This was the most meaningful and focused Tisha B’Av I had experienced, at least that I can remember. Astounding to me given that I have spent a few at the Kotel. What made this year so different?
I believe it to primarily be two things.
The first, that I was asked to teach a women’s class the Shabbat before last. Although I try to learn about Tisha B’Av as much as possible during the Three Weeks every year, I simply learn more when I teach. I feel more compelled and more motivated. I need to try and recreate that dilligence as a student in the coming years.
I have expressed my gratitude for living in the small community that I do in many blog posts. In my mind I keep returning to my hakarat hatov that although it has been Hashem’s will to exile me (again) from the land of Israel, that I am blessed to be in a place that has helped me work on myself, my spiritual growth, and to become a teacher of Torah.
Secondly, as I have also written about before, I am truly enjoying “phase II” with my children. There have been many changes in our lives since we have gone, slowly, from a house “full of babies” to a house with no babies at all. This year I was able to have a meaningful dialogue – more than once – with my older children about the meaning of the day. Their comprehension led to their help and cooperation in allowing my husband and I to mourn properly. Their participation in our mitzvah, and their perception of it as just that, heightened the whole day for me and allowed me to focus more sharply. Even my talking to them repeatedly, or sharing a Tisha B’av video or thought helped me learn more, again, through teaching.
My oldest daughter is now at an age where I can leave her in charge for limited amounts of time under limited circumstances. Last night being one of those, I was able to go hear Eicha in shul for the first time in eleven years! Being with my community and hearing our amazing community Rav expound on the Kinot contributed so much to the day for me.
All that has happened is time; time for my daughter to grow up and time for the rest of the kids to be mature enough to understand why they need to listen to her for the evening and let me do this.
I am so very happy that entering “phase II” with our family allowed me to so successfully feel sad.
I hope that your Tisha B’av was meaningful and redemptive.
I occasionally have an opportunity to teach Torah classes to women in my local community. It is one of the many reasons I am so grateful to live where I do. Had I remained the tiny fish in the huge pond that is Jerusalem, I doubt that I would ever have had a chance to grow into a teacher, or to learn that it was one of my favorite things to do.
I have been asked often to post a write up of my shiurim on this blog. Most of the time I don’t prepare early enough or have time to post soon enough, and the material is then for a holiday that has come and gone by the time I get to it.
However, last Shabbat I taught a class on the Nine Days & Tisha B’av, so thought I would put down some of the discussion while we are still in this solemn period. Especially since it was an analogy to parenting that struck me so deeply while preparing the shiur, and that has been the sharpest part of my focus this year. So this is a recap of some of what we discussed:
During “The Three Weeks” and then “The Nine Days” and finally on Tisha B’av we mark the destruction of the Holy Temple. I asked the women gathered if we are “mourning” or “yearning.” Although the word mourning is often used, we are on the one hand mourning the loss of something we never experienced first-hand. And, usually when we mourn something it is a process of letting go because that thing (or person) is gone to us forever. Here, we mourn the Beit Hamikdash that was, but we also hope for its return. So we do mourn our loss, but we also yearn for it. We yearn for a new Beit Hamikdash and Moshiach’s arrival.
The word that we use for yearning is “tshukah” in Hebrew, and it is a concept that I would like to return to later. But this is the other feeling we invoke during this period, because we not only mourn what we have lost, but we long–in fact strive–to get it back.
The next question I asked is: Why are we fasting?
Fasting is not a very popular means of connecting to Hashem for most people I know. In fact, for some of us it is a distraction from whatever process we feel we should be going through, since we feel little more than hunger. Lastly, fasting is certainly not something we associate with mourning! The restrictions during the Three Weeks and the Nine Days are those associated with mourning, but the prohibitions of Tisha B’av are more akin to Yom Kippur.
I came to learn that the period leading up to Tisha B’av is constructed in such a way as to evoke a feeling of loss, to help concentrate on mourning what we no longer have. This is done so that we will be stirred on Tisha B’av to do teshuva* – do improve and repair ourselves, our community, and our world so that we can have a day of celebration on the 9th of Av, as the Gemara explains, rather than a day of mourning. The sadness of the day comes from our feeling that we are “still not there;” it is not a sign of mourning. It is intended to be our sincere demonstration of teshuva; of “tshukah” to Hashem so that it will be the last sad Tisha B’av.
