קרא עלי מעוד (איכה א.טו) בגמרא: ויבכו העם בלילה ההוא – ואותו לילה ליל תשעה בעב היה ואמר הקב״ה״ אתם בכיתם בכיה שלחינם ואני אקבע לכן בו בכיה לדורות (סנחדרין ד).
declared upon me this appointed time (Eikha 1.15). In the Gemara: “the people wept that night” – that same night was the night of the 9th of Av, and the Holy One said “you have wept for no reason, I will give you a reason to weep for generations” (BT Sanhedrin 4).
Rashi explains that because HaShem is called m’kadesh haShabbat we understand that the Shabbat time is fixed by HaShem, and the phrase m’kadesh Yisrael v’haz’manim indicates that it is the kedushah of Israel which sanctifies the z’manim, by means of the determination of the date according to the judgement of the (human, not Divine) beit din. (R. Yosef Sha’ul Nathanson, Itturei Torah, Eikha, 268)
The above commentary concludes by noting that in this case, the mo’ed is fixed by the Holy One, not by Israel. This mistakes the nature of Israel’s sin for a simple heyt, pesha or avon to be decried and mourned for generations, when the deeper significance is more profound. In truth, when given the opportunity of 1948, not only have we not acted to turn Tisha B’Av into a Festival, but we have done the opposite, and made Simkhat Torah a time of mourning for all time to come.
For many generations of suffering in Exile, we consoled ourselves that in the end, our mourning will turn to joy; that in future, the 17th of Tammuz will be the first day of a festival, and the 9th of Av the last day, and the Three Weeks will be the hol hamo’ed of the hag. Instead, behold the mighty deeds of the people of Israel, whose sin has turned our Simkhat Torah into Tisha B’Av. We have turned our simkha into avel. We have fixed this mo’ed upon ourselves and our descendants forever; as long as the memory of the people of Israel lives, Simkhat Torah will never again be a time of rejoicing.
We who stood at the gates of the Promised Land, we who beheld before our very eyes the first flowering of our redemption, we only had to make ourselves into conduits for blessing, to bring down the shefa to nurture that flowering, that it might grow and strengthen into the Olam haBa of our dreams and longings. To fulfill the dream we had only to learn from our past, to refrain from idolatry and sin’at hinam. To meet the moment we had to be willing to deal with our historical trauma, to seek healing through the path of the mitzvot and the guiding spirit of v’ahavta l’reakha kamokha, treating others the way we ourselves wish to be treated.
Alas! The jeering of the children of Israel against our cousins, the children of Palestine, has become true of us: we have missed the opportunity. Because of our sins, the state of Israel has become Molokh, and we have sacrificed not only the children of Palestine to its horrible maw, but our own children as well. We have given not only ourselves but HaShem a reason to weep for generations.
על זה היה דוה לבנו על אלה חשכו עינינו (איכה ה.יז)
For this our hearts grieve; for this our eyes are darkened. (Eikha 5.17)
See: how many have died, innocent of any crime?
See: how many more will die? how many who live will be dead at heart?
See: our joy is turned to sorrow. Again, we are fated to wander, exiled mipney hatoteynu, as we admit in our prayers, because of our sins.
Eikha ends with harsh words; it is traditional practice to repeat the next to last line as a nehemta, a consolation, so that we do not end the recitation with sadness but with hope. It is difficult on this Tisha b’Av to believe that it is more appropriate to end with hope than with despair. But perhaps the abiding teaching here is that we Jews must find within ourselves our generational stubbornness here as well: to continue to believe that we can do better. Today we mourn all that we have lost; beginning tomorrow, we return to the work of that hope.
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 