The Book of Lamentations, which we read every year during the fast of the Ninth of Av, likens Jerusalem sacked to a woman despoiled, humiliated, and turned against her maternal instincts. Women’s suffering, as we see in The Book of Lamentations, serves as a metaphor for national suffering. Jerusalem’s destruction is likened to the destruction of the human body, and particularly the female body. The very first line of the book posits a metaphor of female suffering, but not the actual thing itself. Jerusalem is not actually a widow, she is like a widow. Who is like a widow? An "Agunah" or a deserted wife. Why is this the figure that is chosen to illuminate the experience of loss and destruction?
Together, we will read excerpts from the first and fifth chapter of the Book of Lamentations, some commentaries by Rashi, Tractate Sanhedrin, and Lamentations Rabbah, some excerpts from more contemporary texts written by the Hebrew writer Dvora Baron, the literary critic Naomi Seidman, Rabba Dr. Melanie Landau and the Auschwitz survivor Charlotte Delbo.
Together, we will read excerpts from the first and fifth chapter of the Book of Lamentations, some commentaries by Rashi, Tractate Sanhedrin, and Lamentations Rabbah, some excerpts from more contemporary texts written by the Hebrew writer Dvora Baron, the literary critic Naomi Seidman, Rabba Dr. Melanie Landau and the Auschwitz survivor Charlotte Delbo.
(א) אֵיכָ֣ה ׀ יָשְׁבָ֣ה בָדָ֗ד הָעִיר֙ רַבָּ֣תִי עָ֔ם הָיְתָ֖ה כְּאַלְמָנָ֑ה רַבָּ֣תִי בַגּוֹיִ֗ם שָׂרָ֙תִי֙ בַּמְּדִינ֔וֹת הָיְתָ֖ה לָמַֽס׃ {ס} (ב) בָּכ֨וֹ תִבְכֶּ֜ה בַּלַּ֗יְלָה וְדִמְעָתָהּ֙ עַ֣ל לֶֽחֱיָ֔הּ אֵֽין־לָ֥הּ מְנַחֵ֖ם מִכׇּל־אֹהֲבֶ֑יהָ כׇּל־רֵעֶ֙יהָ֙ בָּ֣גְדוּ בָ֔הּ הָ֥יוּ לָ֖הּ לְאֹיְבִֽים׃ {ס}
(1) Alas! Lonely sits the city Once great with people! She that was great among nations Is become like a widow; The princess among states Is become a thrall. (2) Bitterly she weeps in the night, Her cheek wet with tears. There is none to comfort her Of all her friends. All her allies have betrayed her; They have become her foes.
(ג) יְתוֹמִ֤ים הָיִ֙ינוּ֙ (אין) [וְאֵ֣ין] אָ֔ב אִמֹּתֵ֖ינוּ כְּאַלְמָנֽוֹת׃
(3) We have become orphans, fatherless; Our mothers are like widows.
כאלמנה - כמו אלמנה - Like a Widow
כאלמנות - כמו אלמנות - Like Widows
כאלמנות - כמו אלמנות - Like Widows
(ד) הָיְתָה כְּאַלְמָנָה. וְלֹא אַלְמָנָה מַמָּשׁ, אֶלָּא כְאִשָּׁה שֶׁהָלַךְ בַּעְלָהּ לִמְדִינַת הַיָּם וְדַעְתּוֹ לַחֲזוֹר אֶצְלָהּ:
( (4) Has become like a widow. But not really a widow; rather, like a woman whose husband went abroad and he intends to return to her.
היתה כאלמנה אמר רב יהודה אמר רב כאלמנה ולא אלמנה ממש אלא כאשה שהלך בעלה למדינת הים ודעתו לחזור אליה
With regard to the phrase describing Jerusalem: “She became like a widow” (Lamentations 1:1), Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: Like a widow, but not an actual widow. Rather, Jerusalem is like a woman whose husband has gone to a country overseas, and yet he intends to return to her.
