Tisha B'Av

FEELING ANOTHER'S PAIN

The 9th of Av is one of the reasons that our people have always been proactive in the struggle for freedom, and in the war against poverty wherever they have lived. We led the way in the fight for civil rights in America. We protested apartheid long before the conscience of the world was aroused against apartheid. We demonstrated in Red Square when other Russians feared to stand up against Communism. We were the leaders in the efforts toward democracy in Europe and South America.

In the United States our brothers and sisters have been deeply involved in the plight of the disenfranchised. We are the social workers in Harlem, the legal aid lawyers in South Central L.A., the doctors in the ghettoes or our great cities, the union leaders in occupations where hardly a Jew can be found. We have a long tradition of charity to the poor and the homeless and the addicted.

We feel the pain of others who suffer because our tradition teaches us to feel that pain. The most common idea in the Torah and in the entire Bible is 'the going forth from Egypt.' Over and over again we are taught to remember the disenfranchised because we once were slaves in Egypt. We are commanded to bring the poor and the homeless to freedom because God brought us from slavery to freedom.

Our rabbis have taught us that unless we have suffered, we cannot understand the suffering of others. So on Pesah we retell the story of the Exodus at the Seder, and on the 9th of Av, for one day we imitate the mourning of our people.

On the 9th of Av we pretend that our houses have been burned, our Temple has been destroyed. We walk about traumatized and hungry as a result of the tragedy that has befallen us. We feel the pain that our forefathers felt at the ruin of the First and Second Temples, and from our exile from Spain and Portugal and France and Germany. During the chant of the Book of Lamentations real tears come to our eyes. For a moment we forget the present and live in our bloodied past of death and destruction and horror.

And when the day is over, the imprint of suffering remains with us. We look about at new tragedy and inequity and hurt in this world and we cannot remain quiet. We commit ourselves to the premise that every Jew and every person is born with the right to a life without pain. We commit ourselves to make that world real.

The lesson of Egypt and Pesah and especially the 9th of Av change us. The history of our people, which we have internalized through study and ritual, has created within us the desire to change the world, to bring about a redemption, a new world, where no person suffers ever again.

Rabbi Aaron Kriegel
July 2001