Thoughts on the Fast of ’Av

Jewish date:  9 ’Av 5773 (Parashath Wa’Ethḥannan).

Today’s holidays:  The Fast of ’Av (Judaism), Feast Day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Roman Catholicism), Display of the Embarrassing Swimsuits (Church of the SubGenius).



Today is the Fast of ’Av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, marking some of our worst tragedies.  When one reviews the laws for fast days, one of the first things one reads is that fasting and associated practices, while obligatory on certain days, are not an end in themselves.  Thus to spend a fast day touristing or playing video games is forbidden. because that would be missing the point.  Fasting and suffering are a means to the end of repentance.  This post is meant to comment on a contemporary mistake that we have yet to correct.

In previous generations, our ancestors saw fit to act on what they believed was going to happen soon.  YHWH forbade King Dawidh to build the First Temple, but since Dawidh’s son Shelomoh was supposed to build it, Dawidh made all the preparations he could ahead of time.  When many thought that Shim‘on “bar Kokheva’” bar Koziva’ was Mashiaḥ, many took up arms against the Romans to fight the wars that Mashiaḥ is supposed to fight.  And when many thought that Shabbethay Ṣevi was Mashiaḥ, many repented their sins and prepared to move to Israel.  The attitude was that one should act to move events along.  The fact that Mashiaḥ did not actually come at those times is irrelevant to this point.

We are closer to the fulfillment of Messianic prophecies now than at any time in the past 2,000 years.  Not only have we reestablished the Jewish state, but it has survived despite the constant hostility of its neighbors, including terrorism and unprovoked warfare.  All three of the major Abrahamic religions are scrambling to deal with this unprecedented historical change, with adherents trying to adjust their beliefs to the altered situation on the ground or rationalize their way around it.  And while we Jews have been a big winner in this new era, for too many of us the consequences of this new era have not sunk in.

As happened at the start of the Second Temple Period, few of us have returned home to Israel voluntarily, preferring to remain in the Diaspora.  Many of us who did come came because they had little choice in the matter.  Persecution and genocide, both before and after the formation of the State of Israel, have given Jews every reason get out of Europe and the Muslim world.  Those living in places of tolerance, such as the United States, have felt less motivated to make ‘aliyyah.  In such comfortable places, it is very easy to claim to be a Zionist but never act upon it.  Moving to Israel may be a dream or an ideal, but “maybe sometime in the future” very easily becomes “never” in practice.  I myself was guilty of this error until YHWH coerced me into reconsidering.  It is one thing to say one believes that Israel is where Jews belong; it is an entirely different thing to live it.

Even among those of us who live in Israel, the consequences of what we are supposed to be doing have generally not sunken in completely.  Yes, we tithe our produce, and we do not celebrate an extra day of major holidays.  But ever since the destruction of the Second Temple, we have not been able to fully practice Judaism.  Without the Temple, or at least proper access to the Temple Mount, many of the rites that are supposed to performed daily, on Shabbath, and on major holidays cannot be performed.  Part of the problem is the government, or to be specific, every government Israel has had, starting in 1967.  Almost immediately after the Temple Mount was liberated, Mosheh Dayyan returned it to Islamic control, where it has remained, aided and abetted by the police.  The police would rather violate freedom of religion to keep Muslims relatively happy in the short term, even though it is their job to enforce religious tolerance and pandering to violent Muslims never works in the long term.  Muslims are essentially allowed to do anything they want up there, even blatant violations of Israeli law, such as destruction of antiquities, while Jews are openly discriminated against.  Many Jews are turned away for no valid reason, while those who do ascend are warned not to pray and may be harassed by the police and Muslims.  Bringing sacrifices is something the police cannot conceive of permitting at all.

