Reb Ezra Weinberg
This week’s Torah portion is Pinchas: Numbers 25:10 – 30:1
Every summer, the primary holiday segment of the Jewish calendar focuses on the story of our separation, or divorce, from God. Can God really decide to divorce us, the children of Israel? According to one text, in Midrash Rabbah on Genesis 19:9, God can and God has.
“I judged them with banishment, as written (Jeremiah XVI): Send them from my face and they left. I judged them divorce, as is said (Hosea H): from my house I will divorce them. I lamented on them Eicha as it was written (Eicha 1) How did she sit?!”
Strong words, God! Sounds like you were really angry with your people Israel. So angry that you not only threatened divorce, but you followed through. If such a thing is possible, God, to divorce Israel, you did it. You grew so frustrated with your people that only the language of covenantal separation would suffice. I cannot imagine how bad things must have gotten to get to that point.
The Three Weeks are upon us. From the 17th of Tamuz to the ninth of Av we are in a twenty-one day countdown in which we recall the annihilation of Jerusalem and our holy Temple. In its eternal wisdom, the Jewish calendar presents a stark contrast to the joy, fun and hopefulness that the typical American summer promises. My soul craves life-giving rituals, not some historical reminder about a massive butchering of our people and our ancient way of life. Yet, somehow, every year, from a socio-religious perspective, the holiest days of the Jewish summer revolve around this epic biblical war over Jerusalem that ends in our complete defeat. Yet, from a theological perspective, the three weeks commemorate the saga of our collective divorce from God.
One of the continued stories of my own life is that of someone who has lived through divorce. As both a child of divorce and as an adult going through divorce with children who are also living through divorce, the experience of the separation of family is part of my everyday life in a hundred different ways. I have also learned that Jewish tradition has a lot to say about divorce. And yet, for most of my life, I never noticed any experience of divorce reflected in our collective story as a people. There is no specific holiday that even acknowledges the existence of divorce. Or is there? As it turns out, I just hadn’t dug deeply enough.
In the fifth and sixth chapters of BT Gittin, our sages depart from the main topic of the tractate, namely the details of divorce and what constitutes a kosher ‘get,’ and instead spend a significant time detailing the destruction of the Holy Temple. Within these two chapters the Sages delve into the specific legends surrounding the fall of Jerusalem including the famous Kamza/Bar Kamza story. These two chapters catalogue commentary and stories about one of the darkest periods in Jewish history, namely the wholesale slaughter of our people at the hands of the Babylonians with references to the Roman onslaught at the same location 600 years later.
Which begs the question: Why did our sages choose to put all of this brutal and bloody narrative into Tractate Gittin – the tractate on divorce?
Our sages are making a connection: The destruction of ancient Jerusalem and the separation of our people from our holy land can be described as a divorce. God is divorcing us. And it’s a high conflict separation with intense levels of abuse, neglect and trauma as chronicled in the book of Lamentations. The experience of loss was not only physical but theological. Our notion of God changes after this kind of loss, and God’s notion of us changes.
And these narratives and conversations, how the rabbis make sense of it, are housed in our largest and most ancient book about divorce, Tractate Gittin. Our tradition is not random. The Talmud was constructed in such a way to make the point that cosmic divorce, the idea of being separated from G-d, is a crucial part of the story we reenact every year. As it turns out, I was wrong. The phenomenon of divorce is acknowledged and reflected in our holiday cycle and it’s happening right now, in the Three Weeks. May all those who have experienced devestating loss, including the loss that comes with divorce, be seen and blessed with courage and stamina for the rebuild ahead.
Reb Ezra Weinberg is the founder of Jews Get Divorce (jewsgetdivorce.com), a network of resources for Jews going through divorce. He lives in Philadelphia and can be contacted at [email protected].