It’s 100 degrees here in Camp Ramah in the Berkshires. It’s sweltering, humid, buggy and dusty. Pretty miserable. But then, miserable is just what high summer should be on the Jewish calendar.
This week we marked the 17th of Tammuz, the minor fast day marking the date when a number of mythic calamities befell Israel, the most important of which is the day Moses descended Mt. Sinai carrying the twin tablets of the covenant, carved and inscribed by God, and – upon seeing the people worshipping before a golden calf – smashed them into a million pieces.
In another couple of weeks, on August 8-9th, we will mark the 9th of Av, the major (sundown to nightfall) fast marking the date both Jerusalem Temples were destroyed, and when God decreed that the generation that had left Egypt would not reach the promised land after all. (The historical catalog of disaster can be found in Mishna Taanit, ch. 4.)
We mark these hot days generally (and the 9th of Av specifically) with fasting, sweating, going barefoot, sitting on the ground, no bathing, no celebrations, refraining from meat, wine and sex. Is this just more woe-is-us, oy-vey Judaism? Needless self-flagellation over long-ago suffering? Isn’t life hard enough without bringing up forgotten tragedies? Can’t we just go to the beach?
To the contrary, I think this time of year is among the deepest passages in our calendar – in fact, a real paradigm for Jewish time. The “trees” of Judaism are innumerable details of ritual, ethics and story. But they come together in a “forest” that tell us: Squeeze light out of the darkness. Draw life out of death. Find hope overcoming doom.
At this time of year, our spiritual palette is dominated by the darkness, the death, the doom. And it must be this way, because our only chance to fix this cracked world is to focus fearlessly on the all its genuine brokenness. Whether things happened on the 17th of Tammuz or the 9th of Av long ago exactly like the Sages said or not, I cannot miss the enormous mythic, poetic power of the incidents they recalled. To remember the smashing of the tablets is to stare honestly at the truth that God’s plan for the world can be foiled by human faithlessness. We can screw up this world royally. And we have. To recall a divine decree that the generation of the exodus could never enter the Promised Land is to understand that your destiny might actually end up unfulfilled. There is no promise you’re going to make it. You might die in the desert.
Marking a high-summer period of failure, fasting and national mourning is essential to religious integrity. Our summer mourning period keeps us from over-confidence, from being Pollyannas. You know what? It’s actually not all good.
Only by staring into the dark can you extract the light, the life, the hope. And that’s what comes next on our calendar. According to that same chapter of Mishna in tractate Taanit, the 15th of Av, just a week after the fast, was Jewish matchmaker’s day, a day of love and sex, when young men and women went into the fields to seduce each other into marriages.
I find this magnificent. The Jewish summer calendar says to us: Spend three weeks remembering the smashed tablets of the covenant; remembering the ruined temples; remembering the wandering in the desert for 40 years. But don’t let mourning overwhelm you. After three weeks, stop. And go make babies. First, pay close attention to destiny unfulfilled. Then, go fulfill it.
By juxtaposing suffering and death on one hand, with eros and reproduction on the other, our Mishna calls to mind one of the stirring facts of the last 100 years in Jewish history. What did Shoah survivors do when they emerged from concentration camps and the forests, caves, attics, barns and other hiding places, now gathering into Displaced Persons camps? Many had lost their first families, seen their spouses and children beaten, shot and gassed before their eyes. What did they do next? They married and made babies in extraordinary numbers. The DP camps saw 700 births a month at one point, and more than 50 births per 1,000 people, the highest rate in the world at the time. (I myself know one person actually born in a concentration camp, in the final days of the war. Unbelievable!)
This is our Mishna and the summer calendar that it commands, in living color. The world is full of suffering. So don’t try to avoid it. Bring our suffering, our failures and our brokenness from the back of your mind to the front. Stare at it. Fast over it. Mourn it. And then emerge from it, to rebuild all that is broken, life by life.
- Nedarim, Daf 79 - January 12, 2023
- Nedarim, Daf 78 - January 11, 2023
- Nedarim, Daf 77 - January 10, 2023