“The mourning has gone out from our hearts, as we seek quiet in a land that is not ours”
Afew days before Tishah B’Av, my chavrusa showed me the following passage (loosely translated) in the Siddur of Rav Yaakov Emden:
Even if we had no sins in our hands other than our failure to mourn over Yerushalayim to the extent that is fitting, it would be a sufficient explanation for the length of our exile. And that is the most obvious cause for all the mass destructions beyond all understanding that have befallen us in the exile, in every place to which we have been dispersed. We are pursued without cessation, so that we find no respite among the nations from our lowliness, suffering, and embittered state, for this alone — because the mourning has gone out from our hearts, as we seek quiet in a land that is not ours. We have forgotten Yerushalayim, and thoughts of her do not enter our hearts. And on account of the deceased loved one forgotten from the heart, so does our suffering and misery grow from generation to generation.
A Jew from Lakewood whom I had never previously met called last week and asked to meet with me. From our preliminary conversation over the phone, I had the impression that he was exploring the possibility of making aliyah, or at the very least wanted to know whether I thought he was crazy for his sense that America is an increasingly inhospitable, even dangerous place for Jews.
He is not the only one asking the question. Professor Ruth Wisse, whose antennae for threats to Jews are as sensitive as anyone’s, reports being stunned recently when an Upper East Side neighbor described his daughter, who made aliyah a dozen years ago, as having seen “the handwriting on the wall,” and went on to point out, “Jews have been driven from every place where they’ve settled.” A few weeks later, a Jewish financial advisor in Wisse’s neighborhood pointed to a top lawyer, who has been hearing the same thing from some of his clients.
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