The strange thing is a general lack of concern, even among the observant, for the Temple Mount and the Temple service.  Many of us pray for complete redemption and sing about how we want Mashiaḥ now, but we expect YHWH to do everything and ourselves to do nothing—unlike what our ancestors did.  Very few of us bother to visit the Temple Mount.  Very few of us protest against Muslim desecration of our most holy site.  And very few of us have done anything to get ready for restarting the Temple service.  When confronted with their indifference, many will make excuses based on ritual purity (in contrast with what Jews did in earlier times or that certain sacrifices can be made even while ritually impure) or feign fear of Muslims should Jews reclaim the Temple Mount (despite Muslim complaints about Jews having little to do with reality).  Simply ignoring a large chunk of our religion is irrational, and I can see no way around the problem other than to reclaim the Temple Mount.

May YHWH help us get past the delusion that the status quo must be preserved and lead us to repent.


Various relevant articles:

• “The 9th of Av: A Time to Mourn... A Time to Build”
• “The Temple taboo”
• “Danon: Equal Prayer Rights on Temple Mount Now” (Someone is trying to get my vote.)
• “Muslim Extremists Force Jews From Temple Mount”  (As I keep saying on my Facebook account, the police suck.)
• “A historical description of Tisha Be’av”
• “Weeping in the silence – Tisha Be’av”

Also note the Temple Institute, who are working to get ready everything needed for the next Temple.

The Israeli police suck more than I thought

Jewish date:  10 ’Av 5772 (Parashath Wa’ethḥannan).

Today’s holidays:  The Fast of ’Av (Judaism), Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Brigham Young (Church of the SubGenius), Feast of Paschal Beverly Randolph (Thelema), Stikklestad Day (Germanic Neopaganism).

Today is the Fast of ’Av, the culmination of the Three Weeks and Nine Days commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temple.

Last week I posted “משטרת ישראל היא לא גרועה כמו קודם • The Israeli Police suck less than before”, which is about my visit to the Temple Mount last Sunday.  Ideally I would have liked to go today, but I am afraid to do much of anything outside during fast days due to dehydration and overheating, which are serious concerns in the summer.  (Especially the summer in Israel, which is hot and dry.  Even more especially during the summer in Israel feeling the effects of global warming, which make me not want to leave my apartment more than absolutely necessary.)  However, some brave souls do attempt to visit the Temple Mount on fast days.  It has been reported on Facebook that a large number of Jews showed up to ascend to the Temple Mount this morning, only to be turned away because the police decided to pander to Islamic supremacism rather than do their jobs.  I therefore declare the police to have increased their level of suck, and I encourage everyone to let the government, political parties, and anyone else relevant to know.

On the Fast of Tammuz, I posted “Pathological mourning”, arguing that we should not be ritually mourning as an end in itself, but, like all mourning, should be a means towards moving on and rebuilding the Temple.  I am not the only one who thinks mourning should not be an end in itself.  “Next Year in Jerusalem — Maybe”, “What Are We Fasting For?”, and “Ninth of Av Message on Moving to Israel – Rabbi Beryl Wein, Rabbi Zev Leff and Rabbi Shalom Gold” all argue for making ‘aliyyah (immigration to Israel).

And they have a point.  The destruction of both Temples was accompanied by exile.  The Hebrew Bible has an ideal that the Jewish people should live in Israel and YHWH promises that we will return.  However, we have done a lousy job of this.  The Book of Ezra records that when the Persian Emperor Koresh (Cyrus) allowed the Jews to return and rebuild the Temple, very few did so.  We are doing a better job today (about 50% of the way there), but life in the West is still rather comfortable, and it is easy even for religious Jews to put off moving to Israel indefinitely.  I know.  I used to be that way.  Food for thought.

’Aharon/Aaron

It was the best of Gospel-based films; it was the worst of Gospel-based films

Greetings.

Jewish date:  8 ’Av 5770 (Parashath Wa’ethḥannan).

Today’s holidays:  The Nine Days (Judaism), Monday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Dr. Doom/St. Thulsa Doom (Church of the SubGenius), Feast Day of the Magi: Krishna (Thelema).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Tell Restaurants and Markets: Donate, Don't Dump, Usable Excess Food - The Petition Site” and “Forget what Timothy Geithner thinks. We want Elizabeth Warren to police Wall Street.”.

