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Eicha! Alas! How lonely sits the Tisha B’av, city, Once full of joy and bustle, Now filled with fear and sorrow. Eicha! Alas! Bitterly she weeps in תשעה באב, the night, the summer holy day commem- There is none to comfort her, orating Destruction and Renew- She is utterly disconsolate. al, challenges us as educators, -Lamentations (1:1-2) Jews and human beings every year. We hope these resources In this resource: can aid you in your personal and Eicha! communal observance of this “Eicha” by Shoshannah day. Especially this summer, re- Brombacher Fasting taught by Isaiah flecting on this chag and current events, we are faced with “Your Golden Hair, Margeret” its relevance. Conflict and injustice surround us. We must by Anselm Kieffer continue to learn, hope, and find ways to join as a Jewish “After the Fall” by the velvet- people and as humankind to combat these recurring trage- een rabbi dies in search for peace and equality. Parker Palmer on the Tragic Alu v’hagshemu, Gap According to the Mishna… The Mazkirut Artzit A Tisha B’av chevruta study Fasting by The Prophet Isaiah (taken Peula: Cycles of Violence—A from The Shalom Center) Jewish Perspective on Justice, Revenge, and Peace What is the point of fasting? Can it make a difference? Peula: Bringing Talmud to Life – The Story of Bar Kamza The Prophet Isaiah (chapter 58) taught what truly fasting really means. Many years later, the ancient Rabbis thought his teach- Peula: Hangman ing so important they made it a major reading on the holiest day “A Time of Choice,” adapted if the year –- Yom Kippur (a fast day). Said Isaiah, striding into from Rabbi Arthur Waskow a crowd of ancient Israelites who thought they were fasting on by Kali Silverman Yom Kippur as the Torah taught: Look! You fast in strife and contention. You strike with a wicked fist. This is the kind of fast that I desire: You are not fasting today in such a way Unlock the hand-cuffs put on by wicked As to make your voices heard on high. power! Is that the kind of fast that I desire? Untie the ropes of the yoke! Is that really a day for people to “press down their egos”? Let the oppressed go free, And break off every yoke! Am I commanding you to droop your heads like bulrushes And lie around in sackcloth and ashes? Then when you are frightened and seek a shield to guard you, Is that what you call a fast day, Your own righteousness will march ahead The kind of day that the God of the Burning Bush would to guard you. wish? And a radiance from YHWH, No! Yahhhh, the Breath of Life, will reach out behind to guard you. Habonim Dror North America 1 AFTER THE FALL by the velveteen rabbi The mishna says senseless hatred knocked the Temple down not the Romans with their siege engines -- or not only them, but our ancestors too who slipped into petty backbit- ing ignored Shabbat forgot how to offer their hearts we're no better we who secretly know we're right holier-than-they we who roll our eyes and patronize, who check email even on the holiest of days “Your Golden Hair, Margeret,” by Anselm Kieffer who forget that “The Romanian poet Paul Celan was the only member of his family to a prayer is more than a tune survive incarceration in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, more than words on a page but committed suicide in 1970, at the age of 49, after producing a body in Oslo parents weep of work that included the searingly painful poem, ‘Death Fugue’. In it he talks of the inhabitants of the camp drinking black milk and digging and we're too busy arguing graves in the sky. Two figures are contrasted in the poem and act as the motive to comfort them central metaphor: Margarete, with her cascade of blonde Aryan hair, across the Middle East parents and Shulamite, a Jewish woman whose black hair denotes her Semitic weep origins, but which is also ashen from burning. and we're too busy arguing The theme of Celan's poem has been a preoccupation of the German borders to comfort them artist Anselm Kiefer, for whom Margarete and Shulamite have become in our nursing homes parents the metaphoric protagonists in a series of paintings, of which Margarete weep (1981) is the concluding work. shuddering and alone As Kiefer's 1980s series on Margarete and Shulamite evolved, like Ce- and we're too busy -- lan, he developed a series of visual tropes to characterise the two wom- even now what sanctuaries en. Shulamite's black hair is usually painted, while Margarete's is de- what human hearts picted in straw embedded in the paint. Mirror images of each other, are damaged and burned Kiefer implies that the destinies