My Experience on Tisha B'Av, 5781

[Written on Tisha B'Av, 5781/2021]

For a non-Jew, I’ve had a lot of Jewish experiences, starting with my first visit to an Orthodox synagogue in 1981 when I was in high school (accompanied by my first purchase of Jewish prayer books). I majored in Judaic studies with a minor in Hebrew in college and took many Jewish studies courses in divinity school, including three with a Chasidic rebbe in Maimonides in which I was the only non-Jewish student in the class (in at least one, the only one not an Orthodox Jewish man). I’ve attended at least 25 Passover seders, 3 Tu B’Shevat seders (four if you count the one on Zoom last year during the pandemic), at least 9 years of in-person High Holy Day services (15 if you count livestreaming), and many, many Shabbat services. Even two Shalom Zachor celebrations and a bris. This was my fourth Tisha B’Av. I’ve learned daf yomi (daily Talmud) for over a year now, have completed the first year of the Center for Contemporary Mussar program, and have been attending a chasidus shiur for a few months. I own 84 Jewish prayerbooks, not counting a dozen and a half haggadahs for Passaover (and one for Tu B’Shevat). And a lot of other Jewish books. I’ve carried a tiny copy of Tehillim (Psalms) in my wallet for going on three decades.

And I don’t believe I’ve ever been as deeply emotionally affected as I was by this year’s Tisha B’Av observance.

To be sure, the other years were meaningful. The first two times, I only attended one service (the evening service). Last year, I participated in two evening services by Zoom, sitting on the floor by candlelight for the first and being moved by the removal of mezuzot from a year-old shtiebel’s first location, as well as a couple of Zoom classes the next day. (And another year, I had a wonderful conversation on Tisha B’Av morning with an Orthodox coworker who had not taken the day off but was fasting – he had great insights.)

A large part of what made it so powerful for me this year was being there in person for all three services of the day (and Maariv of Motzei Tisha B’Av) as well as for the afternoon program of four classes (and another one on Zoom when I was home in between morning and afternoon sessions) – spending 11 or 12 hours with Orthodox Jewish friends observing the day with a great deal of kavannah certainly influenced my experience. I did not fast, but from leaving the house at 2 until sitting down to dinner a little after 9, I had no food or drink – the mild hunger was not bad, but the lack of beverages did affect me. The services and classes were all very well done and quite meaningful. The arc of the day, from the intensity of the evening service in dim light sitting on the floor with candles about, punctuated by thunder and lightning, with a packed room of mostly younger people seriously mourning, leaving in silence, to the quieter morning service, still sitting on the floor, followed by reflections on the kinnot (I actually gave one myself and was quite moved by the others), to the afternoon where we returned to furniture. The rabbanit made the point that the day was to feel like a shiva call, and it did feel like a funeral observance, moving from more intense mourning to the sort of quiet remembrance with mixed laughter and tears.

But what affected me the most was the burden of centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. I’ve read the inspirational Easter sermon of John Chrysostom and heard it read at Easter Vigils – and the knowledge that his virulent hateful screeds against the Jews were able to be reprinted by the Nazis eliminates the possibility of any of his writings being sacred to me. The simplicity of the Good Friday liturgy has a stark beauty to it – but the knowledge that it at one time had anti-Jewish elements that inspired Christian mobs to attack and murder and loot their Jewish neighbors makes me grieve in a rather different way than the liturgy intends. Martin Luther made necessary reforms, necessitating a break from a church that had become thoroughly corrupt – and, again, wrote anti-Jewish attacks so vicious the Nazis printed them. I love the music of Johann Sebastian Bach inspired by Lutheran liturgy. I appreciate that many Lutheran churches have engaged in repentance of their part in anti-Semitism and in helping foster an environment that made the Holocaust possible – and yet I wonder if any act short of stripping Luther’s name from their churches can be enough. The Roman Catholic denomination commendably repented at Vatican II with Nostra Aetate, and yet anti-Semitism remains – I know someone who in this millennium studied in a diocesan seminary with a professor who has publicly defended the kidnapping of a Jewish child baptized secretly by a maid against the will of his parents and raised as a Catholic. And the evangelical world in which I was raised attempts to convert the Jews to their version of Christianity and have no problem with using the word “crusade” to describe their evangelistic efforts. I’m regularly asked by Jews if I have Jewish ancestry – and, given the fact that my ancestors are almost all from England and Scotland, who expelled the Jews in the thirteenth century, I must shake my head no. France and Spain followed suit, with Roman Catholic clergy leading the Inquisition in Spain, forcing Jews to convert, flee, or die, with only a minority of the Jewish population surviving with their Judaism intact. And the Eastern Orthodox, unlike Catholics, Anglicans, and many Protestants, have never reckoned with their anti-Semitism and history of pogroms and their liturgy remains intact with hatred of the Jewish people being a major theme of the Holy Week liturgy.

