We Are Commanded To Love

Today’s episode is a Shabbat Replay of our Saturday Morning service on August 17th. The saddest day of the Jewish calendar is followed by one of the most joyous. In this moving sermon, Rabbi Steven examined why this is and how the abundant love of Tu B’Av can overcome the excessive hatred behind the tragedies of Tisha B’Av.

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

On Monday evening, communities around the world gathered to observe Tisha b’Av. Known as the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, it occurs every year on the anniversary of the Second Temple’s destruction by the Romans: the 9th of Av, 70 CE. This calamity was the nadir of an ill-fated rebellion that resulted in the deaths of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people. The rabbis assign other tragedies to Tisha b’Av, both mythic and historic: the day God decreed that the generation liberated from slavery in Egypt would not enter the promised land because of their obstinance; the day the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE; the day Beitar fell ending the Bar Kokhba Rebellion in 135 CE, which was also the day Jerusalem was razed to the ground so that it would not be inhabited by our people again until the Rashidun Caliphate claimed the city five centuries later.

And since the rabbis codified our observance of Tisha b’Av in the Mishnah (which was written around the same time as the New Testament, early in the new millennium), other terrible events – from our expulsion from England in 1290 to ratification of the “Final Solution” in 1941 – have happened on this day. It has become the container for our collective grief in a world where it is often dangerous to be a Jew.

Yet as the sun sets on the 9th of Av and people begin to shed the practices of mourning associated with the day, our attention turns to Shabbat – a time when we act as if we are living in the world as it could be: a world where everyone is blessed with safety and abundance, where there is no longer need or want. The command to set down our work on Shabbat, for example, is not so much a restriction as it is an invitation to imagine what it would be like to receive the basic necessities of living – food, rest, shelter, community – without having to ask (or pay) for them. This weekly practice isa vision of the future that belies the present we currently live in, a contrast made even more painfully clear to all of us having just sat with the accumulated pain of our people on Tisha b’Av.

And so, recognizing the emotional whiplash we might experience between these two days, the rabbis designate the Shabbat that follows Tisha B’Av as “Shabbat Nachamu” – the sabbath of comfort, named after a verse from Isaiah: Nachamu, nachamu ami yomar Eloheichem, “Comfort, o comfort my people,” says your God.

This Shabbat, and for the remaining six shabbatot between now and the (Jewish) new year, we read passages of consolation attributed to the prophet Isaiah. The idea is to reorient us away from the pain and loss of the past toward hope for renewal in the year ahead. “Dabru al-leiv, speak to the heart,” Isaiah says. “Tell Jerusalem that her hardship is over, that any faults have been forgiven.” Shabbat Nachamu is a moment of transition, no longer looking over our shoulder to fixate on what has happened but facing forward to anticipate what might yet be.

But this isn’t a comfort that comes from a place of naivety. Isaiah is aware that life is difficult, that our bodies are frail, and that our time is short. “All living things are like grass,” he reflects. “Their goodness is like flowers in the field. Grass withers. Flowers wilt.” He doesn’t promise that everything is going to be okay. That would be a lie (even if a well-intended one). There might be tragedy ahead of us. In fact, there probably will be. Yet our ability to move forward is not contingent on the promise that tomorrow will be a better day. We take the next step with no way of knowing what lies ahead of us, but understanding that we have what it takes to make it through whatever we might encounter. Tisha b’Av has several lessons. One is that bad things happen. Another is that, despite the long list of bad things that have happened to us, we are still here.

The fact of our survival is nothing short of a miracle. Because, as Isaiah points out again and again, we control very little of the world around us. Seen from the vantagepoint of heaven (whether by God, or with a godlike sense of scale), what we create – even the things that feel, from our perspective, enduring or immutable – are like drops of water in the vastness of the sea. And if these words of comfort seem, well, not very comforting, I think there is a kindness in giving us the grace of knowing that even when we do everything in our power to prevent tragedy, sometimes tragedy will still happen. It’s not our fault.

We cannot change the past and we cannot control the future. But we can decide how we meet this moment.

A peculiarity of our calendar is that less than a week after Tisha b’Av we encounter another, albeit much less known, holiday: Tu b’Av. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel taught that Tu b’Av is one of the most joyful days of the year – a time when the young people of Jerusalem would go out into the fields and vineyards, dressed in white, to find a partner. Tu b’Av is a holiday of love, a sort of “Jewish Valentine’s Day.” In Israel, and in many traditionally observant communities in the Diaspora, it’s a popular day to get married. (It also happens to be my anniversary with my partner).

