Engraving: The People Mourning Over the Ruins of Jerusalem. Gustave Doré 1891
Readers know that I tend to write about biblical women; the seven prophetesses and the many others that populate the Tanakh. They have often provided inspiration, and on many occasions, food for thought. The world isn’t always kind to women and the ancients’ treatment of my sex left quite a lot to be desired! I would not have liked to have been around back then; life was tough!
Women’s stories in the Tanakh are often hidden, sometimes incidental to the main narrative. Occasionally they get central billing and a book to themselves (Esther, Ruth). Dig a little and on close reading, personalities, courage and resilience emerge. The women do not always have names, sometimes they are simply the main character’s wife, their daughter, their mother or their cousin. One we haven’t considered though is an object, personified as a woman. Where might we find that?
We see it in Eicha, the Biblical book of Lamentations. As I write, it will soon be the month of Av. Tisha B'Av, the universal day of mourning for all Jews, looms on the horizon. Over millennia, this is a day which seems to have attracted to itself all the terrible tragedies of the Jewish people, including those of the Holocaust. It is considered to be a day for fasting and eschewing anything remotely good. As it is, that is depressing enough.
On Tisha B'Av we read Eicha, or are prompted to do so. Eicha is deeply problematic for me as maybe it is for many modern women.This is one of the toughest reads in the Tanakh if you are female. It describes the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem but it is couched in purely female terms. Yerushalayim is personified as a fallen woman; ruined and bereft.
“She weeps sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she has none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies.”
She is blamed for having transgressed and brought this all on herself:
“Yerushalayim has grievously sinned; therefore she is become loathsome: all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: she herself also sighs, and turns backward.”
“Żiyyon spreads out her hands, and there is none to comfort her: the Lord has commanded against Ya῾aqov, adversaries round about him: Yerushalayim is like a menstruous woman among them.”
For me, this is truly hard going. For a long time, I found it impossible to even go near Eicha, or this day. Added to the way it makes me feel about my body as a woman, I found it hard to take away anything positive or good from its perusal. I suppose it is one reason that I've wandered from the orthodoxy my mother knew, embracing progressive Judaism instead. I read Eicha through as a young woman and walked away from it.
It is therefore a long time since I've even looked at this section of the Tanakh; a very long time! Given my tendency to shine a light on all Biblical references to women, I decided to take another look.
I suspect that another, teenage me, felt totally overwhelmed with verse after verse of depressing imagery. This is akin to modern news channels focussing perpetually on tragedy and misfortune, maybe even my teen predilection for gothic horror and being scared out of my wits. Did I even read beyond the end of Chapter 1? Maybe not.
When I was born in the early 70s, the Shoah was closer to people's minds. Having a 70s and 80s childhood I was urged to concentrate on fitting in, being a good British citizen and forgetting our tragic past. I was encouraged to join the Girl Guides and not speak about my Jewish heritage. My own mother scarcely ever spoke about the tragedy of the Shoah, unless in very general terms. It was a national shame; something to forget and move on. I understand. My mother didn’t want me bullied at school. She didn’t want to have me ‘name called’ or treated as she had been. Fitting in though, involved for me, an element of detachment from Jewish life. At home I was Jewish. At school I was like everyone else. There is a point at which detachment from faith can leave you bereft and lonely especially when you come to deal with teen anxiety. It is an unfortunate by-product of ‘fitting in’ to a largely secular society. When boyfriends dumped me or two timed me; when they broke my heart or trifled with my emotions, I got badly hurt.
When a girl reads Eicha, the problem is, it all comes back; the hurts, the groundless rumours spread about you, the friends who deserted you, the boys who used you and moved on. Eicha describes the loss of something good and precious. It is replaced with the depression that comes with loss and being violated. Maybe I needed this jolt when I was younger and ran away from it? I don’t know. In time, I have come to realise the sheer power of Eicha and the emotions it was clearly written to evoke. On occasions, I have even wondered if a female mind had any influence in its writing; it is certainly a shockingly accurate portrait of female woes: Tradition has it that Eicha was penned by the prophet Jeremiah. His close relative was the influential prophetess Huldah!
Jeremiah seated in the ruins of Jerusalem, Friedrich Wilhelm Heithecker after Eduard Bendemann, ca 1830. Sothebys
At the worst times of teenage depression, I came across a quote from Hemingway. I’d become aware of his antisemitism after reading ‘The Sun also Rises’, but this passage from another work, spoke to me somehow.
“By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.”
It comes from his book, ‘A Moveable Feast’. I typed the quote out on Ima’s Adler typewriter and blu tacked it to my bedroom wall. In time, I did find my ‘something better’ and life was good again. Judaism too found a replacement for our precious Temple by creating our Jewish home practices and Synagogue observances. To my mind, we found our own ‘something better’ too.
However, the last word doesn’t go to Hemingway (fine (yet antisemitic) wordsmith though he was). It goes to Eicha which surprisingly contains an eternally optimistic statement. It is often overlooked as we wallow in self pity on Tisha B’Av.
“This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope: that the Lord’s steadfast love has not ceased, and that his compassions do not fail.
They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.”
That phrase ‘Rabbah Emunatecha - Great is thy faithfulness’ also closes the morning prayer so many of us learn as little children (Modah/Modeh Ani..) Only now do I realise that the key to facing adversity was taught to me as a little child. Go figure.
