Tisha Be’av 5765

Today is Tisha Be’av, the day when Jews mourn the greatest tragedies of Jewish history, among them the destruction of the First and Second Temples in 586 BCE and 70 CE. In a stroke that might be considered emblematic of the gulf between the settlers and most Israelis, the disengagement plan officially takes effect at midnight tonight, thereby handing its opponents an easy claim that we are about to witness yet another stain on Jewish history.

In response, those urging calm, such as President Moshe Katsav, are also appealing to the legacy of Tisha Be’av, particularly the tradition that the
destruction of the Temple was brought about by sinat chinam – or “baseless hatred.” There is, indeed, no avoiding the parallels to this day from our history.

But which way, or to which folly, do they point?

It is worth looking a little more deeply at the concept of baseless hatred, which is often thought of in terms of a morality play rather than a clear-eyed interpretation of historic events. According to the most straightforward religious narrative, we sinned by hating each other, and God punished us.

Yet what is generally overlooked is that baseless hatred is not just an ethical or religious metaphor, but an apparently accurate description of what directly brought about tremendous Jewish defeats. As Albright Institute Fellow Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg explained in these pages on Friday, “The destruction of both temples, though carried out by our enemies, was mainly our own doing.”

When the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem in 597 BCE, they did not destroy the Temple – they exiled Jehoiachin, the Jewish king of that time, but continued to treat him as royalty, and installed another Jew, the deposed king’s uncle Zedekiah, in his stead. It was only when Zedekiah and the people, against the warnings of the prophet Jeremiah, thought they could overthrow Babylon with the help of Egypt that the Babylonians returned and destroyed the Temple.

Similarly, the Romans and the Jews did seem to have a modus vivendi of some sorts, but it fell apart. As Rosenberg tells it, “Twice a day the priests offered up a sacrifice donated by the emperor until one day the revolutionaries persuaded the kohanim to reject his bull as being unsuitable for having a blemish.

This was an insult the Romans did not take lightly and they sent in a punishment squad, which only served to arouse the hotheads to greater rebellion. Insult followed insult on both sides and this led to open war with Rome.”

The legacy of Tisha Be’av is a two-edged sword. It can be used to show that disengagement itself is of the magnitude of previous destructions, or as an example of the danger of zealotry leading the people astray and to defeat by foreign enemies.

What cannot be disputed, however, is one parallel that may be even truer today than it was in the times of Babylon and Rome: that the main hope our enemies have of defeating us is that our unity and sense of purpose – rather than our physical might – will fail us.

Of course this observation as well can be used by both sides of the disengagement divide, since it is always possible for each side to place responsibility on the other for dividing the people. Yet in truth, the responsibility for causing and repairing divisions is almost always shared, and certainly is in this case.

If there ever was a dispute “for the sake of heaven,” as the Talmud puts it, it is this one. Both sides deeply believe that their path is the best, perhaps only, way to secure the future of the Jewish state.

Crucially, both sides must internalize that fact that those fellow Israelis with whom they so strongly disagree nonetheless seek the same goal as they do: the well-being of Israel. Why crucially? Because the history behind Tisha Be’av suggests that it is the kind of internal rift we are seeing now – rather than the consequences of the particular policies so passionately advocated by our divided sides – that offers our enemies the greatest hope of success.