The word tshukah as explained by Rabbi Fohrman in The Beast that Crouches at the Door, is a yearning that comes not from a needy deficit, but an overflow of abundance. It is not the feeling a newborn has when it needs to nurse… it is the feeling the nursing mother has when she needs to provide. It is our overflow of love for Hashem and our desire to serve him that has nowhere to go until we once again have a Beit Hamikdash in which to channel our love and desire to cleave to G-d in the proper way.
My final question was: Why do we need to mourn for Three Weeks and to have a day of sadness and teshuva? Surely we demonstrate to G-d in our prayers and rituals every day that we miss the Holy Temple and that we yearn for its return? The commemoration is deeper than the historical anniversary of so many tragedies for the Jewish People.
Rabbi Label Lam answers this question so beautifully in his wonderful piece on Tisha B’Av at Torah.org:
“On the 9th of Av we are like little children sent away from the table. The child sent to his room can artfully distract himself. His parents wait for the breaking point. He might then even be willing to admit his faults like fighting with his siblings etc. That time never comes. Why? He’s found some candies, there’s a cell phone, a computer and a treasure of other goodies. He’s forgotten that he’s being punished.
The father realizing that the child is too busily engaged in his “things” forbids him for a time to play with these toys and those. Suddenly, he feels alone and isolated from the family. Tears begin to stream. He cries out longingly to his father and is invited to the table again with a pleasant mixture of joy and humility.” (click here to read the whole article. )
We are like G-d’s punished children all year. We are in exile every minute of every day. We do not have our Holy Temple, and we are banished from the closeness with Hashem that we enjoyed when it stood. We are so distracted by our comfort and blessing that we forget that we have been punished. Our computers and cell phones, wonderful kehillot and yeshivot, our beautiful built-up modern Israel… all allow us to forget. We don’t always know what we are missing, and we don’t know what it feels like to have such an intimate relationship with our Creator. It is sometimes easy to forget that we can and will have more; but Hashem gave us intimate interpersonal relationships precisely so that we can taste that closeness and yearn for it with him.
The Three Weeks are our reminder that we have been sent away, that we can be so much closer to the Divine… that we once were, and that it is truly up to us to be so again. Done right, the limitations imposed during the Three Weeks and Nine Days bring us to this difficult combination of mourning our closeness to our Father that we lost and our yearning to be back in his good graces. The power of mourning and yearning together ideally mobilizes our true and deep teshuvah on Tisha B’av; a teshuva marked by fasting and focus.
I bless you all with a meaningful remainder of the Nine Days, and a meaningful fast. May our communal Teshuva bring Moshiach bimheira yameinu.
*teshuva = repair, return, improvement, repentance.. or as Aish.com puts it “dry cleaning for your soul”
I welcome your comments and thoughts, and am happy to suggest the following articles (far wiser than mine) at Torah.org and Naaleh.com:
Why Do We Fast? by Rabbi Prero
Mourning on the 9th of Av, the Reasons, by Rabbi Jacob Mendelson
What Are We Missing on Tisha B’Av by Rabbi Lam
Why Destroy Our Sanctuary? by Rebbetzin Tzippora Heller
It has been almost a full month since I last wrote a blog post. I am not sure if this is an indication that I have truly spent the month on vacation, or precisely the opposite.
Being at a house by the ocean that is not my own with a stream of visitors and visiting time withgrandparents has been wonderful. I am not sure I would use the word “leisurely” or “relaxing”. The lack of school structure for six kids for one month certainly might have eclipsed my ability to blog, beach house notwithstanding. I feel like I have been busy, and tired. I have spent a great deal of time shopping, cooking, cleaning and doing laundry.
I wrote last year about finding the moments of personal vacation within my family vacation, and every year this is a different experience, since the ages and circumstances of the family are always changing. I discovered kayaking this summer, because our old, dear and generous friends lent us theirs for two weeks. Out in the kayak in Barnstable Harbor, there was more than one moment this month when I could not hear a single sound. Not a child, not a phone; not even a boat or seagull. And I love the fact that my older brother showed me the ropes my first time out. No spa visits like last year. Not even some “escape shopping”.
