How?
Posted by Jack Kustanowitz on July 19, 2007 | Tags: Tisha b'Av
The book of Eichah, read on Tisha b'Av, starts with the word "Eichah", which repeats over and over. It is a cry of astonishment at reality -- that which we thought impossible came to pass. The Chosen People have been abandoned, the holy city deserted.
We are all victims to the line of thinking that says, "Things are good for me because I deserve it", or in the language of sefer Devarim, "kochi v'otzem yadi asah li et hachayil hazeh": It is my own power and strength that have created me this might.
And then disaster strikes, and we are left picking up the pieces. We walk through a destroyed Jerusalem, seeing wild animals walking where the Temple once stood. Maybe we walk around the ruins of the Wolrd Trade Center, attributing our sin to a lack of imagination. We stare at a portfolio of stocks whose value was decimated following an unexpected financial crisis. We are frequently astonished in the face of sudden, severe trauma.
And so we turn to God, and ask, "How?" How are the tragedies that human history have seen possible? Can each of the millions killed by the Romans when the Beit Hamikdash was destroyed have somehow been to blame for their fate? Somewhere, somehow, innocent, righteous lives are lost, victims of the greater tragedy.
In his book "Fooled by Randomness", Nassim Nicholas Taleb makes a fascinating and compelling case for how people project order onto disorder, seeing patterns after the fact when in fact it was random events that brought history down that particular path. Perhaps the cry of "eichah" is exactly that of man struggling against the randomness, trying desperately to write "the story behind the story", and due to the enormity of the tragedy, coming up empty.
And so we spend Tisha b'Av with no food as if we were poor, no leather clothing as if we could not afford any manner of luxury, away from physical comfort of loved ones as if they had already been taken away by events beyond our control, and remember for a day how the terribly unlikely and unexpected can come to pass. Rather than giving up on a seemingly random universe, we use tragedy as an opportunity to learn humility, repentance, and love for the other.
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Jack KustanowitzJoined: July 15, 2007 Jack is an Internet professional living in Silver Spring, MD. He is a proud alum of the Frisch School in Paramus, NJ as well as Boston University, where he was active at BU Hillel. Divrei Torah (32) |
