29 July 2012

Tisha B'av

Perhaps it is problematic that I associate Tisha B'av with haunting music and books - two of my favorite things.  But Eichah trope and other reflective music moves me.  At camp, we used the occasion of Tisha B'av to bury old unusable books with the tetragrammaton in a genizah.  The reverence for books in the Jewish tradition is one that my nerdy self also loves.  The pain of needing to dispose of a book as national pain was a wonderful lesson to learn as a child. Books are powerful and words have the capability to kill or to save lives.

On Tisha B'av, both Temples were destroyed.  Jews were expelled from England, France, Spain, and Portugal on the date.  World War I started on the date.  The rounding up of Jews into ghettos in Poland started on the date, and the deportation from the Warsaw ghetto also happened.  Whether some of these dates were actually on Tisha B'av is unknown, but the commemoration becomes a container for our anguish.

This Tisha B'av, I'm trying to recognize national and personal pain and also the hope of leaving that pain behind.  Tisha B'av starts a season of reflection, self-improvement, and t'shuvah, and we read at the end of Eicha a prayer for God to facilitate our process of t'shuvah.  I'm grateful that in the depths of our sadness, we have hope of a better world.

15 July 2012

Memory

Memory is a funny thing, and I feel like I've been stuck in it all day.  Memories of my love have been swirling around me and popping up, and her brother asked me when I was going to stop being weird.  I was hanging out with some friends today to avoid spending all day alone in my apartment, and one was talking about James Taylor, so I mentioned that our song was "You Can Close Your Eyes."  I remembered her singing it to me for so long before I picked up on why she was doing it.  When I realized it, I felt stupid.

When today has been too much for me, I've tried visualizing the Beit Teva at Tzofim at OSRUI in my head.  It is the place I sought refuge at camp whenever I needed to.  I'm trying to see myself sitting on a stump surrounded by woods, with fewer mosquitos, of course.  And trying to get to that refuge in my head has helped when I feel like I need to escape.