Mark Erev Tisha b’Av With Progressive Judaism

Tisha B’Av – ‘But this do I call to mind, therefore I have hope…’ (Lamentations 3:21)

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 Please join us as we mark Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning for tragedies that have taken place across Jewish history and as we reflect on hope.

You are invited to write and submit your own kinah (elegy or lament) inspired by the theme of hope, derived from Lamentations 3:21: ‘But this I call to mind, therefore I have hope…’ and to read your poem during the evening. Please submit your poem to Rabbi Alexandra Wright: a.wright@ljs.org

Alexandra Wright is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86237006793?pwd=I2laiyS5ZzIGOz027R8x2d7Ce2bJEC.1

Meeting ID: 862 3700 6793.     Passcode: 9AV5785

The Book of Lamentations (Eicha in Hebrew) is a series of five lyrical elegies mourning the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. Each of the first four chapters is structured as an alphabetical acrostic – a way of declaring both the immensity of the tragedy borne by the Jewish people (from ‘A to Z’) but also containing it within the vehicle of a poetic structure.

The final chapter is confessional and liturgical. Eicha is not simply rooted in historical time; it transcends the loss of the Temple and becomes Israel’s eternal lament for all catastrophes that befall our people, past, present and future.

Eicha is the lament of a whole people mourning the ‘slaughter without pity’. It is also an elegy by an individual exhausted and shattered by grief, wrestling with faith in a God who seems to ‘bring down His hand again and again, without cease’, who weighs down the poet with chains, who shuts out prayer, and leaves the poet numb and confused. Yet, this individual is not without hope. When morning comes, this individual is willing to sit patiently and to affirm faith in God’s goodness and mercy.

This complex lament will form the centre of our liturgy on Erev Tisha B’Av as we reflect on the tragedies of the past and the most recent on 7 October and its aftermath.