JBFCS: Rita J. Kaplan Jewish Connections Programs

Rita J. Kaplan Jewish Connections Programs of the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services

July 2009

Reflections on Tish’a B’Av

Below is an excerpt from the keynote address delivered by Rabbi Amy Eilberg at the NCJH conference on Drawing Spritual Resources From the Jewish Holidays, November 2003. You can download the full copy of Rabbi Eilberg’s remarks in PDF, or for a printed copy please contact

If Simchat Torah and Purim, days of great joy and frivolity on the Jewish calendar, may be the days that are hardest for people living with illness, pain and grief, then Tish’a B’av may be the easiest. Tish’a B’av, the ninth day of the month of Av, commemorates the destruction of the First Temple and of the Second Temple. As such, Tish’a B’av came to be observed as a day of collective mourning, recalling the loss of Temple — of spiritual home and communal center. In time, as tragedy continued to befall the Jewish people, tradition came to associate many other collective tragedies with this day, until Tish’a B’av became the focal point for communal grieving over all that we have suffered at the hands of other nations.

The particular tragedy that is the focus of Tish’a B’av bears further reflection for people living with personal grief and loss. The loss of the Temples is about collective loss of home, loss of center, loss of unity and collective orientation. While we as a people continued to turn toward Jerusalem — the center of our universe — in prayer, the loss of our spiritual home left us bereft and fragmented. As a people, we have never fully healed from these traumatic experiences.

Many years ago, a Christian clergy friend forever changed the way in which I understand the verse in Psalms 90:1: "Adonai ma’on Ata hayita lanu bedor vador." "O God, You have been our Home in every generation." Can you remember one of those billboards on the side of a highway, advertising an apartment building nearby? "If you lived here, you’d be home now." My friend said those words, pointing to his heart. If you lived HERE, in the heart, not only in day-to-day concerns, but in your essence, in your divine center, you could be home at any time — any time you took a breath, any time you awakened to the reality of being alive.

Loss inevitably disorients us, causing us to lose our moorings, even shattering our sense of who we are. This is the genius of Jewish bereavement ritual, affirming the profundity of our losses, and offering structure, safe space and time devoted to the expression of our grief, the support of community, prayer, and much more. Then, when the excruciating time of acute grieving begins to lighten, Jewish prayer and ritual gently remind us that our true home can never die, never be taken away by external circumstance. As long as we are alive, we can come home, moment by moment, to our center, to the holy place within us.

These "Spirituality Notes" are excerpts from our monthly E-newsletter. Articles are © JBFCS Rita J. Kaplan Jewish Connections Programs and may be reprinted free of charge as long as this credit line is included.

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