This cycle begins with the minor fast of Shivah Asar B’Tammuz, the day on which the supposedly impenetrable walls around Jerusalem were penetrated and the enemy entered the city. It was the beginning of the end.
Between the Shivah Asar B’Tammuz and Tisha B’Av is a span of three weeks. During the Three Weeks, Jews do not celebrate weddings, play joyful music, dance, wear brand-new clothing, or get haircuts. Long hair in olden times was a sign of mourning. Some men do not shave during the Three Weeks, although many of those who go to business do shave. In Jewish summer camps, the local barber in the nearest town is usually brought to the campgrounds a day or two before the Three Weeks for wholesale clippings.
The latter part of the Three Weeks, from the first to the ninth of Av, is known as the Nine Days. The laws of deprivation and mourning intensify during the Nine Days:
No laundry, except that which is essential.
No swimming.
No eating meat or poultry, except on Shabbat or at a seudat mitzvah feast in honor of the performance of a mitzvah. Such occasions might be a siyyum (completing a tractate of the Talmud), a Brit, a Pidyon Haben, or a Bar Mitzvah that is celebrated on Monday or Thursday (when the Torah is read).
Likewise, there is no drinking of wine, except for Shabbat. Even the Havdalah wine, which is drunk after Shabbat has ended, is given to a child to drink.
Some people refrain from full showering or tub baths during the Nine Days.
The Nine Days should really be called the nine and a half days, since all of the above restrictions remain in effect until the middle of the tenth day of Av. Although the actual fast of Tisha B’Av (the ninth of Av) completes the mourning period, the other restrictions are observed an additional half day in commemoration of the fact that the Temple continued to burn and smolder through the tenth of Av.
The ban on swimming, coming as it usually does in summertime, can be a real deprivation. Summer-camp administrators and parents have their hands full if a heat wave strikes during the Nine Days. As Gary P., then age twelve, once remarked wistfully during the course of the Nine Days, “Why couldn’t Nebuchadnezzar [the Babylonian king] have destroyed the Temple in the middle of January!” But, that is the law, and so the ban is widely observed in the Orthodox community.
Unlike other fasts connected to the Churban, Tisha B’Av is a major fast, not only in importance but in length of time. Tisha B’Av begins at sunset and lasts until sundown the following night. It is the longest, hottest, most difficult fast of the year. The custom is to eat a large meal before Minchah (midafter-noon) on erev Tisha B’Av and then, just before sunset, to eat a small meal, the formal prefast meal (seudah mafseket). For this prefast meal, some follow the custom of eating a piece of bread and a hard-boiled egg, with the bread dipped into ashes.
During the fast itself, the same restrictions that apply to Yom Kippur apply here:
No eating or drinking.
No washing or bathing except for necessary washing (upon rising, or soiled hands, or after elimination).
No anointing (no cosmetics).
No wearing leather shoes.
No sexual relations.
There are two additional restrictions on Tisha B’Av that point up the distinction between a fast of mourning and one of atonement.
On Tisha B’Av, the Rabbis prohibited the study of Torah, except for the Book of Job and certain parts of the Prophets and Talmud directly related to the Churban. The reason is perfectly logical. Torah gladdens the soul, and Tisha B’Av is not the day for that.
The second unusual prohibition is that of greeting friends. Instead of a big hello or broad smile, we give a controlled nod of the head; or we start a conversation right off without the preliminary hello or how are you? This custom of restricted greeting is borrowed from shiva, where the mourners and guests do not formally greet each other (see chap. 14). It sounds as if it would be awkward, but generally it isn’t terribly so, for everyone in the community understands the law and anticipates the modified behavior. For others with whom we work and live, our greetings are simply more subdued, and the difference is barely noticeable. One does not have to wear Tisha B’Av on one’s sleeve unless one is so inclined.
