Va'etchanan 5781-2021

While the fast of Tisha b’Av is now behind us, and we have thankfully entered the period of Shev’ah d’N’chem’tah, the seven weeks in which we read Isaiah’s messages of comfort, allow me to share with you a striking insight regarding the fast of Tisha b’Av that I found in the commentary on the ArtScroll Kinot.

For those who are unfamiliar, Kinot are a collection of liturgical poems written mostly during the Middle Ages, bewailing the destruction of the Temples and the mourning over the hardships endured by our people throughout the ages. These poems are read after the Book of Eichah (Lamentations) is chanted on the night of Tisha b’Av. A larger selection of Kinot is recited on the morning of Tisha b’Av, following the Shacharit, morning services.

After reading two dozen Kinot on Tisha b’Av morning lamenting the destruction of the Temple, a kinah, known as מִי יִתֵּן רֹאשִׁי מַיִם, “Would that my head were water,” is read. It is the first kinah recited on Tisha b’Av that is not related to the destruction of the Temples. In fact, it is a poem that recalls the calamity that befell the Jewish communities of the Rhineland Germany–Worms, Speyer and Mainz (Mayence) in the year 1096, during the First Crusade. Although this destruction occurred over 1,000 years after the sacking of the Second Temple, this kinah is included in the Tisha b’Av ritual to indicate that Tisha b’Av is the universal day of mourning and that all Jewish tragedies can be traced back to the destruction of our Temple and the sin of the scouts, as recorded in the Bible.

The ArtScroll commentary (The Complete Tishah B’Av Service), strikingly points out the universality of Tisha b’Av as the national day of mourning:

When the Jewish people became aware of the awesome devastation that befell our nation at the hands of the murderous Nazis in World War II, many sought to establish a new day of national mourning to commemorate Churban Europa. The contemporary Torah leaders were consulted. Among the responses was that of the Brisker Rav, R’ Yitzchak Zev Soloveitchik, who said that the reply to this question lies in the kinnah before us. Why didn’t the great Rabbis and Sages of that generation–among them the greatest of the Rishonim, including Rashi to II Chronicles 35:25,–establish a new day of national mourning to commemorate that new tragedy? The author of this kinnah addresses this question and offers this insight:

Please take to your hearts to compose a bitter eulogy,/ because their massacre is deservant of mourning and rolling in dust/ as was the burning of the House of our God. Its Hall and Its Palace. / However, we cannot add a (new) day (of mourning) over ruin and conflagration, / nor may we mourn any earlier–only later./ Instead, today (on Tishah B’Av), I will arouse my sorrowful wailing, / and I will eulogize and wail and weep with a bitter soul, / and my groans are heavy from morning until evening.

Thus, the essential purpose of this kinnah is to drive home this lesson: There are really no new tragedies befalling Israel. All of our woes stem from one tragic source–the Destruction of the Temple on Tishah B’Av. To establish a new day of mourning would detract from the significance of Tishah B’Av and obscure its lesson and message. (See Rashi to II Chronicles 35:25.)

This kinnah also answers another major question. Why does the exile continue? Why does G-d visit fresh calamities upon His people? Where have we gone astray?

One of the main reasons for the continuation of our exile is because Jews are often quite content and comfortable in their adopted, alien homelands and have all but lost their desire to return to the poverty and hardships of Eretz Yisrael. Slowly the Jew ceases to identify with his true home, the Holy Land, and begins to feel intense pride in his citizenship in his new country.

The destruction of the Jewish community of Worms in the German Rhineland was the work of the crusaders. How ironic! The crusaders were willing to leave everything behind–homes, families, occupations–in order to conquer the Holy Land they called Palestine, while the Jews themselves were filled with no such zeal to regain their own homeland! In heaven, this irony did not go unnoticed, but aroused a terrible denunciation against the Jewish people, and especially against the Jews of Worms and her neighboring communities.

The classic work on Jewish history, Seder HaDorot, by R’ Yechiel Halperin, records the following observation in his entry for the year 5380 (1620):

The author of the commentary Sefer Meirat Eynayim (SMA) on the Shulchan Aruch explained why the Jewish community of Worms suffered far more persecution, pogroms and evil decrees than other congregations. That kehillah was founded by Jewish exiles who made their way to Germany following the Destruction of the First Temple. After seventy years of exile, many Jews returned from Babylon to Eretz Yisrael and Jerusalem, but none returned from Worms. The community in Jerusalem wrote to the kehillah in Worms and urged them to join their new settlement in Jerusalem…but the complacent Jews of Worms dismissed this invitation out of hand. Instead, they responded, ‘You stay where you are in the great Jerusalem, and we will continue to stay where we are in our little Jerusalem!’ This arrogant response was due to the prosperity and prestige the Jews of Worms enjoyed in the eyes of the local gentiles and their princes.

The success of Worms was its undoing! The prosperity of the Jew in exile is nothing more than a Divine test to see whether it will cause the Jew to forget his homeland and his heritage. Worms and the Rhineland failed and suffered bitterly. In our own times, the vast majority of the German kehillah failed, because, as Meshech Chochmah (commentary on the Pentateuch by R. Meir Simcha HaKohen of Dvinsk, 1843-1926, author of the classic work Ohr Sameach) (Bechukotai) observes, ‘They began to call Berlin, Jerusalem!’ (The ArtScroll Kinos pp 272-273)