From despair to hope TB Taanit 29

Two days, the 17^th day of Tammuz and the 9^th day of Av, in the Jewish calendar are traditionally bad karma days. They seem to have attracted apocalyptic events. TB Taanit 28b and Taanit 29 lists those tragedies.

“§ The mishna taught: Five calamitous matters occurred to our forefathers on the seventeenth of Tammuz, one of which was that the tablets were broken..§ The mishna taught that on the seventeenth of Tammuz the daily offering was nullified. The Gemara explains: It is a tradition that this occurred on that date.  The mishna further taught that on the seventeenth of Tammuz the city walls of Jerusalem were breached…The mishna further taught that on the seventeenth of Tammuz Apostemos publicly burned a Torah scroll. The Gemara explains: This, too, is a tradition. The mishna also stated that on the seventeenth of Tammuz Manasseh placed an idol in the Sanctuary.” (Sefaria.org translation)

“The mishna taught: On the Ninth of Av, it was decreed upon our ancestors that they would not enter Eretz Yisrael…The mishna further taught that on the Ninth of Av the Temple was destroyed the first time…nd the mishna further taught that the Temple was destroyed for the second time also on the Ninth of Av. The Gemara asks: From where do we derive that the Second Temple was destroyed on this date? It is taught in a baraita: A meritorious matter is brought about on an auspicious day, and a deleterious matter on an inauspicious day, e.g., the Ninth of Av, on which several tragedies had already occurred. he mishna teaches that Beitar was captured on the Ninth of Av. The Gemara explains that this is known by tradition. The mishna taught that on the Ninth of Av the city of Jerusalem was plowed.” (Sefaria.org translation)

Why are we Jews still on the historical stage? By all rights of reason we should have left it long ago either because our enemies sought to destroy us or the burden of our fate should have left us so despondent that we would have stopped being Jewish and joined another people or religion. One of the most important books I have in my library that answers this question is David Roskies’ Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture.

Roskies writes “Soloveitchik taught that the three week of increased mourning from the 17^th of Tammuz to the 9^th of Av is designed to bring the individual into the collective memory of the people of Israel’s historical tragedy, whereas the decreasing intensity a personal mourning-the rites of shiva (seven days) and sheloshim (30 days), and the recitation of the kaddish for 11 months in the synagogue-are designed, in contrast, to bring the individual who is cut off from normal life back into the everyday routine of the Jewish people. This, then, is the way individual Jews prepare themselves during the exact period between the breaching of the walls and the day of destruction; and then, in assembly with other Jews, experience the desecration of their own sacred space-their mikdash me’t, or Temple in miniature.” (page 37)

“Perhaps, as practical men, the rabbis did not want to push the Messiah’s hand. However they very much wanted to keep the hope of restoration alive. And so they continued to believe that the Messiah would be born on the ninth of Av (based on P Berakhot 2:4), thus linking the anniversary of the great destruction to the new beginning. Centuries later the Jews of Eastern Europe heightened the dialectical tension by adding new practices. They turned the rabbinic custom of exempting schoolchildren from classes on the ninth of Av as a form of spiritual denial (B Taanit 30a), into a regular free for all: heder (school) children ran around all day throwing burrs at the adults. And adult Jews in the Galician city of Brod, in the hope of imminent redemption, tore up the printed kinot at the end of the service-each year. Next year in Jerusalem there will be no more cause for lamentation.

“The rabbinic design seems to have been set limits to mourning lest it spill over into extreme asceticism or a cult of death; at the same time, they left ample room for selective expansion. And so, just as the liturgy for the ninth of Av could move from Jerusalem in ruins to Jerusalem and rebuild, the pendulum continued to swing-sometimes with amazing rapidity-from grief to relief and other ritual spheres as well.” (Page 38-9)

I can’t recommend Roskies’ book high enough for his keen insights in the history of the refuse of Jews throughout the ages to surrender.