There are times when Tisha B’Av stops being a distant memory and becomes a mirror held up to our own community. What unfolded this year around Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Feivelson shlit”a forces us to confront not only acts of violence and disruption, but the deeper danger of silence — the silence of Gedoilim, of institutions, and of all of us who know better. This is not a story about one rabbi. It is a story about who we are, and who we dare to become.
by Menahem Godick
When Tisha B’Av Happens Before Our Eyes
There are moments when Tisha B’Av stops being a story about something that happened nearly two thousand years ago. There are moments when it unfolds right before our eyes.
I have been a student of Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Feivelson shlit”a for over twenty years. I love him and respect him deeply; I have learned from him for many years. That is why what has happened around him in recent days pains me personally.
But what I write here does not depend on what anyone thinks of Rabbi Feivelson. You can disagree with him. You can think he is mistaken. You can argue sharply with his words.That is the essence of the Beit Midrash.
But persecution is not disagreement. Violence is not ideology. Shouting and cursing are not zeal for Heaven.
A Night of Tears — Interrupted
On the night of Tisha B’Av, the Rabbi sat on the floor, surrounded by hundreds of students and bnei Torah who came to hear his annual shiur.
He spoke of destruction, of nearly two thousand years of exile, of baseless hatred, and of the teaching that “Every generation in which the Temple is not rebuilt, it is as if it was destroyed in that generation.” And he wept.
In that moment, people entered who looked exactly like us — suits, hats, beards, payot — and they shouted, cursed, and disrupted the lesson.
Just a week earlier, in Modi’in Illit, they had surrounded the Rabbi, blocked his way, insulted and shoved him, and damaged his car until he had to be rescued.
The more I think about it, the more one thing frightens me even more than the shouting:
Where is the voice of protest? Where are the Roshei Yeshiva? Where are the gedoilim? Where are the leaders who will stand up and simply say:
You do not need to agree with Rabbi Feivelson to say that.
Two Gemaras come to mind — and this year, they are impossible to read without shuddering.
