Eichah?! How is it that our city is now the home of murderers? That’s one question (Isaiah 1:21) we are asked in the prophetic reading (Isaiah 1:1-27) for the Shabbat before Tisha B’av, the day of mega-mourning in the Jewish calendar. It’s one that many in the District of Columbia, and other cities in the U.S., are asking ourselves this year, as in years past.
In DC, we recently lost an 11-year-old child, Karon Brown, who spent his summer days selling water and Gatorade on the street; Jamal Bandy, a 27-year-old assistant coach at the rec center where Karon played; and a 17-year-old student and poet, Ahkii Washington-Scruggs, who wrote shortly before his death:
In D.C., it’s nothing but people trying to take your life away
I’m from a city where it’s a blessing to see the age 20
These are just three of the 96 lost to violence since January inside our city limits. This doesn’t count the many more injured in gun violence, the communities traumatized, the educations disrupted, and the constant grief and fear in which some parts of the city live…while other neighborhoods are free to enjoy the city, tuning in or out, at will, to the dreadful conditions a short distance away.
In Isaiah’s frightful prophecy, we are told that two true things are:
1) we are a rotten mess, harboring thieves and murderers while hiding behind empty rituals, and
2) we can stop adding more blood to our hands and turn things around:
And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide My eyes from you;
Though you pray at length, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood.
Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes, cease to do evil;
Learn to do well;
seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
— Isa 1:14-17 (JPS 1917 translation adapted)
Multiple Mournings
The state of my city is what I hear when first Moses, in the Torah reading for Shabbat Hazon (right before Tisha B’av; Deuteronomy 1:12), and then Isaiah (above), and finally Lamentations (read on Tisha B’av, which begins with nightfall on August 10), cry Eichah?!
So it is hard for me to enter into prayers on Tisha B’av, as Truah is calling us to do, to mourn in solidarity with immigrants and demand closing the camps, without also acknowledging the many other ways families have been torn apart, caged, and otherwise brutalized since the last Tisha B’av.
I strongly support Jews standing against the camps and witnessing that Never Again is Now. When non-Jews called for Lights for Liberty protests a few weeks ago, I advocated for bringing a strong Jewish presence to those events. But I don’t understand how it is — again, however unintentionally, that Eichah?! — that we can mourn for the one set of griefs, and atone for the one way in which our hands are bloody, without acknowledging the other… and the many other ways in which our country has been complicit in murder, here and abroad.
Last year, I joined the Truah Tisha B’av observance at Lafayette Park ONLY because I saw that DC’s listing included this statement: “…not just on the southern border, but every time a parent is put in prison for months on end, is brutally murdered by police—we lament” (excerpts from the 2018 announcement below). In actual practice, however, it turned out that the focus was entirely on refugees except for some words around the mourners’ kaddish about local gun violence deaths.
Eichah?!: How is it that this second year of solidarity with refugees for Tisha B’av, there is still not one resource that Truah provides — as far as I can see; if I missed something someone please let me know — that allows Jews to mourn separations and cages and death in more ways than one?
Whether you or your community join a Truah event or pray and mourn in another way on Tisha B’av, please consider acknowledging the many ways our country has ripped families apart, caged, and otherwise brutalized refugees AND OTHERS. There is still time. I know we can do better.
Some resources that might be adapted to the purpose — or we can write new ones!
Eichah! How My city
אֵיכָה הָיְתָה לְזוֹנָה קִרְיָה נֶאֱמָנָה
מְלֵאֲתִי מִשְׁפָּט צֶ֛דֶק יָלִין בָּהּ וְעַתָּה מְרַצְּחִים׃
How is the faithful city become a harlot! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers. — Isaiah 1:21
לִמְדוּ הֵיטֵב דִּרְשׁוּ מִשְׁפָּט, אַשְּׁרוּ חָמוֹץ; שִׁפְטוּ יָתוֹם, רִיבוּ אַלְמָנָה
Learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. — Isa 1:17
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Excerpts from DC’s 2018 Truah co-sponsored Tisha B’av
Our grief is compounded by holding many overwhelming tragedies together in one day.
It is written that baseless hatred and paralyzing humility were the reasons the Holy Temple was destroyed. We read from the Book of Lamentations and bare witness, through our lament, to the horror of children separated from parents—not just on the southern border, but every time a parent is put in prison for months on end, is brutally murdered by police—we lament. In the face of the fear and uncertainty plaguing our immigrant communities, plaguing Black mothers who fear for their children’s safety, of Muslim children, witnessing daily state violence, of indigenous families, ripped from their land, we lament.
— full 2018 announcement; scroll down for Washington DC
PS — Some Starting Points
Just a few resources that could be adapted
Materials with some beautiful and pertinent adaptable bits:
- JVP Haggadah Supplement 2019
- JFREJ Haggadah 2016
- El Malei Rachamim from Truah 2017
From this blog:
"A Song Every Day" 