After the walls came smoldering down and the prophets proved true, once the compassionate women, starving, ate the corpses of their own children and the "face" of G-d went into hiding for two millenia, a new age of Jewish history began: that post-biblical mess of pogroms, expulsions, clubbings and gas that, despite finally having our own army and sovereignty in our eternal Homeland after 2,000 years of exile, continues to influence Jewish consciousness--and probably will until the Temple is rebuilt.
It's not like the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash should have come as a shock to Am Israel--Isaiah and Jeremiah had spent decades warning the people and their kings to cease their immoral, idolatrous ways. However, a shock the destruction undoubtedly was. Judah and its leadership had thought that the merit of the Beit HaMikdash in Jerusalem would protect the nation from subjugation indefinitely and unconditionally.
There have also been many post-exilic points in our history that Jews have felt secure, safe and accepted in their host countries, such as Spain, Poland, Germany and Iraq. Of course, one of the saddest--and scariest--aspects of Tisha B'Av, on which an eerie number of tragedies have occurred, reminds us that there is no such thing as guaranteed security.
The prophetical writings in Tanakh accuse the Jewish People of acting disloyally to G-d prior to the destruction of the Temple. Ironically, Megillat Eicha, which poetically describes G-d's abandoning the Jewish People to the cruelty of their enemies, simultaneously works to repair the gulf between the Jews and G-d. It is G-d that the people must turn to in their distress, G-d who allows this catastrophe to happen, G-d--and not former political allies--who is begged to save His people, to renew their days of old so that they may return to Him in turn.
Tisha B'Av reminds us that regardless of nationality, minhagim, ethnicity or religious denomination, we are one people with One G-d. This day marks not just an event or several events in history, but highlights the interminable desperation and optimism that defines the experience of being a Jew.
I would like to end this post with a simple, but poignant, poem written by Franta Bass in the Terezin ghetto, Czechoslovakia, sometime between the ages of 11 and 13 years. Franta was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944, shortly before his 14th birthday.
~ ~ ~
I AM A JEW
by Franta Bass
I am a Jew and will be a Jew forever.
Even if I should die from hunger,
never will I submit.
I will always fight for my people,
on my honor.
I will never be ashamed of them,
I give my word.
I am proud of my people,
how dignified they are.
Even though I am suppressed,
I will always come back to life.
~ ~ ~
השיבנו ה אליך ונשובה, חדש ימינו כקדם
