The Jewish Mourning day of Tisha B'Av is marked today. It is a fast day, and a sad one for Jewish People. It marks times seperated by hundreds and thousands of years. The destruction of the First Judean Temple by the Babylonians. The destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans. And according to various stories the day of numerous other tragedies. Such as the first outbreak of the Blood Libel in Good King Richard's and Robin Hood's England. The edict of expulsion in Spain. All these things seemed to occur in this month of Av. Probably because that is the height of the fighting season for most of human history. That AMIA bombing I mentioned earlier is only one of the more recent.
Some people commented to me that somehow comparing the reception of the AMIA bombing by the World Community with the reception to the construction of the wall in Israel was wrong. For them Isreal is creating an apartheid. They believe that Isreal is at fault for the plight of the Palestinians living in their midst or in a new diasporah. And yet, it is not that simple. Palestinian Arabs would not be in such a mess if large numbers, (enough to constitute a majority) hadn't been buying into the ideas of "Moslem Extremism" and trying to, and continuing to try to, drive off those Jewish people who had already settled in their midst, prevent new settlers from arriving and trying in every way to defeat the right of Jewish people to settle in their midst in lands they have long claimed as their own. Worse, they have carried their war to places where Jews have been living for a long time, such as Argentina, Turkey, North Africa, Iraq and Iran. And this same moslem extremism that has been at war with Israel since the 1930's and before, is presently at war with the whole world.
Yet people who should know better continue to blame Isreal and Jews. Indeed the Germans, French, Poles, Russians, and others, denied them a place in their own countries while England and the US prevented them coming to their own countries. The World has denied (with the exception of the US) the right of Jews to live anywhere. If Isreal had not been created, where would they have gone? The US wasn't accepting them either.
And of course it's not so simple. Tisha b'av warns Jews that they were indeed partly to blame for the catastrophes that fell on them, past and present. By relying on force of arms, rather than their God, or arrogantly claiming that God was already on their side, rather than a God to be invoked humbly, the sages tell them stories that warn them that their own behavior contributed to the various disasters which are commemorated on this day. To them each tragedy has it's lesson and it's warning. It is figured that if enough lessons are learned then the day may yet come when people will indeed beat swords to plowshares and the Law will be taught out of Jerusalem.
All this is abstract for most of the world. But it provides an institutional memory for those willing to remember it. Tisha B'av is a sad day for Observant Jews, and a reminder that "Never Again" is a hollow slogan as long as the rest of the world doesn't have such institutional wisdom.
Posted by cholte at July 27, 2004 07:39 PM