At the risk of letting this discussion become something like a crash course in Jewish tradition, I think I should add a kind of foot-note to Alans post.
@unknownuser said:
After all, you cannot be sealed in the Book of Life with a major "tsimmes" hanging over your head, can you?
"Tsimmes" is thinly sliced carrots cooked with raisins and served rather sweet. Why is having to carry an irksome debt called "a tsimmes over your head" ? Go figure. It's probably a Yiddish thing.
@unknownuser said:
Tisha b"av (the 9th Day of the Month of Av, is another major fast day and if you have the time, take a read of the events that day remembers, "Nightmare on Elm Street" is kid stuff
It was on the 9th day of the month of Av in the Jewish calender that the First Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. A Second Temple was eventualy built but it too was destroyed, and also on the 9th day of the month of Av. With the destruction of the Second Temple the Jews were exiled from the Land of Israel and were systematically scattered throughout the diaspora. The destruction of the Temple and the subsequent Diaspora is therefore understandably regarded as great tragedy by observant Jews.
Personaly I think it's one of the best things that ever happened to the Jews as a people. The exile became a focal point, an incredibly powerful adhesive ellement in the Jewish psyche. It forced the Jewish people to hold on to their collective identity with a fanaticism that would not have endured had they not been exiled. The Jews kept themselves apart and isolated themselves from the local population just as vehemently as they were shunned by the native cultures. The IDEA of the Land of Israel and Jerusalem became more powerful than the actual land and city. Jerusalem and Zion were idealised and described in poems and song and prayer as beautiful and bountiful, with milk and honey flowing freely, with the most lucious and succulent friuts growing in abundance etc. The real Jerusalem was never like that. The land was mostly arid. But ideas are not subject to drought or municiple missmanegement. The cohesive power of an idealised home-sickness and a ritualised yearning for a miraculous deliverence back to the sacred ancestral Land cannot be under-estimated. Had it not been for the Diaspora, I doubt the Jewish people and culture would have survived as the unique ethnic entity we are today. The political and social squabbling we see today in the independant State of Israel is a case in point. The single greatest cohesive factor in modern day Israel is not our history or religion or language but the thraet of an anihilating war. In other words, it is an external influence that is keeping us together more than some internal strength.
If anyone has any doubt as to the effectiveness of exile as a bonding and empowering agent, one simply has to read some Palestinian poetry. The descriptions of various places left behind when the Palestinians fled during the war of Independance are as romantic and removed from reality as those that appear in Jewish Diaspora writings. The Palestinian struggle in that respect **(and in that respect only!)**is almost identical to that of the Zionist struggle for independace before 1948.
Personally, I think the 9th of Av should be cellebrated rather than mourned. The Diaspora did us more good than most Jews are willing to admit.
