When LGBTQ people come out, the first questions they ask often have to do with place and belonging: where will my home be now, and who are “my people”—my family, my friendship circle, and my spiritual community?
The experience of displacement is something that our community is all too familiar with. Tisha B’Av is the original archetype for these feelings of displacement – and of fear for the future.
While we often associate Tisha b’Av with the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the very first Tisha b’Av marks the day the spies came back from investigating the land in Sefer Bamidbar. Their report was negative; they made the people doubt whether they could conquer the land. That night the Israelites cried in despair – even though nothing bad had happened yet! Because they lacked faith in G-d’s promise, G-d gave them something to really cry about: the entire generation would die before entering the land. The original Tisha B’Av represented a lack of faith; as Rashi notes, this was the day the Jewish people lost their way, by losing faith in who we are and what we are capable of. So too, when we come out as queer Orthodox Jews, it can be easy to lose faith. That is the reason we at Eshel are devoted to creating support systems and communities, resources and referrals. We understand that hope and faith bring a strong future closer.
Centuries after the spies and their report, the Temple was destroyed on Tisha b’Av. The people were acting corruptly and were filled with baseless hatred for one another, yet G-d’s response was not to give up on the Jewish people. Yet it was precisely because the Temple was no more that we each found G-d with us, in our batei tefilah (houses of prayer). The Temple had to be destroyed for the Jewish people to develop a truly personal relationship with the Divine.
We are not always aware of the blessings in disguise—the silver linings that become gifts born out of destruction. In this sense, the destruction of the Temple is actually a sign of G-d’s enduring love. Tisha B’Av expresses this best. Rabbi Akiva understood this; he was seen laughing while walking through the ruins of Jerusalem. He explained that if the prophecies of destruction were real, then the prophecies of restoration must also be real.
When our lives feel destroyed, when we feel displaced from the communities we once knew, we are actually being invited to build a deeper, more resilient connection to ourselves and the Divine. Just as the destruction of the Temple birthed a new way to relate to G-d, our own experiences of displacement can be the catalyst for an upward slope toward a more nuanced and personal faith, opening us up to new communities, and new people who help us create our new spiritual homes.
Miryam Kabakov