A Moment
- Erin Conway
- Aug 3
- 3 min read
Tisha b’Av is a day of mourning. A list of tragedies fall on this day, but unlike most of the other holidays I explored alongside Abigail Pogrebin, this one, though not well-known, was well-known to me. Through a novel I wrote, I became very interested in Tisha b’Av after realizing that it was the day Jews were expelled from Spain. It was almost as if a connecting point by proxy–a reason there were Spanish-speaking Jews in the Americas, a phrase I can use to describe myself–was exactly the point.
Evoking a false separation that felt all too real across my life, in my novel I wrote, “The veil is thinner than you think. Come find me.”
After my brother mused that perhaps we had relatives who fled in 1492, Tisha b’Av became the root I clung to, its nobby tendrils not just the force to crack the ruins left behind, but the connection to histories. Refusing to let go, I pulled myself up from the overhang I clung to, an anchor to what could still come next. Documentaries and novels, references abound the expulsion of Jews from Spain, and yet in Hebrew class, this intersection of tragedies is the final bullet point on the list. It was also Pogrebin's final stop on her journey through the Jewish Calendar. Should we, or not, stop? She struggled to define an impact. Meanwhile in class, I was finally an insider, finally knowing more than most around me instead of less. A name is a definition. A definition is a wall. Around communities, around traditions, around dates on the calendar.
I’m standing on the wall
Shaking cold and watching, the sun had already set
Years ago, a favorite television series referred to time as circular, not so much in the words of scientists, philosophers, or even farmers who believe events come back around to themselves. Instead, the main character stated that in any one moment, we can be in any moment. We can also not.
A moment not the moment.
An answer not the answer.
A community not the community.
History, my own or the world’s, returns to its root, its circle, hopefully its center. So too, the Jewish calendar returns. One time overlaid on the other means the observance is not about one, not a place nor a time, beginner and expert simultaneously, absence and hope, memory and maybe. In this moment, far away from the moment, I feel that moment.
“I know it sounds naive, but I really can’t fathom the acrimony; it feels fundamentally un-Jewish to me. And profoundly dispiriting. As I approach the end of a full Jewish year, I’m actually left with the opposite sensation: I have felt surprisingly supported, even by those rabbis who are miles away on the spectrum of observance. And I have drawn wisdom from countless different Jewish perspectives. As I reflect on what I’ll remember most from my immersion, it is not sinat chinam – the rancor of my people. What will stick with me is the wide capacity to find meaning . . . “a shared inheritance, and reverence for a calendar that has kept us intact.” (275)
Guarding at the dark of night, the full moon shines bright
Washes over walls and gates, when will come the day
T’sha b’Av was a punishment, sinat chinam, baseless hate. That somehow instead of letting people in, we shut, in fact, lock(ed) people out. I agree with Pogrebin. My opportunity for the past year wasn’t about the past year alone. Each reflection or learning invited me into my past to relive events where I deemed myself lacking or less than, when in fact, I was simply unaware of patterns I was already living.
Where we won’t need watchmen anymore
As if to force me to embrace my own theory, my final Hebrew class took place on Tisha b’Av, its own kind of breaking from the communal experience the past three years. I will mourn its absence, the regularity of practice, the familiar faces. Still, it challenges me to be something simply by being me when no one is watching.
Where we won’t need watchmen anymore*
My Jewish Year Series
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