidating its own power than in the welfare of its constituency. Power plays are transacted with the lives of Jewish people: women denied a halachic divorce, conversions overturned, rabbis placed on a blacklist.
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Jewish tradition has a strong awareness of the ability of leaders to elevate, but also to destroy. The Talmud, for example, attributes the destruction of the Second Temple to a phenomenon termed “sinat hinam” – variously translated as “baseless,” “gratuitous,” “groundless” or “useless hatred.” To illustrate this, the Talmud relates the peculiar story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza. A wealthy man who throws a lavish party accidentally invites a reviled enemy with a similar name to his dear friend. Only at the gala itself does the host realize the error, and he publicly expels the unwanted guest. Although the guest pleads to be spared the public humiliation, even offering to foot the costs of the party, the host does not relent. The ensuing quest for vengeance triggers a series of events – too complicated to describe here – that leads to the destruction of the Temple.
Interestingly, as the Talmud relates the story, it is not so much the brute rudeness of the host that fuels the anger of the ousted guest. Rather, it is the silence of the rabbis who, as fellow guests at the illustrious gathering of the powerful and well-connected, watched the humiliating spectacle without intervening. Their failings are echoed later in the story, when they have the opportunity to avert the impending catastrophe with a lenient ruling on a matter of ritual practice, but decide on stringency. Elsewhere in the Talmud, we read a comment attributed to Rav Yochanan: “Jerusalem was destroyed only because the judges ruled in accordance with the strict letter of the law, as opposed to ruling beyond the letter of the law.”
Thus, this Tisha b’Av, I am mourning the loss of the promise that those iconic photos from 1967 offered. The power dynamics put into play by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel regarding space at the Wall – and the legitimacy of conversions, divorce documents, marriage partners, etc. – are part of a high-stakes game in which stringency wielded as a tool of power can wreak havoc.
