Earlier this month, I had the honor of spending ten days learning at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. As we move through the three weeks leading up to Tisha B’Av, this week will feature reflections on some of what I studied there through the lens of Tisha B’Av and October 7.
On the Jewish calendar, today is the 23rd of Tammuz – placing us 6 days into the count from the 17th of Tammuz to the 9th of Av, two significant days in Jewish historical tradition. Be it because of summer vacation schedules or an ideological rejection of rebuilding the Temple, these days have often been lost to the liberal Jewish world – and yet this year they loom – powerful and intense. According to tradition, the 17th of Tammuz marks the day that the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem; Tisha B’Av, of course, marks the destruction of the Temple(s), one in the 6th century BCE and one in the year 70. In addition to simply counting the time and calling these days The Three Weeks, our tradition refers to this period as Bein HaMetzarim, meaning “within the straits”. It is a name taken from the Book of Lamentations, where in verse 1:3, the text says:
Judah has gone into exile because of affliction, and because of great servitude. She dwelt among the nations, she found no rest; all her pursuers overtook her within the straits.
Linguists and scholars have long noted the similarities – and likely shared root – between the word for these narrow places (metzarim) and the Hebrew word for Egypt (Mitzrayim). Egypt was the first narrow place from which we escaped, and remains the paradigm for our national visions of freedom and liberation. Perhaps it is because of this linguistic connection that the destruction of Tisha B’Av – as well as the weeks leading up to it – are ever more devastating; we are forced to return to the narrow places.
During my week at Hartman, Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer offered a lecture entitled Crashing: Jewish Peoplehood After October 7. At one point, he posed the following question to a room filled with rabbis. “Is there”, he asked, “a spiritual benefit to the posture of powerlessness? Does it, in some way, help us to viscerally feel a part of the story of the Jewish people?”
One of the texts he offered in this conversation brings an idea – perhaps an answer? – which I have been thinking about since he taught it. Teaching from the Mechilta D’Rabbi Yishmael, a 3rd century collection thought to have been written in the Land of Israel, the texts parse the question of which power actually brought us out of Egypt. Quoting from texts as far ranging as Psalms and Ezekiel, as well as the source texts from Exodus itself, the midrash suggests four possibilities for our exodus from Egypt; either we were redeemed by the merit of our ancestor Abraham and his unbending faith in God, the merit of circumcision and the ways that Jews cling to our identity and markers, through God’s power, or through our own zeal and commitment. Each offers a different version of Jewish power and powerlessness, and each might be interesting to contemplate in these days bein hametzarim – in the straits.
But, I am more interested in the lesson which Dr. Kurtzer drew from these texts, perhaps because it discusses one of my favorite Jewish topics: the wilderness. He notes that “the heroic story of the Exodus is not bondage to the Promised Land, but bondage to the wilderness.” As I have noted before, the Passover seder does not end in the Promised Land; the story is not tied up for us with a bow. But, perhaps precisely because it is unfinished, this story – our foundational story – reminds us that our trajectory as a nation need not be from despair to resolution, but from despair to possibility. And that seems like a powerful lesson for this moment in the straits.
— Rabbi Sari Laufer