woe
grief, lament, truth-telling
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Tisha B'Av begins Saturday night. This is the day when Jews mourn the destruction, once again– the annihilation, the desecration, of lives, civilizations, holy spaces, Temples. The First Temple by the Babylonians, in 586 BCE, the Second Temple by the Romans, in 70 CE. The Crusades and their subsequent massacres. The Edict of Expulsion by Isabella I and Ferdinand II in 1492. So many other horrors. Disaster after disaster. Calamity after calamity.
Falls of civilization, of entire ways of being; monstrosities of oppression, destruction, death, again and again and again.
Trigger warning: I won't be subtle, here. This is not the holiday for ease or comfort, and this is not the moment in history to be retiring or shy about what's happening. So there are poems and quotes from people today interwoven with (a pointed selection of) traditional sources. I have overall chosen less graphic options, but the brutalities of what's happening in Gaza cannot be truly elided.
Because another Temple is being destroyed, has been destroyed, now, and we must be willing to face it, show up to our obligations to it.
On the Eve of Tisha B'Av, we read from the Book of Lamentations, which tells the story of Jerusalem after the Babylonians have destroyed it.:
Alas! Woe!
Lonely sits the city
Once great with people–
She that was great among nations
Is become like a widow;
The princess among states
Has become a vassal. (Lamentations 1:1)
All her pursuers overtook her
In the narrow places. (Lamentations 1:3)
All her inhabitants sigh
As they search for bread;
They have bartered their treasures for food,
To keep themselves alive.—
See, God, and behold,
How abject I have become! (Lamentations 1:11)
My eyes are spent with tears,
My heart is in tumult,
My being melts away,
Over the ruin of my poor people,
As babes and sucklings languish
In the squares of the city. (Lamentations 2:11)
They keep asking their mothers,
“Where is bread and wine?”
As they languish like battle-wounded
In the squares of the town,
As their life runs out
In their mothers’ bosoms. (Lamentations 2:12)
Pull Yourself Together
Hiba Abu Nada
O! How alone we are!
All the others have won their wars
and you were left in your mud,
barren.
Darwish, don’t you know?
No poetry will return to the lonely
what was lost, what was
stolen.
How alone we are!
This is another age of ignorance. Cursed are those
who divided us in war and marched in your funeral
as one.
How alone we are!
This earth is an open market,
and your great countries have been auctioned away,
gone!
How alone we are!
This is an age of insolence,
and no one will stand by our side,
Never.
O! How alone we are!
Wipe away your poems, old and new,
and all these tears. And you, O Palestine,
pull yourself together.