Why should restricted greetings be a sign of mourning? It was only when I finally experienced the discomfort that I understood what the law was about. When Yitz and I were first married, we were closely affiliated with the Orthodox community in Brook-line, Massachusetts. Subsequently, we moved to New York, but always returned to Gloucester, Massachusetts, for our summer vacations. The logical thing to do, since there was then no Tisha B’Av minyan in Gloucester, was to drive to Brookline, to our old shul. But it was a source of confusion for me. On the one hand, I would be seeing friends whom we hadn’t seen in a year. If it weren’t Tisha B’Av, we would have thrown our arms about each other and hugged.
Even restraining our formal greeting, even talking in quiet tones, it was still like a great party to me, getting together each year with so many old friends. How wise the Rabbis were: law on restricted greeting is really the law against rejoicing. Instead of a global, “You shall not rejoice,” which would be incomprehensible, they said, “You shall not do this little thing or make that small gesture.” I never knew how much pleasure there is in greeting a friend until the Rabbis forbade it on Tisha B’Av.
The work prohibitions of Shabbat and Yom Tov are not in effect on Tisha B’Av. Yet, in the spirit of mourning, it is the tradition to restrict work activities somewhat. The law permits work in cases where refraining from work would entail a loss. Loss has been rather loosely defined to include salary, time, and momentum. Most Jews do work on Tisha B’Av, but some follow the tradition of not going to work until midday.
THE LITURGY
The synagogue services on the eve of Tisha B’Av are most unusual. To set the tone, the curtain covering the ark is removed or is replaced with a black curtain. Either way, the ark, and by extension the whole shul, looks bare. The lights are dimmed, a few candles are lit. The prayers are recited in a mournful tone.
After Maariv and Kaddish all the congregation move out of their pews and seat themselves on the floor or on the steps of the bimah. Some hold candles as they follow the reading of Eichah, the Book of Lamentations. The reader reads it in a mournful, weeping voice. He starts out very softly. With each chapter (there are five) the reader increases his volume. At the last sentence, the entire congregation joins in. We sing a poignant melody to the words, “Turn us to You, O Lord, and we will return. Renew our days as the days of old.” Following Eichah, other lamentational prayers (Kinnot) about other tragedies in Jewish history are recited. The service concludes with another Kaddish, after which people disperse quickly and go home.
The Rabbis of ancient times set this scenario. One is tempted to say they were great stage managers, for even if you entered the shul lighthearted, and even if the burden lightens as soon as you leave, the experience in shul itself is weighty, sorrowful, and memory-laden. But the Rabbis weren’t stage-managing anything. It was what they remembered, how they felt, and what they themselves did that became part of our tradition.
The first two chapters of Eichah in particular, describing the ravishing of the young girls of Jerusalem, the enslavement and exile of young innocents, and most gory of all, the starvation that led mothers to eat the flesh of their dead children, make my own flesh crawl, my stomach tighten, and my heart constrict in pain. A decade ago, when our own children began to enter the large world of Jewish memories, I dreaded each Tisha B’Av, when, one by one, they would begin to understand those words and ask about such horrible things.
At the morning service, men do not don tefillin or tallit, just as an onen, a newly bereaved person, refrains from doing so until after the burial of his relative. By midafternoon the sacred Temple has been sacked, the Commonwealth buried, and so, men don their tefillin and tallit for Minchah.
During Shacharit, there are three aliyot from Deuteronomy (4:25-40), after which the third person reads
a selection from Jeremiah (8:13-9:23). The Torah and Haftorah are chanted in the same mournful melody as Eichah. There are additional special prayers, such as Anenu, Answer us, answer us, O God, on this day of our sorrow.
Minchah, too, is unusual if only because it is the only time during the year that men wear tefillin in the afternoon. But there are also special prayers of comfort (Nachem), as well as the Va’ye’chal Torah reading that is recited on all fast days. After the Six Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967, the ancient Nachem prayer was emended by the Israeli rabbinate to reflect this miracle in our times. Some congregations in America have adopted the emended version, which seems most appropriate.
