By Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

From Monday night at dusk until Tuesday at dark was the most painful day in the Jewish year, the fast of the Ninth of the Hebrew month of Av. (There was something special about Jews and Muslims fasting on the same day).

The Ninth of Av commemorates the destruction of the First Temple at the hands of the Babylonians in 586BCE, and of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70CE. During the Middle Ages other disasters were added to the tragic list, including the slaughter of the Rhineland communities by the First Crusade in 1096, the burning of cartload after cartload of Jewish books in Paris in 1242, the massacre of the Jewish community of York in 1190 and the expulsion from Spain in 1492.

The Ninth of Av is a day on which we ponder the meaning of destruction. This year, London was burning around us.

The rabbis of the Talmud (edited 500CE) refused to accept blind inevitability as the cause of events. Why, they asked, was the Second Temple destroyed? This was the most devastating of all the disasters, leading to almost two thousand years of exile. Their best known answer consists of just two Hebrew words: sinat chinam, causeless hatred.

In a famous parable, they relate the destruction of their beloved Jerusalem to what happened at a party. A guest was invited whom the host couldn’t stand. ‘Now I’m here’, he pleaded, ‘let me stay and I’ll pay for everything’. Unappeased, the host picked him up and threw him out. The rejected man directed his anger not at his assailant but at the bystanders: ‘Since’, he said to himself, ‘the rabbis were there and did nothing, they must have agreed with what happened. I’ll go and slander them before the Romans’. Who is more guilty, the host, the guest who betrays his entire people to avenge a personal insult, or those who watched in silence? It’s a pointless question; everyone has played a part in the disaster.

I admire the rabbis who have the courage to tell such a story about themselves. In effect, they’re saying, ‘We did nothing, but precisely for that reason we too must take our share of responsibility. It was up to us to make our society the kind of place where people never treat each other like that.’

What is the answer to sinat chinam, needless hatred? It lies in two other words, ahavat chinam, causeless love, goodwill motivated solely by the desire to do good.

Another Talmudic story: Rabbi Yehoshua son of Levi ask the Prophet Elijah where he can find the Messiah. ‘He’s outside the gates of Rome, among the poor. All the other poor are taking off all their bandages and showing their wounds. But the Messiah only ever takes off one bandage at a time. Then he thinks, ‘Maybe I’m needed’, and puts it back on again, in order to be ready.
There are people who spend all their time staring at their wounds: ‘See what life has done to me!’ But there are also those who look at what pains them and say, ‘What can I do to stop others from hurting like this?’ Their very suffering teaches them that they are needed. I’ve met lots of people like that.

That’s how we all have to be, if we are to heal each other’s pain and transform destruction into creativity and hope.