and cultures of these women were in- extricably linked. Straw added to a painting of Shulamite suggests Mar- while we snipe at each other garete's golden tresses, while black lines or tangled areas of black paint or insist we're not responsible in Margarete imply the silent, erased presence of Shulamite. For Kiefer, or look away? Germany had maimed itself by the Holocaust. By pairing these two women in paint, he attempts a restoration of wholeness. This impetus for examining the Nazi era may have partly derived from the 1960s spirit of revolt against the legacy of previous generations. Sensing the unaddressed presence of the Second World War everywhere within contemporary Germany, he felt compelled to confront the silent taboos of post-war German socie- ty.” written by Sue Hubbard for the Independent Sicha questions: Anselm Kieffer is not Jewish. Moreover, he’s German. Still, as a member of the generation born just after the Holocaust, he found his artistic purpose bringing Holocaust to the forefront of the German conscious- ness. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many Germans sought to bury the tragedy from public conversa- tions. Kieffer and other artists of his generation wanted Germans to come to terms with their past. What does it mean for a nation guilty of committing atrocities to come to terms with its past? What is Kieffer say- ing about the Holocaust in “Your Golden Hair, Margeret”? What can we, as Jews, learn from German Holo- caust-related art? Habonim Dror North America 2 According to the Mishnah (Taanit 4:6), five specific events occurred on the ninth of Av that warrant fasting: 1. The twelve spies sent by Moses to observe the land of Canaan returned from their mission. Only two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, brought a positive report, while the others spoke disparagingly about the land. The majority report caused the Children of Israel to cry, panic and despair of ever entering the "Promised Land". For this, they were punished by God that their generation would not enter the land. Because of the Israelites' lack of faith, God decreed that for all generations this date would become one of crying and misfortune for their descendants, the Jewish people. (See Numbers Ch. 13–14) 2. The First Temple built by King Solomon and the Kingdom of Judah was destroyed by the Babylonians led by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE and the Judeans were sent into the Babylonian exile. 3. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, scattering the people of Judea and com- mencing the Jewish exile from the Holy Land. 4. Bar Kokhba's revolt against Rome failed in 135 CE. Simon bar Kokhba was killed, and the city of Betar was destroyed. 5. Following the Roman siege of Jerusalem, the razing of Jerusalem occurred the next year. A Temple was built in its stead to an idol. Here’s a Tisha B’av Chevruta (partnered) study session from On1Foot.org. Parker Palmer on the Tragic Gap: By the tragic gap I mean the gap between the hard realities around us and what we know is possible — not because we wish it were so, but because we’ve seen it with our own eyes. For example, we see greed all around us, but we’ve also seen generosity. We hear a doctrine of radical individualism that says, “Everyone for him- or herself,” but we also know that people can come together in community and make common cause. As you stand in the gap between reality and possibility, the temptation is to jump onto one side or the other. If you jump onto the side of too much hard reality, you can get stuck in corrosive cynicism. You game the economic system to get more than your share, and let the devil take the hindmost. If you jump onto the side of too much possibility, you can get caught up in irrelevant idealism. You float around in a dream state saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if . ?” These two extremes sound very different, but they have the same impact on us: both take us out of the gap — and the gap is where all the action is. That’s the gap Martin Luther King Jr. stood in his entire life, the gap Nelson Mandela stands in to this day. That’s the gap where Rosa Parks and Dorothy Day stood. I call it “tragic” because it’s a gap that will never close, an inevitable flaw in the human condition. No one who has stood for high values — love, truth, justice — has died being able to declare victory, once and for all. If we embrace values like those, we need to find ways to stand in the gap for the long haul, and be prepared to die without having achieved our goals.

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