This work is updated annually based on the source material posted to neohasid.org, here.

For Reb Dovid’s essay on cannibalism in Eikhah, please read “To Prey or to Pray? The Lessons of Famine on Tishah b’Av” (The Jew & the Carrot blog, 2008-08-07).

Rabbi Seidenberg writes:

Some notes on the theology of Eikhah:

1. Tishah b’Av could not be more relevant than it is today, when the crisis of war refugees and fear of terrorism have overwhelmed the political process in so many countries. We think of Tishah b’Av as a time of mourning, but it is more importantly a call to identify with the experience of the refugee, being thrown into a hostile world without shelter or protection. That’s what happened to the Jewish people when the Temple, and the nation and society it stood for, were destroyed, when they became “like deer, not finding a place to graze, walking without strength before a pursuer.” (1:6)

2. The author(s) of Eikhah (traditionally Jeremiah) believed that what happened to Jerusalem was an expression of divine judgment. The idea that tragedy and disaster are punishment for our sins may seem alien to most most modern Jews. This is also why it is hard to connect the Holocaust with Tishah b’Av. But this theology can be consoling, because it allows people to find meaning in tragedy.

3. For the ancients, the choices were to believe that the destruction was God’s punishment, or that God no longer cared about what happened to them. It is easy to imagine why people would choose a punishing God over an uncaring God (though the latter possibility is suggested in the very last verse of Eikhah). Even though Eikhah sounds like it’s about God punishing us, it’s not really a theodicy, but a prayer that tragedies prove God still cares about us, instead of proving God’s indifference.

4. That doesn’t mean we need to accept this theology – even in Eikhah itself, this idea is questioned. Only in the third chapter is Ẓíōn’s destruction seen consistently as fair and just punishment. In all the other chapters, the degree of divine punishment is (subtly) described as excessive and abusive. The poet repeatedly begs God to pay attention: “See, YHVH, and look: whom did You treat thus? If women will eat their fruit, coddled babes – !”(2:20; also 1:9,11,20, 4:16, 5:1). It’s as if other people could see and understand the tragedy that unfolded (1:12), but God could not.

5. This suggests one way to confront the images of sexual abuse in Eikhah: “All who honor her despise her, for they saw her nakedness.” (1:8; also 1:10, 4:21, 5:11) In the prophets, such abuse is a metaphor for the “just” punishment that follows Israel’s “adulterous” pursuit of other gods. But in Eikhah, the metaphor is used to hold up a mirror to God, to show that the punishment was intolerably abusive.

6. The real theology of Eikhah is expressed in the verse, “What can I compare to you, daughter Jerusalem, that I may comfort you?” (2:13) What images, what words, can help people bear the memory of tragedy? The poet is willing to say whatever is needed to enable people to find meaning.

7. There is another way to look at the idea of divine punishment. According to Jeremiah, the reason for exile was that Israel did not let the land rest every seven years during the Sabbatical year. (2 Chron. 36:21) That is why 490 years without Shmitah were followed by 70 years of exile. In an age when we have reason to believe that our ecological “sins” are coming home to roost, the connection between natural disaster and divine retribution is not so farfetched.

8. What does this mean? The Torah portrays the land as a subject with rights and interests that take priority over our needs. Especially in the flood story and the laws of the Jubilee and Shmita years (Lev. 25)—and in the consequences that are supposed to befall if the people do not observe these laws (Lev. 26)—the Torah teaches that God will take the side of the land against the people if force to. The land will “enjoy her Sabbaths” (Lev. 26:34,43) – even if that means the people are exiled or wiped out. From the divine perspective, justice encompasses the land. What has intrinsic value is not humanity but justice, which is humanity’s potential. See: neohasid.org/torah/genesis-shmitah

9. The Torah outlines six curses for not observing the Sabbatical year that describe how the relationship between the people and the land can unravel. Two curses involve children being eaten – first by wild animals (v.22) and then by their parents (v.29). That image is repeated in Eikhah (2:20, 4:10), and it is the main connection between Eikhah and Leviticus. The curses in Leviticus end with: “you will be lost in the nations and the land of your enemies will eat you” (v.38). Because the Jewish people was in exile for so long, the last curse does not sound like the worst. But if the land eats us, this represents a complete reversal of the right relationship between people and land.

10. In ancient times, people believed that the Temple existed to promote the fertility of the land and the people. The Temple brought abundance into the world; its rituals were performed for the sake of the land and all her species, not just for the Jews but for all humanity and all life. So one more way to look at the Temple’s destruction is that its purpose had already been destroyed by the way the people treated the land.

11. However, the idea that destruction came because of how the Jewish people treated the land is not found anywhere in Eikhah, where the identification of the people with the land is total. Instead, Jerusalem’s physical downfall results from a moral downfall in the relationships between human beings. In Jeremiah too, the fate of Jerusalem is sealed only after the rich, who had briefly set their slaves free, immediately re-enslave them when it looks like the danger has passed. (Jer. 34) How we treat the stranger, the poor, the refugee, determines if we can remain in the land.

12. We can expect more wars over resources, as well as people fleeing areas that have flooded or become deserts, as climate change puts more pressure on our ecosystems and our social systems. We need all the spiritual resources we can muster to stay open to the humanity of the refugee and the stranger while also taking care of each other. If we sympathize with these ideas, Eikhah is an invitation to move towards justice for all people, for all species, and for the land herself.

Rabbi David Mevorach Seidenberg,
2017/5777.

Some of this material is excerpted from Kabbalah and Ecology (Cambridge University Press 2015).

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