TWO PERIODS OF MOURNING
Many Jewish holidays, including the three pilgrimage festivals of Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot originated as agricultural holidays rooted the ecology of Israel. We have experienced a shift to what might be called historical/theological meanings of the holidays and away from the ecological origins. I think there are multiple reasons for this ranging from the desire to supplant the God and Goddess worshipping polytheism of our ancient ancestors to the exile from the land of Israel and to the exile from our connection with the earth which is a hallmark of modernity. But that’s not for this set of reflections.
Rather, I have been dancing with the question of how to celebrate these Jewish holidays while living in a radically different ecosystem to which I am committed. I have done a little of this and that. On Pesach for instance, I beseech blessings for the spring planting because that’s more or less what is going to happen in our ecosystem. But I also eat matzah as a way of praying with my ancestors for the rain to cease so the land of Israel can have a successful grain harvest.
The three weeks of Bein Hametzarim from the 17nth of Tammuz to the 9nth of Av offer another opportunity to engage in this dance. This is a three week period of communal mourning. The period was originally about the mourning of the death of Tammuz, the Sumerian shepherd God associated with times of plenty. In the Israelite ecosystem, summertime and the living is brown—most growth is (temporarily) dead because of the lack of rain.
I know that arguing that this period of mourning was originally a period of mourning rooted in the Israelite ecological system is an unusual and controversial interpretation, but take a look at Ezekiel 8:14 where he in effect blames the women mourning the death of Tammuz in the Temple for its subsequent destruction. Or take a look at Jeremiah 44:15-17 where the women are responding to Jeremiah’s criticism of their worship of Tammuz and Asherah by saying things were good when we and the kings of Judah and Israel offered cakes to the queen of heaven. The spirituality of indigenous people is of course shaped by their intimacy with the ecosystems in which they dwell.
I asked my students to do a writing exercise on a series of possible questions related to this three week period including this one: “Any feel on the role of mourning in the story? Should those of us who live in a Continental ecosystem mourn during winter? Winter Solstice?” And like a good teacher, I too wrote for ten minutes non stop letting my dreamer lead the way in engaging in this question
And at the tail end of the writing exercise, I came to the realization that I can have two periods of mourning. One period, bein hametzarim reflecting the ecosystem of my ancestors and one, maybe starting 10 days before the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox and lasting the same 3 week to reflect the ecosystem in which I dwell and which shapes my life. After all, in the last week I have harvested squash, arugula, peas, peppers and blueberries from my garden. Here in Vermont, summertime and the living is green.
You might ask why extend grieving periods? Isn’t grieving something to be as limited as possible—that’s the message of our culture for sure. But here I am with Francis Weller who teaches that the only way to avoid grief is to be shut down. There is so much to grieve for. There are personal losses of relationships or loved ones of course, but there’s also, following Waller, grieving for cut off parts of ourselves, grieving for the more than human world around us, grieving for our lack of belonging to a beloved community and not having clarity about our true purpose and unmourned ancestral grief that we have inherited from our ancestors—something we Jews know a lot about.
The gate of ancestral grief is powerful, and we Jews are given the great gift of a way to walk through this gate. We recall the destruction of the Temples, the exiles of our people from lands where we had found refuge and so many of the terrible things that have happened to us. Thus we sense our solidarity with our ancestors. Because what happened to them lives in our bodies as their descendants. Maybe if we truly grieve all of our losses, we can not act them out upon other people over whom we have physical power.
So two periods of mourning. How to engage in these periods? It’s traditional to fast both on the first and last days of the period. Maybe I will start taking that on; it’s not something I’ve ever done. It’s traditional to read Lamentations and this year I’ll be doing it in community and I will work to let myself feel the pain present in that text. Maybe I’ll even see if I can cry, though that would probably feel pretty weird in our society. Certainly being dispossessed, having your homes destroyed and being forced into exile is something worth crying about.
For my winter mourning, I think I will pray at the beginning of three weeks about the death of the land and all the ways we are killing it. I’ll sing Ani Maamin, a prayer that says in spite of everything, I believe in the coming of the Messiah. Of course, I don’t believe the Messiah is going to come, but I do have at least some hope that humans will find their way back into right relationship with the more than human world. I will pray for the spring to come back, for the world to continue to turn, the cosmic cycle which has so blessed us with our beautiful world.
Mourning is so important. We all need a good cry and so does the world. There is too much for which to mourn. And yet, in spite of it all, I believe, Ani Maamin.