(א) אֵיכָה יָשְׁבָה, שְׁלשָׁה נִתְנַבְּאוּ בְּלָשׁוֹן אֵיכָה, משֶׁה, יְשַׁעְיָה, וְיִרְמְיָה. משֶׁה אָמַר (דברים א, יב): אֵיכָה אֶשָֹּׂא לְבַדִּי וגו'. יְשַׁעְיָה אָמַר (ישעיה א, כא): אֵיכָה הָיְתָה לְזוֹנָה. יִרְמְיָה אָמַר: אֵיכָה יָשְׁבָה בָדָד, אָמַר רַבִּי לֵוִי מָשָׁל לְמַטְרוֹנָה שֶׁהָיוּ לָהּ שְׁלשָׁה שׁוֹשְׁבִינִין, אֶחָד רָאָה אוֹתָהּ בְּשַׁלְוָתָהּ, וְאֶחָד רָאָה אוֹתָהּ בְּפַחֲזוּתָהּ, וְאֶחָד רָאָה אוֹתָהּ בְּנִוּוּלָהּ. כָּךְ, משֶׁה רָאָה אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל בִּכְבוֹדָם וְשַׁלְוָתָם וְאָמַר: אֵיכָה אֶשָֹּׂא לְבַדִּי טָרְחֲכֶם. יְשַׁעְיָה רָאָה אוֹתָם בְּפַחֲזוּתָם, וְאָמַר: אֵיכָה הָיְתָה לְזוֹנָה. יִרְמְיָה רָאָה אוֹתָם בְּנִוּוּלָם
(1) (1) "How (eichah) does she dwell..." (Lamentations 1:1): There are three who prophesied with the language of "eichah": Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Moses said, (Deuteronomy 1:12), "How (eichah) will I carry alone...". Isaiah said, (Isaiah 1:21) "How (eichah) she has become a prostitute..." Jeremiah said, (Lamentations 1:1) "How (eichah) does she dwell..." Said Rabbi Levi: It is compared to a noble woman who had three friends. One saw her in her tranquility, one saw her in her recklessness, and one saw her in her degenerateness.
Once upon a time there was a tender young princess who married a king. Her husband loved her dearly and had canopies and beautiful textiles woven for her and gave her precious jewels and pearls and did not leave her side until he had a golden gown made for her. Then one day the king grew angry with her, stood up and demolished the canopies, ripped off her jewelry and clothing, and then left her and sailed off to a land across the seas. The neighbor women gathered around her, shaking their heads, and saying: Woes is this poor woman, for what her husband has done to her. And there she sits desolate, her hair unkempt, writing her lament through the night to bemoan her fate, crying her eyes out – the preacher lowers his voice and leans on the podium, and all the congregants below crowd closer to the platform, and all around people stand in silence with bated breath. From afar, on the western wall, comes the sound of the clock ticking off the minutes one after the other, and in the chandelier, the full flame trembles and hums the secret song of its light. A hush. Above, in the women’s gallery, semi-darkness reigns. A ray or two of light penetrate the letters of the stained glass Mizrach plaque and fall diagonally across the walls, onto the tiled stove and the charity box of Rabbi Meir the Miracle Worker. Close beside these stained glass letters stands a solitary listener – the wife of Reb Raphael the rabbinic Judge, who had come in at sundown to say the Kaddish and the Barkhu prayers. Her small head, bound in a black cotton headdress, is cocked a little to one side and rests against the wall, and her two eyes are riveted to the mouth of the dear man, who’s standing right there at the pulpit below. The biblical verses and rabbinic sayings are meaningless to her, though, and stick uneasily in her mind like the stale bread in her husband’s house that scratches her toothless mouth. But it’s alright: she has her sock and ball of yarn with her, and she’s here anyway, getting her knitting done. She switches the knitting needs from hand to hand every once in a while without counting stitches or checking, without even looking at them: she knows how to knit by heart, just as she knows the “Kaddish” and “Barkhu prayers that she has come to hear. But now the preacher adjusts his prayer shawl, bends over to lean on the podium. He has reached the climax of the parable and the woolen sock drops from her hand along with the yarn and knitting needs. The fate of the desolate abandoned woman strikes deep into the heart. Poor, tempestuous woman, woe is her and woe is her life – she shakes her aged head back and forth. A bitter salty bile rises in her throat, a sort of mirror of the abandoned princess’s tears, and in her eyes glints the age-old sadness of the woman who has been robbed of justice.
