Devarim, Deuteronomy
1:1 - 3:22
To mourn or not to mourn is often in question in today’s world. When a Jew dies we survivors have a step-by-step traditional path to travel from the moment of our loved one’s death to the unveiling of the person’s grave stone some eleven months later. The steps give us a way to sit with our grief, to confront its terrors and its blessings, to weep, to get support, to take the first shaky and then gradually firmer steps back to the fullness of our lives. Through my own losses and witnessing the mourning of those in our community, I am more and more convinced of the great wisdom of our Jewish traditions. I believe they give us a gift we should not shun, an opportunity we should embrace. We should not be in such a great hurry to get back to work or our routines, but should.
As a Jewish community, we also can gather together to mourn our communal losses throughout the ages. This week’s parasha, Devarim, is always read on the Shabbat preceding the observance of Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, designated as the day of mourning and fasting for the destruction of the First and Second Temples (in 586 BCE and 70 CE respectively). The tradition links the Torah reading, the Haftarah and the fast day through the one Hebrew word: “aicha,” “how.” In this parasha, Moses remembers the moment he cried out to the Israelites, “Aicha/How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering?” In the Haftarah, the prophet Isaiah’s vision (hence Shabbat Chazon/Vision) speaks of the downfall of Jerusalem, “Aicha/how she (the city) has become a harlot, the faithful city that was filled with justice.” And in the Book of Lamentations, read on Tisha B’Av and attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, we hear his description of Jerusalem after its conquest in 586 BCE: “Aicah/How lonely sits the city.”
Aicha? How do we come to grips with the multiple blows our people has sustained? How to mourn a long history of being the scapegoat, the object of derision and violence, living in fear of destruction? Again our tradition gives us a wise answer. We do not dwell, with multiple anniversaries or severe self-chastisements, on our many persecutions and defeats. Rather we take a long night and day, but just one, to reflect on what that history has taught us and to lament, with sorrow, the pain we have known as a people. Then we rise and return to life with renewed commitment. We shun the mistakes of the past, we embrace the opportunities for the future, we work for tikkun olam, for a time when all sorrow will be healed and all the rents in the fabric of the world will be mended.
To mourn or not to mourn should not be the question. Let us mourn that we might heal; let us sorrow that we might turn again to embrace life with fullness and with joy.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Judy Shanks
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