Tisha B’Av thoughts.

This year, Tisha B’Av fell out on Motzei Shabbos. I know it’s not nice, but I was happy to have flieshig before the fast. I’ve never been a big dairy person, and I was able to come into the fast w/o being really hungry.

When I got to shul on Motzei Shabbos, I was busy looking at the different types of “Tisha B’Av” chairs people had. I remarked to a friend who had bought in a webbed beach chair that I remembered the webbed chairs we used to have in my back yard. They don’t really make them any more, most chairs are made of resin. I remember my dad having these big rolls of webbing material, and he would make me repair the busted chairs every year. We never did manage to pull the darned stuff tight enough, and the chairs always sagged through to the ground when we sat on them. We also tended to run out of one color and use another color halfway through. It gave us these bizarre green and orange chairs. We must have had a whole shed of half webbed chair frames that didn’t close properly. One day my mom tossed them all, and got resin chairs, and that was that. My dad wasn’t to pleased, but my brothers and sisters were perfectly fine with it.

Regarding Eicha and Kinnos, I was pleasantly surprised to hear a lot more from my Rav about keeping in mind present tragedies and specifically, tragedies in Israel. He mentioned Merkaz HaRav, and the fact that we accept dead soldiers back from terrorists, and still, we don’t “get it”. Apathy is easy, of course. He was good about explaining the Kinnos, and although we skipped quite a few, the ones we did say had more meaning. At one point he asked the Kehillah to say the Kinnos with a bit more feeling. I think he felt that mumbling the Kinnos does not make you cry over the loss of Israel. If you say it like you mean it, it may come to have more meaning. He also pointed out not to be so happy when we see the Western Wall, but rather lament and try to understand that it is a remnant. There are muslims praying ongoing today on the site of our Bais HaMikdosh, and it is easy for us to think of that as our norm rather than an abomination!

If any of you out there have good ideas of what to do with the kids for next year, let me know. I had a tough time balancing how I wanted to present the day to my son. At what age do you really put the day in perspective? Davening is hard enough for kids (and adults). I found that sitting on the floor for Kinnos did nothing for him, even though he had learned about the day and knows what it is. Maybe some kind of program. Who knows…