How do you look at a broken world with generous eyes?

A couple of problems weren’t going
to come up anymore:
hunger, for example,
and war, and so forth.

There was going to be respect
for helpless people’s helplessness,
trust, that kind of stuff.

Anyone who planned to enjoy the world
is now faced
with a hopeless task.

from “The Century's Decline” by Wislawa Szymborska

For these things do I weep,
My eye, my eye sends down water…
(Eicha / Lamentations 1:16)

It feels somewhat strange to enter into Shabbat, knowing that as Shabbat leaves, Tisha b’Av will begin. The 9th day of the month of Av brings deep mourning. On it we chant from the book of Eicha, a series of laments over the destruction of the first Temple. On this day, too, the second Temple fell. And over the centuries, all sorts of tragedy became memorialized on Tisha b’Av. 

Each Jewish holiday has its distinct wisdom for us. On Tisha b’Av, we are meant to see the world as broken. And we are meant to learn from our mistakes so that mending is possible. 

The Torah portion this Shabbat, beginning the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy), positions us in a similar spot. The Israelites are across the river from the Promised Land. In Moshe’s final months, he delivers speech after speech, recapping their journey from slavery to divine service. But as an inspirational speaker, he tends toward tough love:

“These are the words (devarim) that Moshe spoke to all of Israel…” (Devarim 1:1)

Rashi (11th century): “These are words of reproof and he is enumerating here all the places where they provoked God to anger.”

Again and again this weekend, from centuries past and our contemporaries, we hear messages of suffering (ours and others), mistakes, and critical rebuke. Anyone who planned to enjoy the weekend… oy!

Driving to Queen Anne a few days ago, I was pleased to see that a new season of Rabbi Shai Held’s podcast, Answers With Held, had begun. Soon I was immersed in a profound conversation between Held and Rabbi Steve Greenberg on the query, “Can We Judge Everyone Favorably?” Their conversation explores a teaching in Pirkei Avot, a classic collection of rabbinic wisdom: “Yehoshua ben Perachyah used to say: make for yourself  a teacher, and acquire for yourself a friend, and judge all people with the scale weighted in their favor (dan l’chaf zechut)” (Pirkei Avot 1:6). 

What connects the desire to have teachers and friends to the ethical practice of seeing people with generous eyes? For Held and Greenberg, it is not so much ethical aspiration as simple practical advice. 

“We all choose partners, parties, communities, not because they’re perfect, but because they have excellences we love and weaknesses that we can live with. And if you are a person who can’t live with weaknesses, with foibles and faults, with mismatch of relationship and communication sometimes, if you can’t live with that, then you’re not going to be able to belong anywhere.” 

The rabbis teach in the Talmud (Yoma 9b) that the second Temple was destroyed because the people acted with sin’at chinam, usually translated as “baseless hatred.” The fault lay not primarily in strategic errors, or military weakness, or diplomatic blunders, or even in ritual impiety, but rather in social hostility across lines of difference. The Talmudic diagnosis of suffering and brokenness is that it stems from an inability to relate to each other generously, or as Greenberg says “to love beyond disappointment.”  

On Tisha b’Av, we are meant to see the world as broken. Not to turn away, not to minimize, not to put on rose-colored glasses, nor even to rationalize it. Turning away from the brokenness is one way the world breaks. 

But then, on Tisha b’Av, we are meant to learn from our mistakes and mend what we can in the world. To judge favorably when possible does not mean to tolerate or excuse those who cause serious harm. The deep sadness of what we and others have done wrong fuels our fiery passion for justice. Channel Moshe and rebuke, critique, advocate, and organize so we can do better than before. 

But then, on Tisha b’Av, remember as well that without generosity towards each other any structures we build will remain vulnerable to collapse. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Jay LeVine