Today’s Jewish calendar marks the Ninth of Av, a date commemorating multiple traumas in Jewish history. It’s eerie, but the chapter we are reading today in the 929 cycle of daily biblical chapters is exactly that date as well - the first of many national sorrows that have occurred today, whether in our mythic or historical reckoning. In the narrative of the Torah, chapter 14 continues the saga of the previous chapter, with the people responding to the reports of the 12 spies who were sent to scout the promised land. The mixed reports sow fear and confusion, demoralizing the people who only recently were slaves in Egypt, and now unsure of their future:
וַתִּשָּׂא֙ כׇּל־הָ֣עֵדָ֔ה וַֽיִּתְּנ֖וּ אֶת־קוֹלָ֑ם וַיִּבְכּ֥וּ הָעָ֖ם בַּלַּ֥יְלָה הַהֽוּא׃
“The whole community broke into loud cries, and the people wept that night.” (Ba. 14:1)
According to Jewish tradition, that awful and fateful night was when the Ninth of the month of Av became the night of tears. Many more will follow over the years, including destruction of temples, persecution and exiles. Zorenberg writes: “Time after time, catastrophes will fall on this day, so that it will be institutionalized as a national fast day, accumulating its own complex history of cataclysmic loss.3 Far from being an isolated incident, then, this story gives expression to profound movements in the Israelite soul. It becomes the rootstock of many future national sorrows.”
An obscure tradition tells an astonishing story about what happened on this night throughout the years of wandering in the wilderness:
“Rabbi Levi said: Every eve of the ninth of Av, Moses would dispatch a herald to the entire camp, saying: ‘Go and dig,’ and the people would dig their own graves and sleep in them. In the morning, he would dispatch a herald saying: ‘Rise and separate the dead from the living,’ and those still alive would rise from the graves. Fifteen thousand and more were subtracted each year, for a total of six hundred thousand people among the community. They did this every year. In the fortieth year of their wandering, the last one, they did so again but in the morning found themselves intact. They said: It appears that we were mistaken in our calculation, and they did the same on the tenth, the eleventh, the twelfth, the thirteenth, and the fourteenth of Av. When the moon was full on the fifteenth they said: It appears that the Holy One blessed be He lifted the decree from upon us, and they then rendered that full moon a holiday. But due to their iniquities, mourning beset this world with the destruction of the Temple twice on this very night of the ninth, as it is written: “My lyre is for mourning, and my flute is for the voice of weepers” (Job 30:31) who are the weepers? “The people wept that night” (Numbers 14:1)
Midrash Eycha Rabba/Petichta 33
This heartbreaking midrash imagines that the Hebrews would only die once a year, throughout the wilderness, digging their own graves, uncertain who would rise and who would not, and thus until the 40th year.
These days, the 9th of Av is often focused on the destruction of the first and second temple in Jerusalem, along with exile and persecution. But what about this legend takes this intergenerational trauma to a deeper, older narrative of loss and longing, mourning and mortality? Who and what do we weep for when we take the time, mid summer, as the Jewish year begins its descent, to lament the lost and give space to sadness - so that we can rise again, ready to face the world with more empathy and resilience? You don’t have to be at the wailing wall to weep today, for so many wrongs and hurts, past and present, in our private and public realities. What would your private wailing ritual look like? What does it mean to dig your own grave and then rise?
I invite you to join me, along with colleagues and friends on zoom today to Rise from Rubble at 4pm EST.
Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.
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