Ten years ago, on Aug. 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr. was shot by a local police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Months of protests ensued, with people across the country outraged by images of his body lying in the hot sun for four hours. I myself am the mother of a child, Adina, who died long before her time. Brown’s family’s loss felt personal. So I showed up to the site of Brown’s shooting that day, and I have returned every year to stand there with his family, and with those who have vowed to work to change the systems that allowed for his death, in honor of his memory.
For me, this work has become inextricable with the message of Tisha B’Av, the Jewish holiday that commemorates the tragedies that have marked Jewish history, beginning with the destruction of the Temples and running through the horrors of the Holocaust. The holiday is a vessel crafted to hold our personal and collective grief and trauma as we remember the times that humans have failed at being our best selves.
In 2014, Brown’s death — which came just after Tisha B’Av — made clear just how profoundly, as a society, we had failed. And this year, the same is once more painfully, glaringly apparent, for very different reasons.
Tisha B’Av is a holiday observed through grief: We fast and sit on the floor, and chant ancient laments to hold the horror we have witnessed, the losses we have suffered, the sorrows and disappointments of our story as a people. This year, for the first time, we will add the tragedy of Oct. 7, and the devastating war that continues to rage on in the wake of Hamas’ attack. And this is the first year that I have feared Tisha B’Av will not be able to hold our sorrow.
The frequently used phrase “ tikkun olam ” — which means “the repair of the world” — comes from the mystical story of creation, which imagined great vessels that were filled with the light of God and broke apart. The response to that brokenness is our commitment to social justice, fixing our broken world. Like the vessels that could only hold so much godliness and goodness, it is possible that the vessels that have held our suffering cannot possibly hold any more. The broken hearts of Palestinian and Israeli families and others throughout the world caught in the crossfire of war and hate will be too much to hold.
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I used to believe that the grief work we do on this holiday was a necessary part of our preparation for the new year heralded by Rosh Hashanah. Without Tisha B’Av, a day to hold all of our tragedies, all of our sorrow, there could be no space for the promise of renewal we build up to celebrating on Simchat Torah, at the end of the High Holidays. Without Tisha B’Av to help us confront our trauma and our grief, we could not move forward into hope for a better year and a better future.
Now, I’m not so sure. Simchat Torah, which in the Hebrew calendar will also mark the first yahrzeit of Oct. 7, may also be so impossibly sad that our collective despair will overwhelm the promise of renewal and redemption. How can we confront our grief without the promise of respite — the understanding, which this holiday cycle brings, that despair will give way to renewal?
When Adina died, I embraced the dates that mark my daughter’s life and her death. The pain I allow myself to feel on those days is one of the ways I keep her close and honor our great loss. I did not have any belief that respite would come, but I had no choice but to trust the tradition to guide me.
When Adina died, I put myself in the arms of Jewish practice. The tradition dragged me through that first impossible year without her. Learning continues to carry me forward as time presents more challenges and more children to mourn. The deep divisions in my own St. Louis community over a contentious congressional race in which issues around the war played a starring role have made it difficult to stand together to mourn Michael Brown Jr. on the 10th anniversary of his death. But showing up has also been part of my practice and once again, I stood in solidarity with his people.
In Lamentations 2:19, which we read on Tisha B’Av, it is written that we must “Get up, sing, at the beginning of the watches in the night.” In other words: When you least feel like it, in the darkest part of the night, sing. And then the wailing and the tears will come, and you will find that you are able to “Pour out your heart like water before the face of God.” The power of a good cry will be unleashed, and a river of tears will release us from our lack of faith in a better future.
And finally, the text tells us what to do to save the vessel that holds our grief from shattering, to save Tisha B’Av from losing its ability to heal and redeem us for another year: “Lift up your hands for the sake of the soul of your young children, starving from hunger at the top of every street.”
Look up, sitting in that lowest of places, look up and you will see up close, children you can feed — a direct impact you can make in working to save the future. This Tisha B’Av, take that mission to heart, and make the work of moving out of grief and toward progress personal.
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