I Take Nothing For Granted I Take Everything For Granted: Tisha B'Av 5765

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I'll be on vacation until the week of August 29th.

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Some of the best among us can and have seen the effulgent future in a shady present. For once Rabban Gamaliel, R. Eleazar ben Azariah, R. Joshua and R. Akiba "were coming up to Jerusalem together ... (when) they saw a fox coming out of the Holy of Holies. Rabban Gamaliel, R. Eleazar ben Azariah, and R. Joshua wept but R. Akiva seemed happy. Why are you happy, they asked him?"

"He then said to them, But why are you weeping? They said, A place about which it was said, 'And the common man that draws near will be put to death' (Numbers I, 51) has become the haunt of foxes, so should we not weep?"

"Said R. Akiva to them: That's why I'm happy!"

"For it's written, 'And I will take to Me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the Son of Jeberechiah' (Isaiah VIII, 2). Now what connection has Uriah the priest with Zechariah? (After all,) Uriah lived during the times of the first Temple, while Zechariah lived during the second Temple; yet Scripture linked the (later) prophecy of Zechariah with the (earlier) prophecy of Uriah. In the (earlier) prophecy (in the days) of Uriah it is written, 'Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field' (Micah III, 12). In Zechariah it is written, 'Thus says the L-rd of Hosts, There shall yet old men and old women sit in the broad places of Jerusalem' (Zechariah VIII, 4).

And then R. Akiva makes his point which is this: "as long as Uriah's (threatening) prophecy hadn't been fulfilled, I had misgivings lest Zechariah's prophecy might not be; (but) now that Uriah's prophecy *has* been fulfilled, it's quite certain that Zechariah's prophecy also is to be!" (Makkot 24b, Soncino Translation, with emendations).

More than seeing the proverbial cup half-filled rather than half-empty, Rabbi Akiva was able to envision a cup where none stood, and to somehow or another have the wherewithal to be certain it was there. He was able to live with the irony of beingness within nothingness, life within death.

The psalmist was able to live with a different sort, but an irony notwithstanding. "What is man, that You (G-d) are mindful of him? And the son of man, that you visit him?" he asked, given man's limitations. He knew the ironic answer: man is not only incidental and petty, he's also great and commanding, for indeed G-d had "made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor; (had) made him to have dominion over the works of (His) hands; (and had also) put all things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, and the beasts of the field; the bird of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatever passes through the sea's courseways" (Psalms 8: 5-9).

Jeremiah was able to live with irony after he depicted this dark and horrible scene we shudder at when we recite Eicha on Tisha B'Av:

"How the L-rd has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger, cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not His footstool in the day of His anger! The L-rd has swallowed all the habitations of Jacob without pity; He has thrown down in His wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; He has brought them down to the ground; He has profaned the kingdom and its princes. He has cut off in His fierce anger all the horn of Israel; He has drawn back His right hand from before the enemy, and He has burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devours its surrounding. He has bent His bow like an enemy; He stood with His right hand as an adversary, and He has slain all that were pleasant to the eye in the tent of the daughter of Zion; He has poured out His fury like fire."

'The L-rd was like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel, He has swallowed up all her palaces; He has destroyed His strongholds, and has increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation. And He has broken down His booth, as if it were a garden; He has destroyed His place of the assembly; the L-rd has caused the appointed feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and has spurned in His angry indignation king and priest. The L-rd has cast off His altar, He has loathed His sanctuary, He has given to the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the L-rd, as in the day of an appointed feast. The L-rd has determined to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He has stretched out a line, He has not restrained His hand from destroying; He has caused the rampart and the wall to lament; they languish together. Her gates are sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars; her king and her princes are among the nations; the Torah is no more; her prophets also did not find a vision from the L-rd. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence; they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth; the virgins of Jerusalem bow down their heads to the ground. My eyes are spent with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the babies faint in the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, Where is grain and wine? When they faint like wounded men in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out on their mothers’ bosom" (from Lamentations 2).

For Jeremiah wrote later on in Eicha, "This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. The grace of the L-rd has not ceased, and His compassion does not fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The L-rd is my portion, says my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The L-rd is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that a man should quietly hope for the salvation of the L-rd. It is good for a man that He bear the yoke in His youth. Let him sit alone and in silence, because He has taken it upon him. Let him puts His mouth in the dust; there may yet be hope. Let him offer His cheek to him who strikes him; let him take His fill of insults. For the L-rd will not cast off for ever; but though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the abundance of His grace" (from Lamentations 3).

Somehow he was able to encompass death and life, gloom and glee in one moment. But, how?

The anonymous author of a stunning and remarkable contemporary work, "Kol Demama Daka" seems to have the answer.

He declares that we Jews have to learn to live with a constant ironic mix of certainty and doubt in our religious lives: to be confident that G-d has His plans and knows what's right, but to doubt the details because man -- with all his greatness and meaness intact -- will invariably interfere with them, given his free choice, and muddy up the works.

For while everything that happens, happens for the good indeed (see Berachot 60B), we can never be quite sure in the moment.

May G-d grant us all the means to live with the irony that is our times; and to see the radiant, throbbing, undulant red, red light in the black, black darkness before our eyes.

(c) 2005 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman