I always struggle with Tisha B’Av, which was on Monday night through Tuesday of this week. It’s a day that traditionally mourns the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem and also marks a host of other tragedies in Jewish history. Though the October 7th massacre in Israel occurred on Simchat Torah this year, it will join the other horrors that we will remember as a people.
For many years, like many modern Jews, I sought to redefine its meaning and purpose because I didn’t want to be wallowing in sadness. Yoma 9b teaches, for example, that the Temple was destroyed due to sinat hinam, baseless hatred, so perhaps our job will be to move towards ahavat hinam, baseless love. In one of my years in the pulpit, with the goal of creating more love in this world, we led a Midnight Run into Manhattan, giving sandwiches and clothes to homeless New Yorkers.
It was incredibly inspiring and powerful – and yet, looking back on it, I think it missed the mark of what Tisha B’Av can do for us, especially this year.
In our society today, there seems to be a constant drumbeat to increase our happiness, some of which are valuable and effective, and others, not as much. Authors ask, how can we be happy? How can we improve our mental health? How can we find moments of joy or keep only the things that spark joy in our house? All of those ideas are important and wonderful. And happiness and joy, when they come, feel terrific. But amidst the excellent work on recognizing that positive emotions are more than just a lack of negative emotions, we’ve also started to create a culture of toxic positivity, one that has fundamentally changed the way we think about our emotions and interactions.
Journalist Jessica Grose recently wrote an op-ed in The New York Times on the problems with the way we both value and measure happiness:
For much of Western history, the idea of — and even the word for — happiness was inextricably linked to chance. The ancient Greek philosopher Solon believed that the concept was so unpredictable, it made sense only in the long view of a complete life.
In the West, a new idea emerged in the 18th century: that happiness was “something that human beings are supposed to have,” as Darrin M. McMahon, the chair of the history department at Dartmouth, told me. “God created us in order to be happy. And if we’re not happy, then there’s something wrong with the world or wrong with the way we think about it…”…[W]hereas in earlier eras some might have experienced guilt over being too happy in this fallen world, it became possible for people to feel something entirely new: guilt for not being happy enough.
Tisha B’Av allows us to correct for that. We are allowed to be sad. This year, in particular, for example, Lamentations (and other sad poems) gives us language for mourning the murder of hundreds of Israelis on October 7th. It can inspire us to both pray and work for the return of the hostages. It can allow us to express the myriad and complicated feelings we may have about the Netanyahu government, how the war is being waged, and the immense loss of life in Gaza.
Tisha B’Av can remind us that we can hold multiple emotions at the same time, and that sadness is a crucial part of our humanity. And yet, it also ensures that we don’t ruminate on that sadness, that it doesn’t define us or own us. Even as we are sad, we hold onto hope for a better future. Even as we mourn, we begin to rebuild.
We don’t need to be happy all the time – in fact, that’s impossible. In Judaism, the goal of life isn’t to feel good; it’s to strive to be good. My hope for us is that in this week of sadness connected with Tisha B’Av, let us truly feel it – and then help us grow from it.
Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman is the Founding Director of Sinai and Synapses, an organization that bridges the scientific and religious worlds and is being incubated at Clal – The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and served as Assistant and then Associate Rabbi of Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester. In addition to My Jewish Learning, he’s written for The Huffington Post, Science and Religion Today, and WordPress.com. He lives in Westchester with his wife, Heather Stoltz, a fiber artist, and their daughter and son.