Nine Daze

I always feel so listless and unmotivated during the nine days. Partly it's the lack of meat, coupled with my sullen, boneheaded refusal to eat enough of other types of protein to make up for this deficiency in my usual carnivorous diet. Partly, it's the custom/superstition against beginning any new initiatives during this period of semi-mourning. Whatever the cause, my general mood is definitely altered during this time.

I wish I could say that the sadness was my yiddeshe neshama sincerely crying out for the lost beis hamikdash. But I find it hard to emotionalize that sense of loss the way I know I should. On an intellectual and religious level, I do believe that the mashiach will come one day. And maintaining even this cerebral level of faith in the face of all the tragedies, individual and communal, that we have suffered, can be a great challenge. Among my uncle's starkest of statements, he has been quoted as saying that if the mashiach was really coming in our time, he would have come to Auschwitz.

Last year, among other timely issues, I pondered whether, if one mourns at this time, but for a personal grief rather than for Zion and Jerusalem, does the mourning "count"? A similar question can be asked about observing the customs of the nine days with a purely ritual focus, but without one's heart being in it. Can we say "mitoch lo lishma, ba lishma" - that by starting out doing the right actions for the wrong motives, you will come to do them with the right motives? Or does going through the motions of mourning, as I fear so many of us do at this time, become an end-state, a goal in and of itself?

A somber question for a somber time. May God elevate and sactify our sadness, and then remove its reason for being.