As we draw closer to Tisha B’Av, when we remember the destruction of the First and Second Temples, I wonder how those ancient losses connect to the tumultuous times in which we’re living and what kind of lessons they might teach us today.
From the time I was a young girl, I was taught that the destruction of the Second Temple was due to sinat chinam — baseless hatred, and it seemed a reason adults were giving us kids because we might not understand the real, more weighty and complex causes for why such a disaster might befall our people. As I look around the world today, I don’t think that anymore. Just the opposite: it seems like baseless hatred is indeed the weighty reason why buildings topple and the foundations of society and civilization itself are shaken.
One way sinat chinam has been allowed to flourish in America today is through a culture that celebrates mockery. Famous and powerful people have carved careers for themselves out of the nasty and cruel denigration of others, and I’ve watched in a kind of horrified fascination as their followers not only didn’t condemn the meanness, but have come to embrace and mimic it. This has been all the more surprising a phenomenon in a religious community such as ours which purports to hold itself to high standards of kindness and compassion. Throughout my life at Orthodox Jewish schools and institutions, I learned source after source that exhorted the Jewish people to seek the meaning behind our laws and that is to create a just, righteous, and compassionate community for everyone in it, particularly the most vulnerable.
A colleague I was speaking to this past week reminded me of the small details in the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza that seem particularly resonant now. If you remember the story, told about the way sinat chinam led to the destruction of the Second Temple — a Jew had a friend, Kamtza, and an enemy, Bar Kamtza, and tells his servant to send an invitation to a party to his friend. The servant mistakenly invites Bar Kamtza to the feast, and Bar Kamtza, thinking his enemy wants to make peace, dresses in his finery and comes to the party in a mood of rapprochement. The host, however, is having none of it, and wants to kick his enemy out. Bar Kamtza begs him not to, but the host remains adamant, even when Bar Kamtza offers to pay first for his own part of the meal, then for half the feast, and finally for the entire party, so anxious is he to avoid being publicly embarrassed.
The host, however, has Bar Kamtza thrown into the streets. First, my colleague pointed out that Bar Kamtza’s reaction to go tell the Emperor Nero that the Jews were planning a rebellion was motivated not by what the host did, but by Bar Kamtza noticing that the rabbis present at the party watched and did nothing as he was humiliated. They watched a fellow human being embarrassed and remained silent. Next, my colleague noted that the way Bar Kamtza convinced Nero that what he was telling him about the Jewish rebellion was true was by informing him that the emperor should send an animal to be sacrificed at the Temple, but that the Jews would refuse to do so. When Nero sends a Roman delegation with the animal, Bar Kamtza intercepts it on the journey and gives it a blemish. The Jews see the mum — the blemish, and don’t sacrifice it. Nero sees that Bar Kamtza can be trusted, believes the Jews are rebelling, and destroys the Temple.
I hadn’t remembered the part of the story about the blemish; I don’t even recall if that part of the tale had ever been conveyed to me when I learned it growing up —a counselor favorite during chinuch, a reminder not to get too caught up in color war competitions. The story landed very differently this past week. We live in a community where we have the time, resources, and freedom to pursue Torah learning and the keeping of the mitzvot in ways that were often denied us in other times and places, and yet we are in danger of becoming so focused on the minutiae of law —of checking for the blemish on the sacrifice —that we forget what the laws were meant to do, and that is to prevent us from being mean, from not standing by when someone is humiliated.
Underpinning my entire Jewish education — which spanned from Orthodox elementary and high schools to Midreshet Moriah and Stern College for Women — was the sense that we were in this as Jews in order to see the humanity behind each person we meet, whether that person is from our own community, or from another, whether that person is a fellow Jew or a member of our human tribe. We are told that the first story in the Torah is the creation of the world because God is the God of all people, not just the Jewish one, and that all humanity is part of one community. We are shown examples of kindness and morality from Israelite and non-Israelite alike, again and again in Tanach, and we are exhorted to care for the marginalized — the widow, the orphan, and the stranger — more times in the Torah than we are told to do anything else.
We are about to enter into as a community Tisha B’Av, but the Prophets remind us that God will reject our fast and our prayers and our service if we do not remain true to the mishmeret. Isaiah 58:4-7 says:
“Indeed you fast for strife and debate, and to strike with the fist of wickedness …Is it a fast that I have chosen, a day for man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast? …Is this not the fast that I have chosen —to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; when you see the naked, that you cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh?”
In his book, “Justice in the City,” Rabbi Aryeh Cohen makes the point that the Greek philosophers argued for an ideal city that oftentimes felt very out of reach. While we know that the word “utopia,” meaning “ideal place,” really means “no place,” since it can never be found, Rabbi Cohen says the rabbis in the Mishnah and Talmud seem more practical than their Greek counterparts. The laws they discuss, expound, ultimately decide on are meant to even out inequities, ensure the vulnerable are protected and that each person has what she needs to thrive.
The rabbis were concerned with the quotidian —with fair and equitable wages and conditions for workers; with tort law; with ensuring that communities took care of the most needy and did so in a dignified way. This is the beauty of the Torah and its laws, that their ideal is a society that does not put the arrogance and ego of the most powerful at the center of the world, but the needs and concerns of those who are weakest. As Rabbi Cohen explains, the Torah sets a Godly view of the world against a Pharaonic one — a radical reimagining of political and societal order. The way it manifests is often in law, but what motivates that law is compassion, an absence of mockery, a seriousness and empathy when noticing the Other, a curiosity when confronting someone who does not think like us, an offering of friendship, even when someone is very different from us.
These are norms — civilities — modes of being in the world. They are often not codified in law — they are “lifnim meshurat ha-din, beyond the line of the law” —but the breaking of them, as we will commemorate on Tisha B’Av, has the power to wreak havoc, destroy foundations and shatter our world. I hope we remember that this Av, and as we look around and wonder how to repair our broken world right now. Isaiah (58:10-12) reminds us this is the way:
“If you extend your soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the noonday … Those from among you shall build the old waste places. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer of Streets to dwell in.”
Tikvah Wiener is Head of School of The Idea School, an Orthodox, project-based learning high school in Tenafly, NJ. She lives in Teaneck.