Dvora Baron, “Deserted Wife” in The First Day and Other Stories, eds. Naomi Seidman and Chana Kronfeld (Berkeley: U of California, 2001)
Dvora Baron, “Deserted Wife” in The First Day and Other Stories, eds. Naomi Seidman and Chana Kronfeld (Berkeley: U of California, 2001)
From the other side of the sheet, strung across the archway that separated the men from the women, an invisible fist pounds an invisible lectern and the women quite down and open their books. I know the first line by heart: eichah yashva badad ha’ir: How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow! She that was great among the nations and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!” Movie child that I am, I watch the sheet to see the shifting silhouettes of my father and his friends. The shadows on the curtain reward my attention, forming for a second the monstrous shape of lopsided breasted woman, as if we were seeing our own reflections mutated into a single enormous female figure. Jerusalem sways and shakes her big skirts, crooning in the hoarse voice of the old stockbroker or diamond cutter on the other side of her veils. Then she splits into two amorphous bodies, black hats, a lectern in between. He-She sings a mourning dirge falling empty and flat at the end of each phrase. The tune has no resolution, accrues no meaning. This is not Yom Kippur – the tune, the overturned benches, the fasting are not meant to spiritualize. Tisha B’Av is an event of the body -- creaking bones settling down on splintery wood, hard pavement under thin soles, the rumble and gnaw of an empty belly. Even the naked Torah scrolls remind us of their participation in the cruelties of physical existence, their vulnerability or violation and debasement. And Lamentations, I understand now, reinvents the picture perfect princess, Zion as God’s beloved daughter or bride, as a physical woman, a woman with all her fleshly sorrows. Whatever the Babylonians did to turn Jerusalem the city into rubble, it is the Jewish poet, I can’t help feeling, who rips the bride Jerusalem’s jeweled veils from her forehead, stripping the embroidered robes to flash us a glimpse of her genitals, “ervatah”: translated by the squeamish or modest translator as “her nakedness.” “Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honored her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness; yea she sigheth and turneth backward. Her filthiness is in her skirts.” My mother sways as she murmurs along, a ready sorrow propelling her words. My own spine is rigid with insult and distance, my thighs clenched with the usual impotent rage. I know full well that I take offense the way a woman might grab a robe to cover herself and my proud impiety is only a makeshift dam against the insistent words of the reading…
Reading Lamentations in the divided synagogue, hearing a male voice intone the complaints of the widowed Jerusalem, are we really a community of mourners, the men and women who recognize how much a woman’s truth has to say about the broader experience of national degradation. Or is Lamentations itself yet another outrage, heaping a man’s distaste for women onto the already painful outrages of Jewish history.
Naomi Seidman, “Burning the Book of Lamentations” from Out of the Garden: Women Writers on the Bible eds. Christina Buchman and Celina Spiegel (NY: Ballantine Books, 1995)
Reading Lamentations in the divided synagogue, hearing a male voice intone the complaints of the widowed Jerusalem, are we really a community of mourners, the men and women who recognize how much a woman’s truth has to say about the broader experience of national degradation. Or is Lamentations itself yet another outrage, heaping a man’s distaste for women onto the already painful outrages of Jewish history.
Naomi Seidman, “Burning the Book of Lamentations” from Out of the Garden: Women Writers on the Bible eds. Christina Buchman and Celina Spiegel (NY: Ballantine Books, 1995)
This Tisha B’Av, instead of fighting against the images of female humiliation and victimhood, I am inviting myself and others to enter into the pain that these texts evoke for us, and in fact use them as an opportunity to explore our own lived experience of this breach of the feminine, and to allow ourselves to be with it inside our own bodies and experience. This includes allowing ourselves to grieve and mourn it, and then to let that mourning connect us back up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the breach of the Jewish people.
The metaphor of the humiliated woman that I once had to fight against because of the pain it evoked in me, becomes a portal for me to connect to my own lived experience and to bring a sense of authenticity and immediacy into my mourning of Jerusalem. In addition, we can reframe the use of this imagery to see that in fact, the metaphor places the wound of the feminine at the center of the gaping wound of the Jewish people. Now our challenge is to be able to move forward without re-wounding that original wound but with feeling, naming, validating, and expressing.
Rabba Dr. Melanie Landau. For Tisha B’Av, A Feminist Reading of Lamentations. 2015
The metaphor of the humiliated woman that I once had to fight against because of the pain it evoked in me, becomes a portal for me to connect to my own lived experience and to bring a sense of authenticity and immediacy into my mourning of Jerusalem. In addition, we can reframe the use of this imagery to see that in fact, the metaphor places the wound of the feminine at the center of the gaping wound of the Jewish people. Now our challenge is to be able to move forward without re-wounding that original wound but with feeling, naming, validating, and expressing.
Rabba Dr. Melanie Landau. For Tisha B’Av, A Feminist Reading of Lamentations. 2015
I went down cautiously to the edge of the bank, thinking of how I’d adjust and coordinate my gestures so as not to waste precious seconds. The pause was a short one and we had to get the most out of it. The bank was not slippery, but I didn’t wish to risk getting my shoes wet; they had finally become dry for the first time only a short while ago. Which means that this stream did not run through the marsh, for in April, as the ice melts, the marsh is nothing but a field of mud. Moreover, I now remember clearly the grass, and in the marsh there wasn’t a blade of grass.
