“To recite Eicha is to carry the past forward, but what do we do with its message of devastation? Can we transform lament into action, or do we remain forever exiled in its verses?”
Rabbi Jill Hammer’s important questions echo sadly during these difficult days, as so much trauma continues to devastate and divide us. What is the purpose of this text in our lives? To relive the trauma, honoring our ancestors’ plight and our people’s resilience? To warn us of internal divisions and political realities that lead to destruction? To help us deal with grief as it comes our way whether we like it or not, personally and collectively?
Perhaps it’s all of the above. And surprisingly, it also includes sentiments of hope - against all odds.
Whether whispered alone or read aloud in public, these words of woe were meant to stir our feelings, and thousands of years after they were written - they still do.
The Scroll of Lamentations has become the script for one of Judaism’s longest living rituals of grief. Every year, on the night that begins the 24 hours fast day of Ninth of Av, Jews gather in synagogues all over the world to recite these chapters in a special sorrowful melody. Some congregations mandate sitting on the floor, not in chairs, as a sign of mourning. Some only use candle-light. The ritual-theater of grief centers around this dramatic alphabetical poetry that conveys the horrors of the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 586 BCE by the long gone Babylonian Empire. I remember attending these rituals from a very young age, vividly aware of the emotion in the room, and even the tears streaming down the cheeks of some of the men and women with whom I was sitting. In the world I was raised in - inhabited by many Holocaust survivors who didn’t show much emotion - public tears were rare. And yet that is in some way the lingering power of Eycha - it gives us, even strong men among us, the public permission to cry.
In today’s chapter, the horror story is told from the point of view of a man who lived through the destruction and knows how to cry. He is not named but traditionally, the scroll is attributed to Jeremiah the Prophet. But many readers over the generations recognized in his words echoes of another biblical man who dealt with suffering - Job. For those of us who just went through the saga of suffering that is Job’s story - we may recognize some familiar themes and turns of phrase, such as Job 7:4-6; 16:9-22; 19:14-20.
The identification of this nameless man with Job on a symbolic, literary levels was already made in the Midrash on Eycha:
“Rabbi Joshua of Siknin in the name of Rabbi Levi said: “The community of Israel said to the Almighty: ‘Master of the World, I am Job, as it is said: “What man is like Job, who drinks scorning like water” (Job 34:7). All that you brought upon Job you wish to bring upon me!’”
Rashi, on the other hand, preferred to identify the poetic mourning man as Jeremiah:
“Jeremiah was complaining as follows: “I am the man who has known affliction’ – who has known affliction more than all the prophets who prophesied about the destruction of the Temple; for the Temple was not destroyed in their time, but in my time!”
Prof.Jacob Klein reviews the different opinions and hones in on what are the important features of this chapter - what this man has to offer us today:
“ The editor of Lamentations included the lament of this individual in the book in order to teach people how to cope with the national tragedy that they experienced so that they do not despair and lose faith in future redemption.”
What’s indeed astonishing here is that despite the dark descriptions of chains and prison cells, tears and trauma, rage at God and feelings of futility, this man keeps alive a spark of hope for forgiveness and redemption - deep inside his heart:
יִתֵּן בֶּעָפָר פִּיהוּ אוּלַי יֵשׁ תִּקְוָה׃
“Let him put his mouth to the dust—
There may yet be hope.”
Lamentations 3:29
These words are honest and heartbreaking - the ‘maybe’ is as good as it gets. These words echo not just Job’s attempts at reconciliation of his faith with his awful fate but those of countless poets and philosophers through the ages - of all genders and all narratives. Let it be - May it be - perhaps - the open window to the possibility of better is the only way to make it through the valley of despair, again and again.
The authors of Lamentations were careful to include these different perspectives in the text, precisely placed as alphabetical acrostics. Chapter 3 is unique in that each of the Hebrew alphabet letters has three lines - the man’s monologue is the longest in the scroll. This formal device encapsulates the enormity or totality of the destruction - from A to Z.
The alphabetical structure is an attempt to help to seek some order out of the chaos, to stick to at least one format of stability that may yet give us, all of us, much needed courage, patience, and hope.
Here is one incredibly hopeful ray of light - a song by this name sung last week by Sagui Dekel-Chen, a former Israeli hostage in Gaza, with his family and friends.
read about it here. And watch the ray of hope, here:
What gives you hope during these dark times?
Image: “Old Jew” by Hermann Struck (1876–1944)
The painting is currently on display at the entrance of the Faculty of Jewish Studies building at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, but is missing the Hebrew inscription that was seen when it was first displayed in Berlin before the Second World War. The original inscription included the words from Lam. 3:28): ישב בדד וידם כי נטל עליו “Let him sit alone in silence, for God has laid it on him.”
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Thank you for sharing Sagui's performance at the end. It was much-needed. In the words of the prophet: there may yet be hope.
Thank you, Rabbi, for this beautiful d'var. Yes, I think the challenge is to hold onto that hope. The hope, I believe, gives us the strength to keep working for better times.