In times of disappointment or despair, Jewish tradition offers tools for resilience. Sometimes, those tools do better than get us out of a rut and instead inspire us to take action to make the world a better place. These tools are front and center this week on the Jewish calendar and in the news.
From last week through to this coming Tuesday, the Jewish calendar marks what are known as the Nine Days. These days refer to the first nine days of the Hebrew month of Av, the last day of which commemorates many of the worst calamities to befall the Jewish people including the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. The first tool shows up here: not only naming travesty but also preparing for its remembrance with physical and spiritual conditioning like refraining from meat and reducing joy.
That pre-conditioning allows the naming to do more than merely mark an occasion; it lays the foundation for the commemoration to contain a message of hope. A meaningful commemoration – in this case, a day of fasting, mourning rituals, and melancholy readings – has a mirror image in which those doing the commemoration symbolize redemption from the historical suffering. By taking time – real time – to prepare, to name, and to wallow, we end up demonstrating how much better off we are.
It is this redemptive framing of calamity that drives the persistent Jewish call to make the world a better place. In fact, the ancient rabbis blame the destruction of the Second Temple on senseless hatred within the Jewish community, and then they go on to construct systems for how to disagree agreeably. These same rabbis knew that they had to compete philosophically with Epicurean engagement in pleasure, Stoic asceticism, and all manner of mysticism. Their answer was this same engagement of pragmatism and spiritual uplift.
That brings me to the recent news. Gov. Josh Shapiro, when he acknowledged Gov. Tim Walz being chosen over him as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, said, “My faith teaches me that no one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it.”
That teaching is from Rabbi Tarfon in Ethics of the Fathers who lived before and after the destruction of the Second Temple. In her commentary on this teaching Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum, says:
“It deals not with that which is whole or complete, but instead with a wounded world of many broken pieces, and it gently suggests how a person might create a path forward among those broken pieces to make them again whole.”
I grew up singing this teaching as an inspiring call to redeem whatever small piece of the broken world I could. If you want to know what the Governor meant, it is that we all have a part to play, and we can make a difference. Sometimes, it is most obvious when things seem to need even more work. I hope this moment teaches us all to be resilient by doing our part to finish whatever task we can.
About Rabbi Jeremy Winaker
Rabbi Jeremy Winaker is the executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hillel Network, responsible for West Chester University, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and other area colleges. He is the former head of school at the Albert Einstein Academy in Wilmington and was the senior Jewish educator at the Kristol Hillel Center at the University of Delaware for four years. Rabbi Winaker lives in Delaware with his wife and three children.
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