And I found myself tearing up at Maariv as we davened and listened to the chanting of Eicha, the biblical book of Lamentations, and the kinnot, the dirges that are a major part of the day’s liturgy. I would have sobbed had I not wanted to attract attention. The next morning, several of us gave reflections on different kinnot (myself included). One in particular that really affected me was a reflection on a kinnah mourning the burning of many copies of the Talmud during the reign of Louis IX the king of France in the thirteenth century. How horrifying to me that anyone could be so evil as to destroy a sacred work, even if it is a sacred work of another religion - and this was in the days before printing, when there were far fewer copies of such works, all written in manuscript form. The fact that my friend who gave this reflection celebrated completion of studying the entire Talmud about a week and a half ago (which he mentioned as a reason he chose this kinnah to reflect upon) made this all the more poignant - and I am grateful I was able to attend the celebratory feast, or siyyum, commemorating his achievement.

I study daf yomi, a daily page of Talmud through this shul and have been doing so a little over a year (after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to read on my own). I enjoy it, get a lot out of it spiritually, and have become friends with my fellow students. After hearing this during this morning's service, I am even more glad to be engaged in Talmud study, which I hope can serve as an act of tikkun or repair in response to the destruction of this sacred text, both in France in the 13th century and in other times and places.

When I got home from the morning service, I looked up Louis IX and it sickens me to my stomach that this wicked man is commemorated as a “saint” not only by the Roman Catholic denomination (thanks to a thirteenth-century pope who not only canonized this vile genocidal tyrant but kicked a member of his court in the head and threw ashes in the eyes of an archbishop he didn’t like), but by the Episcopal Church as well.  I want to tell my Episcopal priest friends, for whom celebration of his feast is optional, that if they celebrate Mass of his feast or commemorate him in the office (and this latter goes for religious and laity as well), they are committing a sin in doing so – same goes for the Independent Sacramental Movement of which I am a part.

Last Sunday, I went to Lakewood, NJ, with friends as a road trip. Lakewood is a heavily Jewish town, with the world's second largest yeshiva, and we visited an amazing Jewish bookstore. I only bought one book, but I was drawn to buy it when I saw it - the Esh Kodesh of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, the Piaseczner Rebbe, z"tz"l - sometimes referred to as the "Warsaw Ghetto Rebbe". I had been wanting to read his writings. He helped keep the Jewish community going in the Warsaw Ghetto during the dark days of the Holocaust and was himself murdered by the Nazis. The remarkable thing about this book, a collection of teachings he gave on Shabbat afternoons, was that he put the manuscript in a metal canister with a note to forward the teachings and buried it. Miraculously, it was found and the teachings have been published. This miraculous story came to mind as we were reading the kinnah.

When the murder at the Poway Chabad shul happened in 2019, in addition to sending a small donation (as I had done for the Pittsburgh synagogue as well), I bought a number of books from Chabad’s publishing arm. This might have been self-serving, but I’m glad I did – because anti-Semites seek not only to destroy Jews but Jewish books as well, and I want to take a stand against that hatred. I’m glad I have Tanya and the Chabad machzor and Haggadah and a pocket book of Tehillim that I carry in my shirt pocket when I am in Jewish spaces (and use regularly – including at Minchah, when we davened for someone who was undergoing surgery and I pulled it out for Psalm 121 which we chanted together).

Tisha B'Av this year was one of the most emotionally intense Jewish experiences I've had. I started writing up my experiences just now to share, but after writing 1,716 words and not getting everything down on paper and those words being too raw to share, I'm not ready to share yet. [I'm sharing it almost a year later.] Let's just say that I really felt intensely the very shameful burden of well over a millennium and a half of quite violent and vicious Christian persecution of the Jewish people.