July 29, 2023 /10 Av 5783
The Prophet Isaiah, Sistine Chapel ceiling
Michelangelo
Vatican City, Rome, Italy
Two nights ago, the reading of the biblical book of Lamentations, known as Eikha in Hebrew, served as the centerpiece of the Tisha B’Av ritual. A collection of laments [hence the book’s English name], Eikha’s painful and resonant images shape our understanding of grief and despair in the face of national tragedy. Four of Eikha’s five laments present themselves as communal statements, presented in plural language, of horror, mourning, and, ultimately, hope.
One lament, contained in chapter three of Eikha, stands out as an individual statement. Offered in the singular, this aching personal statement, resides at the geographic center of the megillah and consequently at the heart of our prayer experience this evening. We take this moment each year to hear a single voice, crying out across the centuries, sharing the torment, physical and emotional, of tragedy and brokenness.
Proceeding through an alphabet of terrors – the poem, like other laments in the megillah, organizes itself via the aleph-bet – our teacher identifies as one who has seen affliction, the rod of God’s wrath. After detailing the horror of personal experience, however, the poet of Eikha 3, arrives at a startling epiphany, a realization that brings about a radical, dare I say audacious, sense of hope. Listen to these lines, near the center of the chapter, and hence at the center of the center of the center of our liturgy this evening.
The first two verses for the letter khet read – חסדי ה כי לא תמנו כי לא כלו רחמיו – God’s Hesed – love or kindness – has not ended, God’s mercies have not run out. חדשים לבקרים רבה אמונתך – they renew every morning, how great is Your faithfulness. In the midst of personal horror, says our poet, I know and believe still in Adonai’s unending love. Even from the depths of despair, I can continue to feel and recognize love. Even at the heart of darkness, I can detect the possibility of renewal.
And then our teacher goes even farther. The first verse for the letter tet offers up this remarkable claim – טוב ה לקוו לנפש תדרשנו – Adonai is good to those who trust in, and those who seek out, God. Even amid great personal pain, one can summon up and detect a ray of light. Even when difficult to detect, God remains present and open to ouroutreach. Radical and audacious feel inadequate as adjectives.
On the basis of our first verses, a Midrash notes that as others observe our suffering even they possess the ability to take notice of God’s unending kindness and love. In that way, suggests the Midrash, God keeps faith with all of humanity, we Jews included.
And one step more, in the words of the Midrash – שאתה מחדשנו ומעמידנו מחדשים בכל בקר ובקר – You God make us new and stand us up renewed each and every morning. From that reality, the Midrash continues, we know of your great faithfulness – רבה אמונתך.
Another Midrash, the teaching of R. Shimon ben Lakish, claims that while God may, in anger, withdraw, the Divine Presence always returns, and always with rahmonus, with mercy. But as the rabbinic understanding of our next verse makes clear, God shows up when we show up. The image I have in mind consists of two dancers each adjusting her steps both to accommodate and anticipate the moves of the other. We step toward God, God steps toward us.
The daily Siddur pulls together the words of our khet and tet verses in its two primary prayers of gratitude. –מודה אני לפניך מלך חי וקים שהחזרת בי נשמתי בחמלה רבה אמונתיך
I thank you living Sovereign for You have graciously restored my soul within me; how great Your faithfulness.
And even more forcefully, the concluding sentence of the Thanksgiving section of the Amidah, the hoda’ah, virtually all of whose words come from our verses – הטוב כי לא כלו רחמיך והמרחם כי לא תמו חסדיך מעולם קוינו לך – The Good, whose mercies never cease, the Compassionate, whose love never ends, we always hope in You.
The instincts of the teachers of the Midrash and the editors of the Siddur strike me as just right. Tragedy and despair, brokenness and pain, and sometimes even horror and utter desperation, all form part of the human experience, not to mention the experience of our people. By and large, we don’t choose to suffer. We do choose how to respond.
The centrality of these verses, and our tradition’s understanding of their meaning, charts a counter-intuitive and decidedly radical choice for us. In the face of tragedy and horror, choose love and compassion; in the face of pain and the inevitable brokenness of human existence, choose renewal and faithfulness; in the face of torment and terror, choose hope, and above all, choose God.
And, yet even more stunning, in the face of destruction and despair, choose gratitude. In the midst even of the most painful and agonizing of catastrophes, some spark deserving of our thanks awaits us. Seek that element and it will find you. Seek God and the Creator of All will return to you with goodness and with kindness.
Shabbat Shalom.
