When I was growing up, my best friend from down the block and I were Tisha B’Av partners. We teamed up to watch Rabbi Wallerstein’s kinnos at night and in the morning, the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation video (both Programs A and B) in the afternoon, and something from Aish or Project Inspire in the evening until I went home to break my fast. We packed our schedule pretty tightly so we wouldn’t have to sit around being hungry.
A few summers ago, I had to work for the first (and only) time on Tisha B’Av. I was doing fieldwork for career #1 in a nursing home. The whole morning, I avoided sitting down by leaning against the wall when I got tired. (There was no way I could sit on the floor.) After chatzos, I excused myself and went to my car to say some kinnos. I remember feeling sad because I was so lonely and out of place. I made it home in time to catch Program B of the CCHF video, but felt like an outsider somehow, sliding into the tail end of Tisha B’Av.
Last summer I was taking an online course and the final exam was on Tisha B’Av. I spent most of the day studying and resting and ended off the day by calling into a teleconference my friend organized. She was the only speaker I heard all Tisha B’Av, but what she said was enough to make mourning the Bais Hamikdash very real.
I don’t know how I’ll spend this Tisha B’Av. Maybe I won’t have to. But I do know that it won’t be hard to feel it. One of my friends said one year, “Do we really need these videos anymore? Doesn’t it feel like galus, all around us?” And it’s true. Who hasn’t been cut by the shards of a broken world? In shidduchim, for sure. Infertility. Family strife, suffering children and teens, and adults, too. Community politics, schools that close, marriages that end, or should end. Public shaming on social media, businesses that go under.
Tisha B’Av is the time to stop putting all this out of our minds and to feel the pain of individuals and the Shechina above all else.
In seminary, a speaker came to talk about the Holocaust. She said that when she went to visit one of the concentration camps, she could not connect to the pain and fear. It was too big for her to grasp. Then her eye fell on one little shoe in a pile of shoes that were taken from Jewish people about to be killed. One little shoe that must have belonged to a child of about three. She thought of nothing but that shoe. And then it became real.
Maybe an idea for Tisha B’Av is to think of one person who you know or do not know so well. It could be an adult or a child. One person who is suffering. And when you sit on the floor Tisha B’Av morning, maybe let their pain become real to you, and cry for their churban.
This post is in the “Yomim Tovim” category, because Tisha B’Av will one day soon become a Yom Tov, iy”H!
