Between the Straits and Up the Mountain

Since the morning quiet of Simchat Torah was shattered by Hamas’s vicious assault the seasons and occasions of the Jewish calendar have doubled as a backdrop to experiencing the reverberating terror of that day and the wrenching ordeal of the hostages. We now come to the time of year where that  most aligns with the brokenness felt during these days of sorrow and bloodshed.

The Fast of  the Seventeenth of Tammuz  opens a period of three weeks that leads to the darkest day on the Jewish calendar, Tisha B'Av, the 9th of Av, the day on which Jerusalem was put to the sword and the Temple was destroyed.  These three weeks, the Narrow Straits are traditionally days of mourning on the calendar, their lesson transcending the historical events and touching on the great fragility and brokenness of the world.

This year neither the Jewish world nor any community needs a reminder of what can be broken and how life can be turned upside down.  Is there a way to make any sense of these days in a time that already feels like Narrow Straits?

We can look to a different aspect of The Seventeenth of Tammuz, the day on which Moses returned from his time on Mount Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments only to find that the people were out of control, worshiping a calf made of gold, having lost patience waiting.  Moses, moved by anger and fear for their lives, hurled down the stone tablets he had just received, shattering them before the people.  The consequences of the Golden Calf were harsh and took a great toll. But here the story shifts.

Moses pleads with G*d to forgive and refuses to relent until G*d agrees once more to return to the midst of the people.  After forty days, G*d invites Moses again to receive the commandments and teaches him the Thirteen Attributes, the words of seeking forgiveness and return that are the centerpiece of our own prayers for renewal, especially on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  The new stone tablets that Moses receives are to be placed in the Ark alongside the pieces of the Broken Tablets.

In this version of the Fast of Tammuz, the dark day of Tisha B’ Av is skipped over. The forty days of pleading end on the first of Elul, the month filled with increasing anticipation for Rosh Hashana and the beginning of a new year.  The next forty days that Moses spends with G*d receiving the new Tablets of Torah end on the only day we fast not out of sadness but holy ecstasy, Yom Kippur.  The broken tablets of Tammuz give way to the wholeness so difficult to envision now.

There have hardly been three days in a row, let alone three weeks that could be counted on to be predictable this past year. Still, in three weeks the day of the dark fast of Tisha B’ Av will come and once more force us to linger on the puncture left by our collective tragedies. Even on that day of disconnection I will remember that the Ark that stood in the Temple already had something broken in it..  The broken tablets of Moses that lay next to the ones that were whole. In a time that has already had its suffering and its reckoning and a fear of hard days yet to come the fast of Tammuz, will be less a beginning of narrow straits than a promise that beyond the darkness and despair the work of restoration, healing and renewal is yet to come.