Turn and Begin the Journey
Words of Wisdom with Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar
This Dvar Torah was written by Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar, Executive Director of CAJE Miami.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
We are presently in “the nine days” that lead up to Tisha B'Av (next Wednesday night through Thursday), a day marking the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the loss of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel nearly 2000 years ago.
These are days of introspection, semi-mourning and sadness.
Most Jews who observe halacha in an Orthodox way will not shave or cut their hair, eat meat, listen to music, or go swimming.
At this season, I always like to reread an excellent book entitled This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared by Rabbi Alan Lew (z"l), founder of the first meditation center connected to a synagogue (and the author of a book I haven't yet read with a great title - One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi).
The words below are his commentary connecting Tisha B'Av to the approaching High Holy Days:
During the Watergate investigation, Deep Throat told reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to "follow the money." In Torah study, the watchword is "follow the language..."
Repeated words become a kind of leitmotiv, a theme that points us to the central action of the portion and invites us to explore the word in question for a broader and deeper range of meanings.
In the first portion of Deuteronomy -- the portion we always read the week of Tisha B'Av - the word that is repeated seven times is the root phanah - to turn...
God spoke to us at Horeb, saying: The time is up for living on this mountain.
Turn [p'nu] and begin your journey...
One of the unmistakable suggestions of its repeated usage here is that the Children of Israel have once again reached a significant turning point.
They stand at the border of the Promised Land... Forty years ago, of course, the Children of Israel resisted this imperative and did not go up [to the Land], and as a consequence their lives ground to a standstill.
Now the turning point has come round again.
The calendar of the sacred year presents us with a succession of turning points...
Exactly seven weeks before Rosh Hashanah, we mark the turn toward Teshuvah - repentance or return - with the observance of Tisha B'Av.
Tisha B'Av is the beginning of Teshuvah, the point of turning toward this process by turning toward a recognition of our estrangement from God, from ourselves, and from others.
Yom Kippur is the culmination of the process that begins on Tisha B'Av, when we acknowledge the darkness, when we let our guard down, when we turn toward the truth...
So the Torah tells us seven times. Vneifen, u-finu - and they turned.
What is required of us at Tisha B'Av is a simple turn of mind, a turn toward consciousness, a turn away from denial, from inertia, from the passive momentum of our lives, a turn away from those things that continue to happen unconsciously, and a conscious decision to change...
Life bets that we won't be willing to endure the suffering it requires.
Life bets that we will try to shut out the suffering and so shut out life in the bargain.
Tisha B'Av sidles up to us, whispering conspiratorially with a racing form over its mouth.
Tisha B'Av has a hot tip for us: Take the suffering. Take the loss. Turn toward it. Embrace it. Let the walls come down.
And Tisha B'Av has a few questions for us as well: Where are we?
What transition point are we standing at?
What is causing sharp feeling in us, disturbing us, knocking us a little off balance?
Where is our suffering?
What is making us feel bad?
What is making us feel at all?
How long will we keep the walls up?
How long will we furiously defend against what we know deep down to be the truth of our lives?
...The walls of our soul begin to crumble and the first glimmerings of transformation - of Teshuvah- begin to seep in.
We turn and stop looking beyond ourselves.
We stop defending ourselves.
We stop blaming bad luck and circumstances and other people for our difficulties.
We turn in and let the walls fall.
