For Tishah b’Av : Our Cherished Litany of Loss, by Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Shared on: 16 July 2018 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories: Tishah b'Av

Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, first person, ירושלם Jerusalem, Prayers as poems, תשובה teshuvah

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Contribute a translation	English
	For Tisha be’Av: Our Cherished Litany of Loss
	You, Jerusalem, (God, Your name burns my mouth.) golden watch-towers, heart-pulsing sacred stones, center of the universe, lion’s share of all the beauty that could be…
	millions clamor for Your love… …You, O Jerusalem
	Eternal City, why do You sit alone?
	I miss You so very much. I miss You in Your absence, long for You because You are not here, because I am not there, with You. That is about me, not about you. I mourn for myself when I mourn for You.
	Just now, I walked Your streets, wept at your renewed splendor and excessive spenders, cried over the ruins and the ruined people who adorn You.
	Stones without end absorb us all, joyful shouts and fallen souls, estranged brothers and sisters, inches away from each other’s hearts.
	Hidden are the Divine ledgers of sin, but lists upon lists of right and wrong are still kept (those ancient stones have witnessed it all):
	smothered sigh and fierce anger, ignited faith and craven hunger, brokenness artistry ecstasy and light
	build burn burned dance eat eaten …eaten
	Jerusalem Jerusalem You poor, aching city, You spread Your worn hands for help, but there are no comforters who truly listen.
	You sitting alone under all of us is all of us sitting alone under and on-top of each other.
	Two Temples, Nine days, three weeks, sixty-seven two-thousand, six million, all numbers, our cherished litany of loss.
	You call to all Your lovers, but we, one of your beloved lovers, hear only our own name.
	But today’s strange gift longing for what is already restored…
	Might we finally remember to cease pretending we own Your Infinite beauty, that Your ruin is our own making? Haven’t we mourned enough to learn that we belong to You, not the other way ‘round?
	Turn us that we might return, for we have forgotten Jerusalem (You burn me)

“For Tisha be’Av: Our Cherished Litany of Loss” by Rabbi Menachem Creditor was first published in 2017/5777 on his website, here.

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“For Tishah b’Av : Our Cherished Litany of Loss, by Rabbi Menachem Creditor” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Menachem Creditor

Rabbi Menachem Creditor serves as the Pearl and Ira Meyer Scholar in Residence at UJA-Federation New York and was the founder of Rabbis Against Gun Violence. A frequent speaker in communities and campuses around the United States and Israel with over 1 million views of his online videos and essays, he was named by Newsweek as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America. His 22 books and 6 albums of original music include the global anthem "Olam Chesed Yibaneh" and the anthologies "When We Turned Within" and "None Shall Make Them Afraid." He has been involved in the leadership of American Jewish World Service, AIPAC, the Rabbinical Assembly, and the One America Movement, an organization dedicated to bringing together Americans of different faiths and opinions. He and his wife Neshama Carlebach live in New York, where they are raising their five children.

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17