WHY FAST?
Why fast? What does fasting really achieve? It is altogether possible to remember and grieve without it. And perhaps one could even say the reverse. Sometimes fasting on a difficult fast day takes our mind away from the larger thing and brings it to light on thoughts of food. I remember one August afternoon several years ago, J.J.’s first full Tisha B’Av fast. He was then almost thirteen, almost six feet tall, and consuming almost five thousand calories on a normal day—and still you could count every rib from five feet away.
That afternoon, J.J. was stretched out on the living-room couch and was writing something on a pad. As I passed through the room, I asked, “What are you doing, J.?” “Just making a list for myself.” I didn’t think to ask what the list was about, since J.J. is the world’s all-time master list-maker. An hour or two later, I passed through the living room again and J.J. was fast asleep, paper and pen on his chest. The list was entitled, “What to Eat After Tisha B’Av Is Over.”
Three slices of rye bread, thick with butter
Two bagels and cream cheese—lots of cream cheese
Two glasses of milk—large-size glass
Bananas...
And so the list went. Obviously, the poor kid was famished. Thoughts of the Churban were the furthest thing from his mind that afternoon. I knew that he was probably dreaming of food. It reminded me of my own late-afternoon hours of a fast as I mentally rummage the refrigerator shelves.
Why fast? After all, the Jews have returned to their homeland, Jerusalem is reunited, the Third Commonwealth is strong, despite its problems. Why fast?
Because fasting is a tangible symbol of grief, of mourning, of suffering. Fasting focuses the memory onto the event, it heightens empathy for the martyrs. It sharpens the feelings of identity, not only with the traumatized Jerusalemites of old, but with the loving, memory-rich community of the present.
Fasting, then, and the feelings of grief it crystallizes are a testimony to the power of memory. Through the process of remembering, we can never let ourselves become reconciled to defeat and destruction. What does that really mean? It means that somewhere in the recesses of the mind we understand that we can build atop the ruins. Memory is protest, memory is activism, memory is the incredible power to turn grief and destruction into hope. Not to remember, not to relive, not to retell, not to mourn, not to feel pain, is to be finally and ultimately defeated—and not the other way around.
In the summer of 1979, we were all in Jerusalem on Tisha B’Av. We had gone to the Kotel, the Western Wall, for the evening prayers. The men in our family were on one side of the mechitza (the divider), the women on the other. We—Deborah, Goody, two sisters-in-law, and I—sat on the hard stone floor in a small group encircled around an American rebbetzin who read Eichah for us. She read it beautifully, with a wailing voice, and full of emotion. But for me the mood was continually broken as her PR person and camerawoman kept taking pictures of her. A few times I felt a pang of sadness at her words, but for the most part I could not get into the spirit of things. I felt like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Someone near us would begin crying, and I would hear the rebbetzin cry, and feel like following suit. And then a moment later the camera would whir or click, an old friend would pass by, some beautiful, young, healthy Jewish child would scramble up the grassy side bank, my eye would catch sight of the broad stones of the wall—and I would feel like throwing my head back and laughing with joy.
Afterward, on the large stone plaza far back of the Kotel, our family regrouped. We walked very leisurely to the exit, seeing old friends whom we hadn’t seen in a long while. I loved every minute of it. Where was my anguish? It was nowhere to be found.
The next morning, we went off again to the Kotel. I detached myself for a few moments and went off quietly to do that which an Orthodox Jew is not permitted to do—to go up to the area of the Temple mount where a great mosque now stands. Despite my prayers about Temple sacrifice, I have never been able to get myself to imagine or long passionately for restoration of the Temple service. But standing there a moment in the hot wind, and in a hostile environment, I felt a sadness and void wash over me. How shortsighted and passive our people were, not to have reclaimed that holy spot in the second century or the third century or the fifth century or the eighth century—before it was too late. How sad there was no magnificent edifice of our own there. Surely there must have been a wedge at some time, in some person, in some benevolent ruler other than Emperor Julian, who gave permission to rebuild the Temple in the fourth century but died before it could be effected. Could there be, rotting in hell, some rich, third-century Italian Jew who was asked to contribute to the rebuilding of the Temple, but who refused the opportunity of a lifetime, of a thousand lifetimes?