I don’t think Tu b’Av following on the heels of Tisha b’Av is a coincidence. When Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel taught about the holiday, he spoke against the backdrop of occupation and war – only a couple years before the destruction of the Second Temple and the scattering of our people. This juxtaposition is a reminder that love is a sustaining force, one that cares for and carries us through whatever might happen. And I’m not just talking about romantic love – but love in all its forms: for those we call our family, for those we call our neighbor, for those we call the stranger, and for ourselves.

Love is also not something we only feel. Our tradition is insistent that love is something we must do. In fact, when we open the Torah this week, we find a passage in the Book of Deuteronomy that is read at every morning and evening prayer service, commonly known as the v’ahavta. It contains the mitzvah, the commandment, to love – in this case, God – b’chol levavcha, b’chol nafshecha, uv’chol me’odecha, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And a mitzvah cannot be felt (although it may cause us to feel things). A mitzvah must be done.

So how do we make this actionable? What does it mean to love God?

One of my favorite passages from the Talmud contains a debate about this very question. One rabbi offers that perhaps our love is best shown by carefully following God, in like, a literal sense. But wait, another rabbi chimes in, how in the world can you walk near a God who is described – also in our parashah this week – as an eish ochlah, a consuming fire? Yet another rabbi is like no, don’t literally follow God (I mean, do we even believe in a God that can be literally followed?). Rather to love God b’chol levavcha, b’chol nafsecha, uv’chol me’odecha – with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might – is to imitate God. And how do we do this? We open the Torah. Just as God gave garments to Adam and Eve as they left the Garden of Eden, we should also clothe the naked. Just as God visited Abraham after he was circumcised as an adult, we should also visit the sick. Just as God blessed Isaac after the death of his father, we should also console mourners. And just as God buried Moses in the steppes of Moab, we should also bury the dead.

Clothing the naked, visiting the sick, consoling the mourner, and burying the dead – our tradition places these four mitzvot above all others not only because they are a form of imitatio dei, imitating God, but because they are about giving our resources, our time, and our presence to another person without any benefit to ourselves. There is something to be gained from a number of the mitzvot (take studying Torah, or preparing a meal for Shabbat, or enjoying the lights of Hanukkah), and that’s not a bad thing. But these are acts of love, only concerned with the person standing in front of us – not with the person standing in front of them (i.e. us). To love God, our tradition teaches, is to love each other.

And to be very clear, “each other” includes everyone. There are times when our tradition prioritizes the wellbeing of the people we call our own over the wellbeing of the people we think of as strangers (and all the more so for the people we consider our enemies). Not in this case. When the rabbis enumerate these four mitzvot, they don’t say that we only do these things for the naked or the sick or the bereft or the deceased that we like. These obligations extend to anyone in need.

This is a critical antidote to another lesson of Tisha b’Av. Classical rabbinic theodicy (aka why bad things happen) draws a direct line between our behavior and disaster. If you ever open up the Book of Judges, for example, you’ll see this cycle on repeat: we’re doing fine, we sin, tragedy strikes, we repent, we’re fine again (if this explanation of the world doesn’t sit well with you, you’ll be happy to know that it hasn’t set well with many Jewish thinkers, theologians, and rabbis who have come up with other ways to account for the persistence of bad things). Regardless, looking at the world through this lens, the classical rabbis have a hard time explaining why the Second Temple was destroyed. It was a time of great scholarship. The priests never failed to uphold their cultic duties. People were scrupulous in fulfilling the commandments. So what could have been the cause of this heartrending tragedy? Sinat chinam, they warn, baseless hatred – not only between strangers, but between neighbors.

Tu b’Av falling within a week of Tisha b’Av is not an accident. It is an answer: for what is the opposite of baseless hatred, if not love? The very kind of love described by the rabbis, which moves us to give of ourselves in a moment of need – even if that need cannot be solved or fixed by what we do. And don’t get me wrong. We can and we must work to build a world where there are no longer people wanting clothes, or shelter, or food. But we will also always live in a world where people get sick, where people lose loved ones, and where those people and their loved ones must be buried. We are, after all, like grass that withers and flowers that wilt.

The months ahead are only going to strain the ties that hold us together, already frayed by ongoing tragedies, both local and far away, and the increasing refusal of people to work or associate with those who disagree with them. For our sake – and the sake of a better future – we must remember the consequences of sinat chinam, of baseless hatred.

When I was a kid, I had a bookmark with a quote from Mother Theresa on it: “Not all of us can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love.” I believe this is what will sustain us in a world filled with pain and loss, because it is what has carried us through the disasters of the past. And when so much is outside of our control, this is something that we can do: to love each other, stranger and neighbor, in small ways – with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might.