Of Elvis, Jerusalem, Loneliness, and Distance

“Tisha B’Av in 2025 is the diagnosis, not the cure.”

The music critic Lester Bangs (1948-1982) was one of the great chroniclers of rock and roll. He emerged in the late 1960s with the maturation of rock—after The Beatles psychedelicized, after Dylan went electric, after the Velvet Underground teamed up with Andy Warhol—and wrote in a style that read like the noise and chaos of the music. Just as the Beat Generation wrote books that bopped with the rhythms of jazz in the 1950s, Lester wrote lines that pounded like drums and spun off like electric guitar solos.

I’m thinking of Lester (his writing invites the informality of first names) because of a few sentences he wrote in August 1977, on the occasion of the death of Elvis, a pivotal “changing of the guards” moment in rock history. In an extraordinary obituary in the Village Voice, Lester wrote:

If love truly is going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each other’s objects of reverence… We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis’s.

But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying goodbye to his corpse. I will say goodbye to you.[1]

I don’t have much affinity for Elvis beyond his place in the history of pop culture; I was seven years old when he died and it barely registered. At the time of his demise his significance had long since passed, and his musical descendants fragmented into many camps and styles.

But that final line of Lester’s elegy haunts me in a much deeper place than, say, “Don’t Be Cruel.”

Part of the reason I cling to that sentence “I will say goodbye to you” is because I think Lester inadvertently (he was raised a Jehovah’s Witness in southern California) gets at the heart of Tisha B’Av, at least on its spiritual and emotional levels.

And for me, Tisha B’Av seems to be more and more spiritually relevant every year, especially this year.

The 9th of Av, of course, is the most sober and solemn day in the Jewish calendar. Ostensibly it is about historical horrors: most obviously in the destructions of the First (586 BCE) and Second (70 CE) Temples that stood in Jerusalem, but also G-d’s decree that the generation that came out of Egypt would die in the wilderness (Numbers 14); the plowing over of Jerusalem by the Romans; and the quashing of the Bar Kochba revolt at Beitar in 135 CE. (All this is enumerated in the Mishnah, Ta’anit 4:6.)

As horrific as those historical moments were, they’re also meant to be understood on a spiritual level. They all emphasize the idea of Exile; that is, the forces of entropy that drive us away from our foundations, and one another, and G-d. The destruction of the Temples, the plowing over of Jerusalem, and end of the rebellion against Rome at Beitar were all historical traumas—but they were also moments when the chasm between our ideals and our reality felt insurmountable.

Does that describe our reality today? Some days it feels that way, and that makes Tisha B’Av for me feel more relevant and meaningful than ever. The centrifugal forces that pull us apart from one another, and ever further from our Source, seem incredibly powerful.

Certainly I’m thinking about Israel—I’m always thinking about Israel.

I’m thinking of my brothers and sisters in Israel who have endured months of sitting in bomb shelters. Who have been conscripted to fight three, four, and more tours of duty to defend their homes. Who endured the hail of Iranian missiles at the beginning of the summer. Who have shown over and over again what it means to be a society that cares for one another at a time of crisis.

I’m thinking of Israelis who day in and day out demonstrate that they are much better and more decent than the government that speaks for them.

Israel once was supposed to be the thing that bound all Jews together. Even if we located ourselves at different places along the political, religious, or ideological spectrum, we agreed on one thing: the creation of a democratic Jewish state in the 20th century was our response—our antidote—to the centuries of hate and exclusion of Jews, and an awesome new chapter in Jewish history.

But now Israel is the stick we use to beat each other with.

There was a moment—a few weeks after Hamas terrorists massacred, raped, and took Jews hostage on October 7, 2023—when it seemed like unity would rule the day. Jews everywhere mourned together and the world’s capitals were lit up with blue and white.

But that seems as long ago as the Second Temple. Outside the Jewish community, we are increasingly perceived as aggressors of a war we didn’t ask for. Inside the Jewish community, we rip ourselves apart by analyzing what we’ve become after two years of this horrific war. Has fighting this just war coarsened our souls to the point where we cannot empathize with the pain of others, including our enemy’s children?

