A Time to Weep
by Rabbi Yosef Koval
The year – 1967. The scene – the Old City of Jerusalem.
For the past 19 years the Old City, together with the Western Wall, was in the hands of the Jordanians. For the past 19 years Jews were denied access to the holiest site on earth, the place where our Temple once stood and where there still remains a remnant of that magnificent edifice to this day – the Western Wall. Now, at the conclusion of the miraculous Six Day War, the Israeli army beat back the Jordanian army and recaptured the Old City.
With hearts full of joy and pent-up emotion, hundreds of Israeli soldiers, of all stripes and colors, raced to the Western Wall. With tears streaming down their cheeks and joyous screams pouring from their mouths, they hugged and kissed those sacred stones.
Watching from a distance were two Israeli soldiers. These soldiers were raised completely secular with no understanding of the Temple and what it represented. They felt no connection to the pile of stones that stood before them. To them it was simply an old wall, nothing more and nothing less. As they took in the scene before their eyes, one of them began to cry. At first it was a muffled cry, then it escalated to a louder one and finally he let loose a barrage of tears and sobs.
His friend turned to him and with a surprised look asked him, “I understand why all those soldiers at the wall are crying. After all, they feel a connection to the Wall. But you are secular and irreligious as am I. Why are you crying?” To which his comrade responded, “I am crying over the fact that I don’t even know what there is to cry about!”
How profound! This soldier realized, with a sudden feeling of horror, that he was missing out on something special. While all of his comrades were crying tears of emotion and joy, he was numb. And that realization shook him to the core and left him in immense pain. And for that he began to cry – not tears of emotion and joy but tears of the painful realization that he was so removed from his Jewish heritage that he knew not what to cry for.
This story reminds me of a scene which will remain etched in my memory forever.
Several years ago a good friend of mine was tragically killed in the prime of his life. His untimely passing shook our community to its core. We shed copious tears as we mourned together with his beautiful family that was suddenly bereft of a husband and a father.
As I went to pay a shiva call I saw his 3-year-old son outside on the driveway. This boy, too young to realize what had happened, was joyfully riding his tricycle and playing with his friends.
At that moment my feeling of angst was ratcheted up another notch. I thought of how tragic it is that this poor child is going to go through his life without a father to be there with him and, to add depth to the tragedy, this boy doesn’t even realize his loss. Like that soldier, I cried for a boy who did not even know what to cry for.
This Sunday is known as Tisha B’av, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar. It is a day we commemorate the destruction of our holy Temple (it was actually destroyed two different times some 500 years apart but both times on the same day of the calendar), as well as the multitude of tragedies that our people have endured throughout the millennia.
It is a day of solemn reflection, of mourning, of sadness and of angst. It is a day that we are commanded to fast, to refrain from wearing leather shoes, from going about our daily activities.
To be honest, it is difficult in 2015 to feel pain and sadness over a destroyed building that occurred almost 2000 years ago. It is hard to bring ourselves to truly mourn and cry over something we can no longer relate to nor fully understand its significance. But like that Israeli soldier, if we cannot cry over what we are meant to cry over, let us at least be inspired to cry over the fact that we are so removed from spirituality and our heritage that we don’t even know what there is to cry about. We are very much like that young boy, orphaned from our past glory and divorced from the reality of the tragedy that we are mired in. We continue to “play with our tricycles” and lead a happy life only because we are too removed to recognize the scope of our loss.
That is indeed tragic.
Wishing everyone an easy and meaningful fast. Let us hope G-d will bring the Messiah and may we no longer need to commemorate days of mourning!
Shabbat shalom.
Rabbi Yosef Koval
