A Happy Tishah B’Av Thought

And that thought led to another reflection on how rich is the life that my wife and I chose at the outset of our marriage, and how grateful I am to be another link in the long chain of transmission of Torah and to have given rise to new generations of such links.

As often happens when my mind starts to wander, an element of sadness soon entered where there had only been gratitude. My thoughts turned to the suburban Jews with whom I grew up and how few of them mark Tishah B’Av in any way or feel any connection to the events commemorated, if they even know of them at all. They know little of the beliefs and practices that made it possible for Jews over the millennia to endure so much while holding fast to their connection to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and one another.

Rav Noach Weinberg used to say that there cannot be a greater chillul Hashem than the fact that the overwhelming majority of the world’s Jews know little or nothing of Hashem’s Torah. And so is it a tragedy for modern Jews to have no sense of what a miracle it is to have been born a member of a people who can trace their civilization back millennia, and who maintained their identity separated from their Land for 2,000 years. (Someone once asked Rav Moshe Shapira ztz”l how old he was. He replied, “Three thousand five hundred years old.”)

And it is sad that so few of the friends of my youth have any idea of what I mean by the “richness” of my life as a Torah Jew. Of a life that constantly calls upon us to think deeply and to delve into yet another facet of the Torah. Of a calendar that is ever renewing, and of experiencing the excitement of that renewal together with a community of fellow Jews. Of cryptic Midrashic comments of the Sages first recorded two thousand years ago, the multiple layers of which continuously bear precious new fruit.