I am experiencing a different kind of relaxation… and that is the sort of phase II with my family. What I mean is that we don’t have any babies, nor are we expecting one (right now). After years of vacationing with strollers and car seats, middle of the night nursing, bottles and diapers and bouncy seats and carriers, we are just a family with a gang of kids. Day trips are suddenly possible. The kids can buckle themselves in the car, or at least buckle each other. No sunscreen battles, or constantly running after a destructive 18 month old.
We are still in transition, don’t get me wrong; we are potty training, and still planning around the “baby’s” nap. But 3-11 years old(My SS sadly didn’t join us this year) feels REALLY different than a house full of babies and toddlers.
My pockets of personal vacation are less about escaping all of the child care because the child care is less intense. This is probably just the calm before the storm, (right Miriyummy?) given that they will all become teenagers practically at once – and then I am thinking “intense” will become a fitting description again.
I have found that as in a traditional vacation, this year has been more about an escape from much of the long list of responsibilities I have. No escape from the childcare or housework ones, of course, but a break from work, my house, my scenery, my routine.
A break that has been in blessedly gorgeous surroundings with quiet bay waves, lovely neighbors, gorgeous hikes and silent kayaking.
Wow. After all of these years I guess it has started to become a vacation.
I have been asked what I want for Mother’s Day this year. The only thing that has come to mind so far is sleep. We will see if I come up with something better.
There are a number of resources out there with good ideas for Mother’s Day, as well as some giveaways. For those of you not yet following me on twitter, I would like to share just a couple:
Hello Giggles has a very funny video posted about what NOT to get Mom for Mother’s Day. My favorite line: “This is like a size… Toyota”. It still makes me giggle, so I guess the site is aptly named.
Blogger extraordinaire-children’s book writer-awesome role model-friend Amy Meltzer has posted a giveaway on her Homeshuling blog. It is for a piece by artist Emily Rosenfeld, who I would also like to plug, because I think her pieces make great Jewish Mother’s Day gifts!
I am not a big celebrator of such days… when the kids are old enough to be party planning I will happily accept a big to-do. In the meantime, I think I will stick with hokey cards, handmade crafts from school that I don’t need, and of course, sleep.
I remember last year at the end of Pesach A Mother in Israel asking on Facebook about the amount of leftovers in our fridges. I remember this because I can’t forget feeling horrified by own my answer. This year I had a lot of successes, including a lot less food leftover. I am not patting myself on the back, or at least not trying to. I am FINALLY getting up a Pesach learning curve, learning from my twelve-years-married mistakes. The learning began by emailing myself notes at the end of the holiday the last couple of years. One of the first things I learned (the hard way) is that by next Pesach I won’t remember all of the things that at the end of this one I am sure I will.
I invited fewer people for Seders this year. I really didn’t want to, but my kids are at this particular stage where they needed the seders to be about them and their (long and many) questions and divrei Torah as much as possible. (Amusingly predictable, they complained at one point at the lack of company.) This allowed me to have the energy to invite more people for Shabbat and the final days, and to end Pesach less ‘burnt out’ than in years past.
I didn’t try a lot of new recipes. I didn’t make a lot of courses. I made lots, and lots (and lots) of mashed potatoes. I barely ate them. The kids were happy, no one complained about the repetition, and I wasn’t stuck with the remains of a fancy dish they didn’t like.
I didn’t buy mixes, pre-made food, or a lot of “substitute” stuff. We lived without Pesach mayo, mustard, pasta and cereal for one whole week, believe it or not.
I did try one thing new: I made delicious stuffed mushrooms with sauteed onions and celery, mushroom tips, spinach, pine nuts and matzo meal. I will wait until next Pesach to post the full recipe, but I will definitely be making these again. I didn’t even try to get my kids to enjoy them. We just gobbled them all up on our own.
I pushed myself to teach a shiur close to Pesach on “Coming to the Seder Elevated and not Exhausted.” I felt really stupidly ambitious for choosing such a topic – after the fact. As with every shiur I give, I learn more than anyone from it, and it pushed me to try and live up to that ideal a lot more this year. It also forced me to learn as much Torah beforehand on the topic as I could to prepare! This helped me plan ahead and strategize. Not menu plan or strategize my shopping lists, but to think about the ways I wanted to maintain Shalom Bayit in the extremely stressful lead up to the holiday.
Rebbetzin Heller‘s practical tips through shiurim at Naaleh.com were a big help in this respect. I hope you check out her classes, especially if you are currently raising kids. After listening to her advice, I tried something new a couple of weeks before Pesach, and had each child make their own list of all of the responsibilities they felt they could commit to in preparation. This included a number of “Yechiel hours”, referring to the time the would put in watching my youngest. I explained (as R. Heller advised) that if everyone completed their own devised lists, they would get a family reward at the end. Which they did. The family reward actually bought me a lot of prep time during chol hamoed as the novelty of it kept them busy.* But the most effective aspect was their own recognition of their abilities and my ability to remind them that when I recruited them to help I was merely asking for something that was “on their list”.
It’s important to get it right at Pesach. Of course in order to fulfill the mitzvot of the holiday, but also because Pesach is the beginning of our journey to redemption, not its completion. Since I am once again pushing myself to teach, I am cognizant of our entrance immediately into the Omer and our need to keep climbing upward.
It feels a little like a treadmill, spiritually and physically (with a lot of laundry and dish washing and sweeping and lugging garbage….) . I am NOT looking forward to cooking tomorrow!
But I left this Pesach feeling much better in years past. Less in this case is more, and that less has given me much more stamina for the rest of the climb.
If any of you haven’t completely given up on me yet and are reading this, then it will be most likely after Pesach has come and gone… without a single blog post from me. Not an essay, not a recipe. And I even came up with a brand new one of my own today for stuffed mushrooms that is SO good…but I suppose it will have to wait to be posted until next year.
What can I say? I decided that being relaxed, organized and happy this Pesach was going to be my priority this year. I am happy to say that I have succeeded for the most part, and I will post about my lessons learned and successes after the holiday. But the only way this happened was to allow something to go overboard, and one was blog posting. I apologize.
I am quite sure there is a direct correlation; I have lost my patience with the kids twice in the five minutes I have scrambled to write and type even this. How pathetic to lose my winning streak in the home stretch of the game.
I truly hope that once we are back to a school routine, I will find a better balance.
In the meantime, please send me your favorite experience from this whole Pesach, as I would like to use them in a future post.
What is the moment YOU want to hold on to?
I want to apologize first for not posting this in time for it to be relevant in Israel. I seem to be customarily behind in everything again this year.
I am preparing for Shabbos and cleaning for Pesach at the same time, which is actually convenient and productive. But it leads me to try and find a balance between getting ready for Pesach while still really making Shabbos Kodesh
We spend weeks focused on the preparation for Pesach, whether it is shopping, cleaning or simply swapping recipes. At the same time, we need to remember that Shabbat is here and it has its own holy essence that we cannot skip (pass?) over because we are so focused on what lies ahead.
As Rabbi Tatz writes in “Living Inspired“: “There are many ideas in Shabbos, but perhaps the most basic is that it represents an end-point, the tachlis of a process. The week is a period of working, building; Shabbos is the cessation of that building, which brings home the significance and sense of achievement that building has generated. It is not simply rest, inactivity. It is the celebration of the work which has been completed. Whenever the Torah mentions Shabbos it first mentions six days of work – the idea is that Shabboss occurs only after,because of, the work.”
Shabbat is not just a rest stop in the many-step process of Pesach preparation. It is an end in and of itself to the intense work most of us have been doing this week.
I hope that you can try and be in the moment this Shabbat and celebrate its own holiness and essence. I hope you can impart that to your kids. I hope you can feel even just a little sadness as Shabbat departs Saturday night, and not just relief that you can get back to what needs to be done before Monday night. I am mostly hoping this for myself, as I know it is going to be a challenge.
My plan is to light the candles and do my best to shut the “to do” list out of my brain completely. While I know we can use the time to learn about and discuss Pesach, I plan to davka spend time with the children on this week’s parsha and on Shabbos itself.
I am not saying we need to divorce ourselves from the time of year. We don’t call this Shabbat HaGadol for nothing. Interestingly, there are a lot of different opinions as to why it has this name. I am pretty sure it isn’t because of the “gadol” menu and elaborate set -up this particular Shabbat!
The Shibolei Haleket writes about the custom for a lengthy sermon to the kahal this week: “The customary lengthy Shabbat HaGadol speech makes the Shabbat feel long, drawn out, and ‘gadol’.” Do we want it to feel drawn out to force ourselves to stay in the moment, or does it feel drawn out because we want to get to Pesach?
And if we need to feel that anxiousness, then let it be for our redemption from exile and slavery and NOT anxiousness to get on with the cooking and cleaning!
May you have a focused and meaningful Shabbat Shalom…..
I have been reading a lot of other material on line rather than writing much here as of late. I taught a shiur last night on the Seder Night: Feeling Elevated, not Exhausted. I hope my own learning and preparation will allow me to achieve that! I also hope to post a summation of that class here as soon as possible… but not now.
Today I just want encourage you to check out some other great stuff:
The Joy of Kosher has invited Kosher on a Budget’s Mara Strom to guest post on Frugality and Pesach, and as usual, she does a great job.
The Bima’s Ima has hosted the Kosher Cooking Carnival … just enough time before Pesach to still be planning.
In preparation for my class I came across a great piece By Rabbi Spoltor of Orot on leaning at the seder that is worth the read.
The Jewish Hostess has a great list of Charoset Recipes from around the world.
And last but not least, Esti Berkowitz is running a great (but “cheesy”) contest over at Prime Time Parenting. I have probably just hurt my own chances of winning. Oh well. May the best recipe win.
Enjoy!
Yesterday was my birthday. I turned old.Which is okay. I am lucky to be getting older and only count my blessings.
But I posted on facebook that it was tough to feel celebratory when people are blowing up my country and slitting babies’ throats. A friend responded that it is “like breaking the glass under the chuppah. You can feel sad and celebrate at the same time.”
That made a lot of sense to me — but just doesn’t feel right. Somehow, I am sad about the Beit Hamikdash which feels so far away; so long ago and so far into the future (may it be tomorrow, B”H) but it doesn’t quite compete with the overwhelming joy in the here and now of a wedding.
But these attacks are here and now, not the distant past. I think this means I have to work on really feeling it when we mourn the Beit Hamikdash at weddings. I am supposed to feel that loss every single day.
But in the meantime, the thought of mourning and celebrating at the same time just doesn’t feel possible. I also am tired of the helplessness I feel sitting in the US watching and listening to the news. I want to drive to Itamar and pay a shiva call. I want to visit a hospital and look at things that turn my stomach. I want to cook for someone. Anyone.
I always feel so helpful when I cook for someone.
Today in Mommy and Me I asked my Mommies and Mes to dance to “Shalom Al Yisroel” . That felt like a something. Wishing for peace. A very small something.
I hope that as you read this that you have found the best resources out there to learn about and empathize with the daily horrors in Israel this week. But in my feeling of powerlessness, I do want to share with you some of what I feel are important reads on the situation:
1. This: http://unitedwithisrael.org/tamar-fogel-speaks-out/ is an article and video of Tamar Fogel, the 12 year-old who survived her family’s massacre, and her desire to speak to Klal Yisroel.
2. This is a great blog in general. Here, he writes one Dad’s take on why these attacks really make him so angry. As an Ima, I just relate to this peiece with every cell. http://www.crossingtheyarden.com/2011/03/toes-terror-and-tears/
3. The One Family Fund has an updated, accurate list of the wounded and who needs our prayers; http://www.onefamilyfund.org/article.asp?ID=2138. I wish the organization didn’t need to exist, and that systematic solutions for the post-traumatic-stress disorder of children could be wiped out. Until that happens, I remain in awe of the work that they do.
PLEASE PLEASE add to this list in the comments if you feel there is something that is missing. Thank G-d I no longer have to rely on American newspapers to know what is going on.
And for any of my friends and readers that are in Israel, feeling scared and angry or G-d forbid have a friend or loved one who has been hurt:
I would cook something for you if I could. I really would.
This has been a transition year for us. My stepson is now a young man. My daughter is in middle school. My twins are turning double digits. My almost-6 year old is reading and writing…. and the baby, well, he just isn’t a baby anymore. We cut his hair for the first time, B”H, in just three weeks.
I spend a lot of time feeling wistful that we don’t have any cute little newborns around anymore. No squishy, non-verbal, nursing gigglers in sight.
… Then my daughter opens up a “Birthday Spa” just for me, with the works, including a pedicure with a most interesting shade of red…
And I thank Hashem for the blessing of a house full of big kids.