Topic 1:  Tomorrow is 9 ’Av (Tish‘ah be’Av), the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, commemorating the destruction of both Temples and a number of other tragedies in Jewish history.  You can find out about this holiday at OU.org.  Furthermore, “Why I like Tisha Be’Av” presents an unusual perspective to the holiday; while acknowledging its aspect of mourning, the author emphasizes what we have now and in the future which is worth having.

Topic 2:  The final film in my series on Gospel-based movies, Color of the Cross.  As implied by the title of this post, this film is in one aspect the best of the bunch and in other aspects the worst of the bunch.

What is great about Color of the Cross is that the antagonists have motives for what they do.  The writers do not simply parrot the Gospels, but try to make what happens make some sort of sense.  The Romans are consistently cruel and oppressive, as is fitting for people trying to dominate an extensive empire.  Caiaphas, while acting against Jesus, does so because he is under pressure from the Roman soldier Horatio, who demands that all “prophets” (who are potential troublemakers) be turned over to him.  The Sanhedhrin calls for Jesus’s arrest to protect him from a racist mob.  Judas betrays Jesus not for money or spite or hatred, but because he wants to start an uprising to drive out the Romans.

There are two things which are really bad about Color of the Cross.  The first and most obvious is the introduction of racism into the story.  Jesus and some of the other Jewish characters are black, and many Jews are depicted as having trouble with the idea of a black Messiah.  This is an astoundingly bad idea, as the notion of prejudice against anyone based on skin color is completely absent from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.  There is an awareness that some humans have dark skin—e.g., Jeremiah 13:23 implies that the people of Kush (Ethiopia) have a different skin color from Jews—but nowhere is there any claim that dark-skinned people are bad or light-skinned people are good.  Racism did not merely have nothing to do with why Jesus was killed, either in how he was depicted in the New Testament or reality; grafting it into the story short-circuits any serious attempt at exploring why he was killed.

The other thing really bad about Color of the Cross is the lack of serious research.  Clearly the writers made some attempt at studying Judaism, but what they studied was modern Judaism, not that of the Second Temple Period, and the study made was superficial.  The details needed to ensure that the writers looked like they knew what they were doing are absent or wrong.  (To be frank, if they had talked with anyone who could provide the necessary information, they might have well discovered that serious Jews consider the arguments made in the New Testament that Jesus is the Messiah or the Son of God to be invalid, and this film would have not existed at all, or it would have turned out to be a very different film.)  No Jew who knows anything is going let ḥameṣ (leavened grain or grain products) remain in his/her possession anywhere near Sundown the day before Pesaḥ (Passover); neither would he/she identify a miqweh (ritual bath) as “holy water”.  Anyone sufficiently familiar with the Torah would know that the Messiah is not mentioned therein, only perhaps hinted at.  None of the characters has a clue that the minimum that one needs to eat in order for it to legally be considered eating is the volume of an olive, and Jesus makes the bizarre assertion that the lamb used for the qorban Pesaḥ (paschal sacrifice) needs to be a virgin.  And while ṃaṣṣah (unleavened bread) and wine make their appearance at the sedher (the ritual storytelling and meal on Pesaḥ), the writers really have no clue what the whole business of dipping is about and have no idea that maror (bitter herbs) and the qorban Pesaḥ should be present, not to mention the fact that the qorban Pesaḥ is supposed to be slaughtered on the Temple Mount and eaten in Jerusalem.  For some reason, the whole movie takes place in Arimathea, despite the claims of the Gospels.  The costumes for the Priests and Pharisees are blatantly copied from The Passion of the Christ.  And for no apparent reason, Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate, both of whom are mentioned in all four canonical Gospels, are dropped from the story entirely.

In conclusion, Color of the Christ makes some attempt to turn the antagonists into believable characters, but forcing racism into the story is not an improvement, and the research department utterly failed to do their job.

Peace and have an easy fast.

Aaron