How Badly Do We Want It?
How Badly Do We Want It?



The accepted custom on Tisha B’Av was to throw the Kinot booklets in the g’niza (receptacle for burial of holy items and books), from whence they would be fished out the following year for use again

How badly do we want the redemption?

Here we are again, now several days into “The Three Weeks,” that period of time between the fast of the 17th of Tamuz and the fast of Tisha B’Av.  And as I looked around my beit knesset (synagogue) on Shabbat, I began to see the usual first sign of this period of mourning.

Friends of mine who live the entire year without facial hair are the proud owners of developing beards this week.

And I am sure that as the days go by, I will experience other signs as well, such as the prevalence of “a cappella”  music, rather than music with instruments, playing on car radios and in stores around the town where I live.

And by next Shabbat it will be clear who planned ahead, and who did not, as will be evidenced by the relative unruliness of some peoples’ hair (including my own, since I completely forgot to get a pre-Three Weeks haircut).

I’ve always felt strange about this period, because it is treated by many like the weeks leading up to Passover, when one spends a lot of time preparing his (or more likely “her”) home for the holiday, or the weeks before Sukkot, when we are out and about, buying items to enhance our sukkot structures. 

Yes, some people have it down to a science.  They time their pre-Three Weeks haircut perfectly.  They have nice, non-leather shoes set aside for the Tisha B’Av fast, during which one is not allowed to wear leather shoes.  They exchange their supply of car music so the music emanating from their CD players is no less pleasing to the ear – yet permissible even during this three-week period of mourning for the destruction of the centerpiece of our spiritual existence, the Holy Temple.

But it shouldn’t be treated this way.  It’s a period of mourning what we’ve lost and sadness for what we don’t yet have. 

So I ask again, how badly do we want the redemption?

I saw an ad this Shabbat in OU Torah Tidbits, that weekly booklet of Torah/Parsha insight that many in the Israel Anglo communities look forward to more than the weekly drasha (sermon) from the rabbi. 

It was an ad for The Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinot by OU Press and Koren Publishers Jerusalem.  This Kinot book includes insights of Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik (zt”l), or The Rav, as many refer to him. 

I was so curious about this, that I went straight to the Internet after havdala on Saturday night and investigated this further. 

The OU website featured the book prominently, and when I read the accompanying press release launching it, I became really upset.

The press release promised: “The Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinot is designed to enhance the experience of users by giving them a taste of those glorious days with the Rav … Tisha B’Av is doubly sad for these students. Not only is it the annual day of fasting and mourning for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, it is also a day on which the absence of their venerated mentor is sorely felt.”

Wow. “Glorious days” ... of mourning? Do people really want to feel the way The Rav was hoping they would feel as he poured his heart into explaining the poems of mourning and destruction? 

And “Doubly sad.” So not only is it horrible that we are not able to observe Judaism the way G-d wants us to, it is – if I may – EQUALLY

sad that students of The Rav are not able to be in his presence. 

And played the other way, if The Rav were still alive today, I guess that would mean that his students would only be half as sad as they are today.  After all, only the Temple is gone, but The Rav is still here.

I humbly submit that Rav Soloveitchik would have disagreed if he were here today to give his opinion.

Rav Soloveitchik, according to those who spent Tisha B’Av with him, used a simple, flimsy paperback edition of the Kinot.  He used the same simple edition every year. 

And while I can’t speak for The Rav on this subject, I would propose that he used the same flimsy edition every year because perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to buy a new version, at least not if he was a real Torah Jew, who prayed three times a day for the redemption.

In eastern Europe – as well as in pre-1948 Eretz Yisrael – back in the early 1900s, the accepted custom on Tisha B’Av was to throw the Kinot booklets in the g’niza (receptacle for burial of holy items and books), from whence they would be fished out the following year for use again.  The message at that time was clear: “We want the redemption badly.  In fact, we are going to demonstrate to you, G-d, how badly we want it.  We are going to reuse the same, flimsy editions of Kinot every year because we can’t say that we believe the Mashiach is coming yet buy new Kinot books at the same time.”

You see, it’s hypocritical.

OU (and Koren Publishing, I imagine) have done a lot of advance work to promote this new book, including (sigh) a video that has been posted on YouTube, on which the organization explains that the OU produced this volume to respond to the challenge: “How can we make Tisha B’Av relevant?  How can we make Tisha B’Av meaningful?”

That is fair enough, but “relevant” and “meaningful” are not synonymous with “appropriate.”

I have an idea for how the day can be more meaningful and appropriate as well …

Perhaps we should behave like we want the redemption and not buy any new Kinot books.  Or perhaps, at least, the publishers should include with every purchase of the new Kinot a coupon entitling the buyer to a full refund should the Mashiach arrive.

But that would be bad business, I suppose.

There is another company that is truly up to the challenge of Tisha B’Av, a company touting a product called the “Avail-a-seat,” which, in its Mishpacha magazine ad promises to “Redefine The Way We Observe Tisha B’Av!”  One website even – disgustingly – adds the word “forever” to the end of that slogan. 

The product in question is a folding chair that opens to a height lower than the three handbreadths specified by Chazal as acceptable for Tisha B’Av lounging.

I won’t give this chair more attention than it deserves by going on about it, but I ask you, for how long are the Jewish people going to live day-to-day with a Galut mentality?

Everyday, three times a day, we pray to G-d that he should restore His kingdom to his people.  We raise our children on songs regarding our desire for Mashiach’s arrival.  We say at our weddings that if we should forget the Temple-including Jerusalem, we should lose the use of our right hand.  We leave a square of wall above (or opposite) our doorway unpainted and unfinished. 

And then we throw it all away by demonstrating to G-d, year-after-year, that we don’t really mean any of it.  We behave as if the latest edition of the Kinot is the latest release of the iPhone.

For years, I’ve been writing about the imperative to make Aliyah, as a demonstration to G-d that we are ready, that we want the redemption so badly that we are willing to pick up our lives and move to where it’s all going to happen

...but you need to have two or three cars, a nice, big house and your New York Yankees season tickets.

.

Many have taken the challenge, and they are each playing a role in bringing the redemption that much sooner.

But most have not, and it is those people to whom I am addressing the following:

I know that moving to Israel is too difficult for you because you need to have two or three cars, a nice, big house and your New York Yankees season tickets. 

I know that picking up your life and making Aliyah is unreasonable because you need a job that pays six figures so that you can pay tuition for your children at their prep school that is decorated with “Jewish wallpaper.”

And I know that you love being able to come here on vacation and spend big bucks on fancy hotels so that you are able to receive the faux-spiritual jolt of being in The Land without actually having to help build it up to its potential.

So I ask that you simply try to think about Tisha B’Av – as it is observed today – and how it is not what we want it to be. 

And buying a new Kinot volume won’t make a difference unless we live our lives hoping such books will be a waste of money, in which case we won’t buy them in the first place.

And in addition to this request, I ask one more thing of all of us during this Three Weeks period. 

Let’s ask ourselves the following question, and answer it as honestly as we can:

How badly do we really want the redemption?

 

 

Go'el Jasper co-hosts the "Aliyah Revolution" on Israel National Radio.com.