And in Jerusalem today, just as on the eve of destruction in 70 CE (see Gittin 56a), a minority of political and religious zealots are manipulating the destiny of the majority of Jews who are seeking a just path out of this morass.

Maybe disunity and unraveling will describe the rest of our lives, as Lester Bangs described in 1977: “We will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis.” Maybe our fate is the same as the one that Joseph faced: “I am looking for my brothers” (Genesis 37:16).

Maybe. But I hope not.

So what is Tisha B’Av in 2025? It’s the diagnosis, not the cure. The diagnosis is estrangement, distance, the utter failure to see in one another a sense of suffering and pain that might in some way resemble our own wounds.

Only after the diagnosis can we reach for a cure. “Only those who mourn for Jerusalem will get to see her future joy,” says the Talmud (Ta’anit 30b).  After recognizing on Tisha B’Av how far we have moved from each other, something remarkable happens in the rhythms of Jewish life: Gravity takes over. We begin to move back towards one another.

In synagogue life this is marked by seven weekly Haftarah readings, each one on the themes of comfort and restoration taken from the final chapters of the Book of Isaiah. Seven weeks mark our return to first principles, until we arrive at Rosh Hashanah and culminate with Yom Kippur. The forces that pull us apart begin to reverse themselves in their courses, and we start to draw closer together once again.

This year, I hope we can make it back. I’m not quite prepared to draw the line that Lester Bangs did when Elvis died and he wrote I will say goodbye to you.

Instead I’ll say I’ve seen that point of estrangement—politically and otherwise—and I don’t want to live there. Instead, I’ll say: I’m looking for you, and maybe we can find a way back, together.

Forwarded to you? You can sign up to receive updates from me via A Tree with Roots.

[1] Lester Bangs, “Where Were You When Elvis Died?”, collected in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, ed. Greil Marcus, 1987.

The Exile of Tisha B'Av: What Are We Mourning?

Exile is one of the preeminent themes of the Torah. From the outset of Genesis, Adam and Eve are exiled from the Garden of Eden. Abraham is called by God to “the land I will show you” but famine forces him to seek refuge in Egypt. Joseph is sold off to Egypt, where, at the end of his life, he makes his family promise, “When God has taken notice of you, carry up my bones from here” (Gen. 50:25). The remainder of the Torah – all of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – charts Israel’s pursuit of a path back home.

Jewish history works in similar cycles of dispersion and return. David and Solomon established a kingdom and a Temple in Jerusalem, but these were demolished in 586 B.C.E. and the survivors of Judah were deported eastward. They longed for Zion by the rivers of Babylon. A generation later, a remnant returned and rebuilt the kingdom and its Temple in Jerusalem. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E., and again the Jews became a people in exile. For centuries, Jews built Diaspora communities even as stragglers returned to the Land, to pray or to die there. The advent of Zionism in the 19th century marked our most dramatic effort since the days of the Bible to return home. 

We have known different kinds of exile. There is political exile – distance from our physical home – and there is spiritual exile – distance from our spiritual Source. Zionism sought to put an end to the political state of exile, but spiritual exile continues to be our existential reality everywhere, including in the Land of Israel.

The fast of the 9th of Av – Tisha B'Av – is devoted to reflection on what it means to live in exile. The shorthand is that it is the date when both the First and Second Temples were destroyed.

But Tisha B’Av isn’t only about history, just as Pesach and Chanukah are not “only” about history. The genius of the rabbis who shaped Judaism is in the way they spiritualized history and filled it with religious meaning for subsequent generations.

Thus, the events of Tisha B’Av aren’t simply understood as historical calamities. After all, catastrophes have befallen the Jewish people on every day of the calendar year. But they are signposts for a religious condition:

Exile from the homeland
Exile from God
Exile from one another

This is the great secret of Tisha B’Av: The last two are really one. Because in Judaism’s religious humanism (or humanistic religion?), distance from other people necessarily results in distance from God:

Why was the First Temple destroyed?
Because of three things:
Idolatry, Sexual immorality, and Bloodshed….

