What a year! Unlike any other, this summer season, usually filled with swimming, barbecues, family vacations and all manner of social events, is one of isolation, concern, and uncertainty. In all other years, we enjoy the beautiful outdoors and deal with the heat in all sorts of ways, but this year many people are staying inside, avoiding others, focusing on preventing contact with the insidious virus and worrying about our futures-our jobs, our families, our schools and our communities. Politics are becoming more ugly than we could ever have imagined and the whole world seems to be in a mess. In the Hebrew calendar year, appropriately enough, we are now at the beginning of the month of Av!
On the ninth day of the month of Av we mark Tisha b'Av, a collective day of mourning throughout the Jewish world. The day commemorates many sad events in Jewish history-the destruction of the First Temple, the destruction of the Second Temple, the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and other notable tragedies. Whether all these disastrous occurrences actually all happened on the 9th of this month is irrelevant-what is pertinent is that Jewish tradition ascribed them all to this date-a kind of collection of misfortune. Traditionally, Tisha b'Av is a day of mourning-we don't eat or drink, we chant the book of Lamentations, we sit on the floor, we avoid sexual activity. Whether we, as Jews living freely in modern times, are actually sad about these catastrophic parts of our history is not as important as realizing the truth that bad things happen, awful disasters have happened in the past, and that allowing them to be hidden away, or pushed under the rug does nothing except allow them to fester, to mold and to grow disproportionately. By recognizing tragedy in our past and explicitly grieving losses we are able to move forward.
So it is with the Jewish High Holidays this year. In other years, we start thinking about the High Holidays during these summer months. We look forward to our traditions, we start to imagine how we will celebrate, who we will share meals with, what special holiday foods we'll prepare and where we will pray. But not so fast, this year. First we have to mourn. We need to allow the fact that we will not be gathering physically with the large communities we cherish this year. We must allow ourselves to feel the sadness of not being able to share hugs and handshakes and hearty "Shana Tova" messages with those folks we see only once a year, but who are are still an essential part of our world. We need Tisha bAv this year, for ourselves, to mourn what we now know will be lost to us this year. Mourning serves an important purpose--recognizing the reality of what we did not choose, we can allow ourselves to feel the losses, experience the sadness and, only then, be ready to move on, toward the rest of the month of Av, the preparatory month of Elul and then, in just a few weeks, to Rosh HaShana....to a New Year to which we can look forward with hope for healing, health, strength, and renewal.