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“The time will come when thou shalt know That triumph’s height is overthrow.” —Ibsen.[1] Lines from Brand (1865/67), a play by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). Cronbach offered this quote in an essay, “Spirituality” published in the 31 October 1914 issue of The Reform Advocate, p. 359, prefaced by the statement “The Jew little understands Ibsen…. Such sublimities figure far too little in the life of the Jew. But it is just this trait of spirituality that is religion’s very essence.” Cronbach here is adding emphasis to an opinion of “one of the leading Jews of England” (unnamed) reflecting on a conversation with them concerning a sermon Cronbach had heard the evening prior by the Christian preacher Reginal John Campbell (1867-1956). | |
Heavenly Father! An hour of black despair cometh to our memory this somber day. | |
We thank Thee, O Thou our Comforter, that the agony of that sad hour hath grown less poignant. We thank Thee that, from the hearts of many, the pain hath vanished, yea been forgotten. Nay, many have never known it and even they whose anguish is bitterest shun not to mingle tones of hope with their sobs and sighs. | |
Yet, craving to enter into the deepest spiritual implications of this day, we may not turn away our eyes from the night-black pit of ruin into which Zion fell that ghastly hour. | |
We ponder, O Eternal One, the utter hopelessness of that dire event. The heroes slaughtered, the comely ones led captive, the land devastated, the sanctuary effaced! The horrors of war, famine, pestilence and defeat! The streets, rivers of blood; the slain heaped in house and highway; the corpses of the famished; the infants perishing at the mothers’ breasts; the offal, the human flesh devoured by the starving; the shrieks of the tortured; the leer of the conqueror; the lurid glare of the final conflagration! And then, the long ages of sorrow and suffering, for many of our brethren, not yet at an end! | |
O Father, that desperate hour typifies the despair that hath been in every age and clime. | |
We look back upon the dark moments of our own lives. | |
We think of those who are, even now, in the clutch of hopeless woes. | |
We think of those who are suffering persecution, hunger and plague. | |
We think of those who are ill and have no cure, yes of those who are, even now, passing through the throes of death. | |
We think of the destitute, the homeless, the outcast, the fallen, the imprisoned. | |
We think of those whose reason hath been overthrown, who flee in terror though none pursue and suffer though naught afflicts. | |
We think of those in the infrangible grip of habits deathly to body and soul and of those in the fetters of lusts and passions too powerful to overcome. | |
We think of the bereaved whose joys have perished with a dear one and whose hopes lie buried in a new-made grave. | |
We think of the disillusioned, the disappointed, the defeated, of those who have toiled for beauty, skill or strength but have not attained, of parents who have striven but failed, of teachers who have striven but failed. | |
We think of those who burn with love longings that can not be satisfied, of those whose homes are marred with incompatibility and strife and of those whose well-meant plans and ventures have brought them not gain but loss. | |
We think of those whose friends have forsaken them, of those who have looked for recognition but found humiliation, for praise but found mortification, for respect but found derision. | |
We think of those who have committed blunders that cannot be retrieved. | |
We think of those, above all, in whom self-reproach is the increase of every woe, lamenting, like downtrodden Israel, “because of our many sins.” | |
O Father, where could we ourselves hide our head in that inglorious hour when our own conscience joined the ranks of our accusers? Alas the black moments, every sense of power or merit, our last source of solace blasted; every vestige of grace or strength wherewith we deemed ourselves endowed whirled away like dead leaves in the fury of the storm! | |
And yet our sages have taught that, on the day the sanctuary was destroyed, an iron wall was rent which separated between Israel and their Father in Heaven. | |
Everlasting One, vouchsafe that gleams of this unfathomable truth may become manifest unto all who are passing through the billows. O perchance it is the mystery of all suffering— the cleaving of the barriers that shut Thee from our sight. The day which “is very dark and no brightness in it” (Amos 5:20) may be, even as the prophet hath said, none other than “the day of the Lord.” (Joel 4:14) | |
We would therefore seek, O our Helper, not mere deliverance from our sorrows but the utilization of our sorrows. We would attain, through our sorrows, that supreme and indispensable good, in no other way attainable. And art not Thou that supreme and indispensable good? | |
O benign the moment that can rend the iron wall! Blessed the hour, even of overthrow, which can start in the vast perspectives of the soul, the fashioning of a new Temple unseen by the eye of the flesh, the rearing of a new Jerusalem built not by mortal hands and, in place of our own vanquished kingdom, the revealing of Thine imperishable Kingdom of right and beauty and love! Amen. |
This prayer for “The Ninth of Ab” by Rabbi Abraham Cronbach is found in his, Prayers of the Jewish Advance (1924), on pages 60-65.
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Notes
| 1 | Lines from Brand (1865/67), a play by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). Cronbach offered this quote in an essay, “Spirituality” published in the 31 October 1914 issue of The Reform Advocate, p. 359, prefaced by the statement “The Jew little understands Ibsen…. Such sublimities figure far too little in the life of the Jew. But it is just this trait of spirituality that is religion’s very essence.” Cronbach here is adding emphasis to an opinion of “one of the leading Jews of England” (unnamed) reflecting on a conversation with them concerning a sermon Cronbach had heard the evening prior by the Christian preacher Reginal John Campbell (1867-1956). |
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“[Prayer for] the Ninth of Aḇ, by Rabbi Abraham Cronbach (1924)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.
Abraham Cronbach
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