But the Second Temple –
when people were occupied with Torah, Mitzvot, and gemilut chasadim –
Why was it destroyed?
Because of senseless hatred (sinat chinam).
(Talmud, Yoma 9b)

Consider the theological outlook the Talmud is teaching. The First Temple stood at a time of rampant perversion and hypocrisy, so naturally (in the rabbinic mindset) it was lost. But the Second Temple stood during centuries that were recalled for Torah and adherence to mitzvot (commandments). Why would God allow it to be destroyed?

The answer, says the Talmud, is because of rampant hatred that existed among the Jews – even as they were living according to the letter of the Law. Service to God in the Temple was not meant to be performed with hate in their hearts.

The Temple was designed to be a place of intimacy – between God and the People, and between and among the people who gathered there. As people became estranged from one another – when they could no longer see the image of God in the face of the person opposite them – then their worship and the Temple itself became hollow. An institution based on lies and hypocrisies cannot stand. Made as trivial as a piece of tissue paper, it is as if God crumpled it up and tossed it aside – because, spiritually speaking, it was already destroyed. The assault of the Romans was just a final punctuation mark.

The astonishing lesson of the Torah is that only one creation is made “in the image of God” – human beings. To treat other people with contempt or disgust or hate is to treat God’s only image that way. As a result, estrangement from one another and estrangement from God are intertwined.

The Tisha B’Av fast marks a sad reality: this is the world in which we live, each in our own isolated cones with our own preoccupations and nursing our own hurts. This scenario illustrates what it means to live in exile; exile is the metaphysical sense of being alone, and it is our own doing.

If we find it hard to mourn the loss of “The Temple” on Tisha B’Av, no matter; mourn for something else.

Mourn for our distance from God.

Mourn for our distance from each other. 

This piece originally appeared on reformjudaism.org on July 19, 2018.

Tisha B'Av, Exile, & The Laws of Physics

Astrophysicists understand principles of physics to become “laws” when they can be reliably applied not only on earth but also universally throughout… well, the universe. For instance, the Second Law of Thermodynamics presumes that objects everywhere have an inclination towards entropy and chaos. And a gravitational principle like centrifugal force, which pulls objects away from their center, is considered reliably true.

I wonder about the universality of these principles in relationships and the human soul. Is “entropy and chaos” our destination? Is there a centrifugal force that pushes us apart? Do our lives automatically incline towards distance and exile?

Stay with me, because Tisha B’Av, the most solemn fast day in the Jewish calendar, is upon us. The 9th day of the month of Av has been a magnet for disaster in Jewish history, encapsulated as the date of destruction of both the First and Second Temples of Jerusalem and the subsequent Jewish exiles from the Land of Israel.

The Sages of Jewish tradition confronted the destruction of the Temple (the Beit HaMikdash) and their exile with radical theology. They spiritualized the message of destruction. And this is a point that I think we lose sight of: what Tisha B’Av really tells us about G-d and human beings.

To understand this, we have to understand what the Beit HaMikdash meant. According to Solomon’s dedication prayer for the Temple (in I Kings 8), worship there had several goals: Someone who was wronged could go to plea for divine justice. Israel sought divine assistance there versus her adversaries. Prayers were offered for relief in times of natural disaster or epidemic. Individuals sought forgiveness for their sins. And it was a place for non-Israelites as well: Solomon asserted that God’s House would be a place for anyone who grasped God’s wonders and wanted to share in celebration of them.

There were other innovations. It was not just a place for reconciliation with God; it was also about reconciling with people. There was a “chamber of secrets”—like something out of Harry Potter—where people would give Tzedakah in secret and others would take in secret, to minimize their loss of dignity (M. Shekalim 6:6). There was also a space in the Temple where a person would return lost objects—not just objects lost in the Temple precincts, but things that belonged to others and had been discovered during the year and throughout the countryside; the Temple was a national lost-and-found (Bava Metzia 28a).