Two minutes later, I went back down to the Kotel, to my people, and all thoughts of what could have been were swiftly banished.
Later that afternoon, we had all planned to return to the Kotel a third time, for Minchah and Maariv, but I fell asleep. No one wanted to wake me, so they left without me. I awoke in due time, and sped out to the Kotel in a taxi, to arrive just at the end of Minchah, when the men were peeling off and wrapping up their tefillin.
There were thousands and thousands of people—old people, babies, teenagers in olive green, young singles, large extended families. Some were praying, some were watching, some were waiting. A few curious birds flew overhead, trying to decipher human mating calls. The afternoon sun was beginning to give off its golden glow against the walls. Suddenly, the fatigue, the hunger, were out of my mind. As I made my way through the crowds, searching for my two daughters, I said to myself, How beautiful, how vibrant, how incredibly lucky we are. Why I would fast a hundred days just to be where I am right now! I would fast a thousand fasts of Tisha B’Av so that my husband and sons and daughters could be somewhere in this crowd, on this day, at this ancient wall, in Jerusalem.
And that is exactly what had happened. My ancestors kept the Jerusalem watch for me. It was only through their longing and their fasts that I was privileged to see this in my lifetime. It was only because they felt so much anguish on this day that I could feel so much joy. It was their shattering of a glass that intruded the destroyed Temple into every joyous wedding; their ruling to leave every new home with a spot unfinished—zecher le Churban, in memory of the destruction; their willingness to say, a billion times over, since the day of destruction, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.”...
Can I do any less?
AFTERWORD
As the reader has probably noticed, there has not been a great deal of talk about God in this book—a serious defect, which opens me up to the classical criticism about traditional Jews: that they are ritualistic, consumed with picayune details and not with larger matters of spirit and faith.
But I think it misses the whole point of halacha, for halacha is nothing if not a faith principle. In its very essence, it is an expression and a channel of love. The bottom line is this: we observe halacha because God commanded us. To act and to do, it seems to me, is at least as high a form of faith as to say, “I love” and “I believe.”
That is how we must understand what the Jewish people have done since Sinai. Take kashrut, for example, a code of law we are told to observe without being given any rational reason except, perhaps,
that amorphous quality of holiness. In developing halacha around the Biblical laws of kashrut, with layer upon layer of tradition, the Rabbis went way beyond the original revelation concerning forbidden and permitted categories. They did this because they felt it to be a voluntary expression of love, faith, and trust in God; they were not content merely to obey the explicitly commanded. Thus, in and of itself, ritual is a vehicle of love and faith.
Second, the whole of Jewish practice testifies to our belief that we fill a special role as God’s Chosen People. Observance of halacha has always been one of the powerful ties that binds us to each other and strengthens this collective sense of oneness. Unity means nothing more and nothing less than a thousand shared memories, shared experiences, shared actions.
Third, halacha—ritual, a traditional way of life—serves another function. I speak not of the salvific function of law, that is, scurrying around like busy little bees, consumed with ritual, in the hope of getting into God’s good graces. Rather, I speak of the very human function of halacha—how to walk through life with some moral anchors and a modicum of dignity, goodness, restraint, and purpose.
Rava, the great Talmudist, taught: At the end of a person’s life, he or she is brought to the heavenly throne. God, too, has His questions, very specific ones at that: “Were you honest in your dealings with others? Did you set aside regular times for study of Torah? Did you occupy yourself with building a family? Did you look forward to redemption? … (SHABBAT 31A).
This is what one might call the examined life. To be able to answer yes at the end of our days—that is what living a traditional Jewish way of life is all about.
RECIPES *
How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household Page 48