Yehudah Amichai, Israel’s most renowned poet who died in the year 2000, once wrote a poem about being the mayor of Jerusalem. “How can a man be mayor of such a city?” he wrote, “What can be done with it?/ Build and build and build./And at night the stones of the mountains crawl down/and surround the stone houses…” The image he evoked was a city where no matter how much you built you could never remove signs of loss and desolation. The stones of the destruction of our two temples, and countless other battles, both ancient and modern, will always be present in the holy city on the hills of Judea.
This Saturday night and Sunday (8/13,14) we will observe the holiday of Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, commemorating all of those stones, and all of the lives once lost in the rubble. It seems strange to be sad about events that occurred two millennia ago. But, that is the Jewish way – to never forget. Tisha B’Av also marks the beginning of a seven week period leading up to the High Holidays. In this time, we, like the mayor of Jerusalem, must “build and build and build” even with the knowledge that our grief over the hardships and losses we have suffered in our lives will always be present like broken stones on the streets of Jerusalem.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex
Last Updated on 08/12/2016 by Marc Slonim