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August 6, 2003 |

Tonight is Tisha B’av. We are supposed to mourn the destruction of the second Beit Hamikdash. Every year I sit and read the megillah of Eicha and I try not to get angry. They told me when I was growing up that Tisha B’av is the saddest day of the year. On that day throughout history terrible tragedies have befallen the Jewish people. And when I’m sitting there, on the floor, with my flashlight shining on this awful account of the horrors that were inflicted on our people I usually start to cry. That is what we are supposed to do on Tisha B’av. Cry. Mourn the horrors. But the tears that fall onto my already tear-stained Artscroll Eicha are not tears of sadness. They are usually tears of frustration and anger. What did these poor people do to deserve what happened to them? Why did they have to suffer so much? What kind of a sick twisted Gd would vent His terrible wrath on His children in this way? I am a man and my limited human senses reel from the thought of causing such distruction and inflicting such pain. No matter what the supposed rationale was, it was just wrong. Like the Holocaust. Like the violence we are suffering here in Israel today. It is wrong. There is a quote that is attributed to Epicurus which has been roughly translated to mean, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” Every time I read Eicha and Kinot I keep having those exact same questions. And it makes me angry at Gd.

And I think that it is ok.

I think that maybe part of the problem with modern orthodox and ultra-religious Judaism is that we are brought up to believe that what we think are the Words of Gd are instructions to us. The Ten Commandments, Rules for Living, Laws, Injuctions, Prohibitions. But maybe the Words of Gd are the beginning of a dialog between Gd and his creations. Maybe Gd is not omnipotent but still wants to be omnibenevolent. Maybe if Gd did designate the Jewish people to be a “light onto nations” he meant for us to show the world that religion is not as much about worshiping the spiritual as it is about nurturing the very human struggle for understanding.

I ask myself what I will answer my daughter when she asks me, “Why should I be religious? What is so good about Judaism?” And I think that Tisha B’av shows us that what is incredibly brilliant about Judaism is that it provides for us a designated time to experience all the range of emotions that humans inevitably feel without allowing those emotions to cloud our thinking. It gives us a chance to feel sadness, feel anger, feel joy, but not obsess about those things because they are not singularities that dominate our existence. Life is about balance, which seems to be a very Eastern religious concept but I think Judaism got it right as well. To think that we are supposed to read Eicha and just weep for the past and bemoan our ancestors failings and our own is to miss the essential beauty of what Gd has given us. Maybe Gd cannot prevent tragedies but He can give us the time to reflect on tragedy. Maybe He is unable to totally alleviate our sadness, but He permits us to feel the anger that we all feel in a world where His presence is hidden at times. One day a year we can weep for our plight. We can weep that there is evil. We can be angry and we can be sad. We are allowed to struggle with Gd. And the next day, we can let it go. We can go back to living life. We can remember that life is beautiful and tragic. We can appreciate that if Gd did create the potential for Evil, maybe even He couldn’t fathom the extent to which human beings have cultivated and refined Evil over the ages.

So what if it means that Gd is not all knowing and all seeing. He created sunsets. How bad could He be?

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