Shael Siegel
Jul 10, 2017 · 4 min read

The Three Weeks — Revisited

It’s that time of year again. In a few days we will once again enter that time warp where we obsess over our past suffering, self flagellate for three weeks, beginning with the 17th of Tamuz and ending on the 9th of Av. Many traditional Jews are swept up in the calamities that have impacted heavily on our national psyche and history. We feed off of it and tread in an ocean of rabbinic rulings and Jewish law that will encumber us for three of the otherwise most beautiful weeks of the year.

The summer quiet and beauty is thrown out of kilter by the observance not of Tisha b’Av alone but of the three week marathon race as to who is more extreme in their performance and attention to the details of rules and regulations established by our sages after the destruction of the first and second Temples. During the Second Commonwealth there was an observance of the fast of Av. We know this because of references to R. Eliezer ben Zadok observing the Fast of Tisha B’Av and other discussions in the Talmud, and we know that during the Mishnaic period the Fast of Av was observed. But there is no indication from text that there was this cascade of halachot surrounding this period. As a matter of fact there was a tendency during that period to slightly relax the mourning laws by the afternoon of the 9th of Av.

Our ancestors were right on target when it came to observing the Fast of Av. They understood the consequences of loosing the Temple but also the reason. Our sages tell us that the Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, which one can interpret as baseless hatred. Instead of being a united people extending appropriate understanding, love and tolerance to our neighbors we became a rigid, factious, stratified and balkanized people, promoting self interests not necessarily in the best interests of the nation. The tragedy of it all is that we never learnt from our grizzly history how to pull together as a nation.

Throughout our history, even when relegated to the Diaspora we were corrupted by our own particular and narrow interests, never really putting up front and center the concerns of the nation. It is a miracle that we survived as a people.

It was probably the shock of the holocaust that brought us together, albeit for a very short time. It was a time when there was love, compassion, understanding and tolerance in the hearts of most Jews, regardless of religious or political beliefs and affiliations. He could have been an atheist or communist. It didn’t matter. The sinat chinam transmorphed to ahavat chinam, just long enough for us to create the State of Israel.

Unfortunately the ahvat chinam didn’t last long and we’ve reverted back to our natural state of backbiting self interest groups, willing to sell out the good of the country for the benefit of the few. I’m not picking on any one interest group. It is endemic. It matters not if you are a charedi or daati leumi, atheist or a socialist. The factiousness of the Knesset, the corruption of the political system staggers the mind. How Netanyahu has still managed to hold on to power is the most shocking indicator that “not all is alright” in the moledet. How he survived the corruption charges screams out to me that we are in desperate need of a collective national cheshbon hanefesh, not a fast day.

What good is fasting on the 17th of Tamuz and again three weeks later on the 9th of Av if we aren’t paying any attention to what it is we are doing it for? We aren’t fasting because God commanded us. He only commanded us to fast on Yom Kippur. This is a fast day instituted for a purpose, which was intended to put us back on track. But we are skimming on the essence and focusing on the meaningless ritual. What good is the ritual if you are missing the whole point? Netanyahu is in power, the country is tearing itself apart, Jews in the Diaspora have been marginalized and discredited and there is no direction regarding peace. Israel’s moral compass is out of whack, but we’ll be self flagellating at the Kotel come Tish B’av as if “business was as usual”. The way things look it makes more sense to take a pass on the 9th of Av and go straight to celebrating the 15th of Av.

Shael Siegel

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Educated in the US and Israel, Shael is an ordained rabbi and has a PhD in Jewish Studies. He is the author of Crossing The Rubicon and Hassidut Belz.