In short, “Anyone who never saw the Beit HaMikdash in its constructed state has never seen a magnificent building” (Sukkah, 51a). And I can’t help but think that by “magnificent” they don’t just mean bean beautiful architecture, but ethical beauty.

The Beit HaMikdash was a place for divine-human intimacy. But that could only be achieved in a place of human-human intimacy, a place where people treated one another with the value, respect, and honor deserving of the Image of God.

In 70 BCE, the Romans destroyed the Temple, burned Jerusalem, and exiled the Jews. The Talmud strove to understand how God could let this happen. And it came to a radical conclusion:

Why was the First Temple destroyed? Because of three things: idol worship, sexual immorality, and bloodshed.

However, the Second Temple—a time when people were engaged in Torah study, Mitzvot, and acts of kindness—why was it destroyed? Because of senseless hatred (sinnat hinam).

This teaches us that senseless hatred is worse than idol worship, sexual immorality, and bloodshed. (Yoma 9b)

The Talmud, in Gittin 55b-57a, describes various vignettes and a chain of events that led to the destruction of Jerusalem. The most famous of these scenes is the “Story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza,” where a private dispute turns into the public humiliation of a certain man named Bar Kamtza. His humiliation takes place in front of the ambivalent Rabbis, the leaders of the community, who couldn’t care less about his suffering. It culminates with the understanding that “God destroyed God’s house.”

What is the point of all this? And what is so radical about it?  The Talmud is saying that people in those final days of the Beit HaMikdash were already estranged from one another. They couldn’t talk to one another, they publicly embarrassed one another, and ultimately they failed to see the divine in one another. Once a society reaches this low state, where someone would be publicly humiliated and no one would speak in his defense, then the community is already in exile—and its foundations are rotten. 

The Beit HaMikdash is meant to be the antithesis of Exile. So if the people are already exiled from one another, then the Temple is purposeless and empty. Thus God flicks it away; its reason for being had ceased to exist. The Temple wasn’t destroyed as a punishment per se, as if to say, “Because you sinned, I exiled you.” To the contrary, its message is: I, God, was already in exile from you. So I tossed the Temple away like a used candy wrapper.

The question at the heart of Tisha B’Av is: Are we destined to pull away from one another? Is Exile—the place where each of us is ultimately, fundamentally Alone—the natural movement of our lives? 

There is a centrifugal force that moves people apart from one another; it is exacerbated by selfishness, greed, and a failure to find empathy for people whom we know are hurting. More than that: the Talmud condemns as accomplices the bystanders in the Bar Kamtza story, the ones who didn’t humiliate Bar Kamtza but who didn’t do anything to support him. Bystanders to evil are contributors to its effects. If you do nothing in the face of lies and hurt, then you are part of the forces that are pushing exile deeper.

The only way to counteract exile is to apply a countervailing force. (This was the theological premise of early Zionism: don’t passively wait for exile to end, but get to work ending it.) Where there are lies, speak truth. Where a person hurts, provide comfort. Where this is injustice, stand up. And where there is hate, apply love. 

Rav Kook called this countervailing force ahavat hinam, “senseless” or default love, the only possible response to sinat hinam, senseless hate. (Orot HaKodesh, Vol. III, p.324).

The Second Law of Thermodynamics presumes that objects have an inclination towards distance and disorder. But Stephen Hawking, musing on the nature of black holes, notes that this law is not universal: 

The second law of thermodynamics has a rather different status than that of other laws of science, such as Newton’s law of gravity, for example, because it does not hold always, just in the vast majority of cases. (A Brief History of Time, p.130)

In other words, exile isn’t inevitable. And Tisha B’Av is not a black hole of bleakness. It just reminds us that passivity and inertia will pull us further apart from one another, and from our source, unless we act—and act soon.