Today I have the honor of hosting one of the well-known Lamed Vav tzadikim of our generation. This is entirely written by him; I am just the one uploading it.

We sit on the floor, the little plastic pins from our Crocs digging into our feet as the blood struggling to make its way through our unhealthy, overweight joints leaves us with that familiar sensation of pins and needles.
I should have brought a chair. Everyone else brings a chair. It just seems like a cop out.
Somewhere behind me, a man whines along with eicha in the high-pitched whisper that rises and falls with the baal koreh, just loud enough that everyone can hear it.
Maybe it’s sincere. Maybe it isn’t. Either way, it’s annoying me and clearly most of the people around him.
Our stomachs are still heavy from overeating, significantly more food and water than anyone could possibly need to get through a 24 hour fast, there is something almost absurd about it. But then again, what is a Jewish day on the calendar without abusing our bodies by stuffing ourselves with carbohydrates and sugar?

We read the story we’ve heard hundreds of times before. Destruction, persecution, exile from the land God gave us. The Romans. The fire. The foxes wandering through the ruins. Mothers eating their children but as the words are read, I don’t find myself mourning so much as feeling that we’re being asked to see ourselves as victims and somehow the most painful part is that we’re told we deserved it.
We disobeyed God, and He punished us by severing our direct connection to Him. There was a time, we are told, miracles were so open and undeniable that no one could question God’s greatness or the uniqueness of the Jewish people.
And yet, sitting there, I can’t stop wondering why I don’t feel the certainty I’m told previous generations did.
I find myself wondering about the gap between the world I’m taught to imagine and the one I know.
The thought feels almost inappropriate on Tisha B’Av. But it comes anyway. The truth is, I don’t know enough to have an opinion on it anyway.
As I look around the room, I wonder what everyone else is thinking.
Are they really mourning Jerusalem?
Are they mourning a Temple they’ve never seen?
Do they actually feel connected to a tragedy nearly two thousand years old?
Or are they, like me, mostly waiting for the day to end
Waiting to eat. Waiting to go home. Waiting for life to become ordinary again.
I don’t know.
Maybe everyone else really is feeling something profound.
Maybe I’m the one who’s missing it.
Or perhaps we are all participating in something we’ve inherited rather than experienced, repeating words that once carried unbearable grief, hoping or wishing they still carry something now.
And in a few weeks we’ll be back in shul for Yom Kippur, beating our chests, confessing our sins, asking to be written into another year.
I’ll probably be there.
I don’t know whether that’s faith, habit, guilt, or simply tradition.
I only know that, year after year, I keep coming back.
Why? I’m not sure.