I figured out I could wash my face while standing barefoot in the water, a process which would hasten the subsequent washing of my feet. I sat down on the grassy slope, took off my shoes, which I carefully placed under my jacket. This means that neither Viva nor anyone from my group was close to me, for we’d have placed our shoes together. I had removed my jacket and my scarf—to wash my face and ears—but you couldn’t consider taking off your dress to wash your neck and arms. The sky was clear, there was even some sunshine, but it wasn’t warm. After piling up my shoes, jacket and scarf, I took off my stockings. I hadn’t removed them since our arrival, sixty-seven days ago. I took them off and turned them inside out. At the toe end I felt some peculiar resistance. The stockings were glued. I pulled a bit too much, and on the other side a strange design appeared. I looked at this truly curious pattern. I looked at my feet. They were black with dirt, and at the tip strangely black, or rather violet, with dry thickening at the peculiarly costumed toes; except for the two big toes, all the others had lost their nails, which, detached from the skin, and glued to the stockings, formed this curi-ous design. Naturally, there was no time to consider this detail. There wasn’t a minute to waste if one wished to wash. Later, I understood that my toes must have been frozen. Or perhaps the others explained it to me when I told them of my amazement. To see one’s toe nails encrusted in one’s stockings is, I promise you, an astonishing sight.
Let’s see, face, feet, legs. I should also wash my behind. I took off my panties and placed them on the pile formed by my jacket, scarf and shoes. My panties must have stunk. It was also the first time in sixty-seven days I had peeled them off. But no, actually I couldn’t smell anything. There is something mysterious about the sense of smell. For example, I’d been back for a long time, and I bathed at that same time twice a day—a real mania—scrubbing my body with a fine soap, I’d been back for weeks, yet I could still smell on me the odor of the camp, an odor of raw sewage and carrion. Yet, on that day, I removed my panties, stiff with dry diarrhea—if you think there was toilet paper, or anything like that, before the appearance of new-grown grass—yet the smell didn’t nauseate me.I went down into the running water, so cold it took my breath away. It hardly covered my ankles, but its contact amazed me, the forgotten contact of water on one’s skin.Now, where do I start? The face or the behind? Quickly, picking up water in my cupped hands, and leaning forward so as not to wet my dress, with its unbuttoned collar, I ran it over my face. Gently at first, because this sensation of water on my face was so new, so wonderful, but almost at once I got a grip on myself. There wasn’t a moment to lose, and I started to scrub myself vigorously, particularly behind the ears. Why do mothers always insist on the ears? It’s no dirtier than anything else.What could I have been thinking as I tried to cleanse my skin a section at a time? Probably of the last shower I’d taken on the day of arrival? After shaving our heads, they sent us to the showers. I still had my piece of soap and bath towel. For the rest, we had to leave our things in our valises, keep-ing nothing. I had emptied a small vial of perfume on my throat, the gift of a friend who slipped it into one of the last parcels I received before departure. Up to that point I’d saved this perfume, satisfied with uncorking it and breathing in its aroma in the evening, before falling asleep. Naked amid my companions, I stared tenderly at the vial—Orgueil [Pride] by Lelong; what a fine name for that day—and I poured it out slowly, between my breasts. Then, under the shower, I took care not to soap down the spot where the perfume had run in order to preserve its trace. I don’t believe that sweet-smelling trace lingered for any amount of time. It is true, however, as I just said, that our sense of smell was quickly obliterated. I had started to wash myself thoroughly when a kapo shouted for us to hurry, and the water stopped running. I had entered the drying room where Viva, Yvonne and the others, half-rinsed, were sitting. It made them laugh. It was the last bit of laughter ringing out among us. “How good you smell!” said one of them. “Let me sit down next to you for a moment. We won’t inhale delicate smells again.” She must have been from the Tours region, so elegantly did she express herself. “Inhale,” the word stuck in my memory together with the voice of the one who had spoken it, but I no longer know who she was, nor am I able to recapture her face.
Charlotte Delbo, "The Stream" in Writing in Witness : A Holocaust Reader. Ed. Eric J Sundquist (NY: SUNY Press, 2018).
I figured out I could wash my face while standing barefoot in the water, a process which would hasten the subsequent washing of my feet. I sat down on the grassy slope, took off my shoes, which I carefully placed under my jacket. This means that neither Viva nor anyone from my group was close to me, for we’d have placed our shoes together. I had removed my jacket and my scarf—to wash my face and ears—but you couldn’t consider taking off your dress to wash your neck and arms. The sky was clear, there was even some sunshine, but it wasn’t warm. After piling up my shoes, jacket and scarf, I took off my stockings. I hadn’t removed them since our arrival, sixty-seven days ago. I took them off and turned them inside out. At the toe end I felt some peculiar resistance. The stockings were glued. I pulled a bit too much, and on the other side a strange design appeared. I looked at this truly curious pattern. I looked at my feet. They were black with dirt, and at the tip strangely black, or rather violet, with dry thickening at the peculiarly costumed toes; except for the two big toes, all the others had lost their nails, which, detached from the skin, and glued to the stockings, formed this curi-ous design. Naturally, there was no time to consider this detail. There wasn’t a minute to waste if one wished to wash. Later, I understood that my toes must have been frozen. Or perhaps the others explained it to me when I told them of my amazement. To see one’s toe nails encrusted in one’s stockings is, I promise you, an astonishing sight.
Let’s see, face, feet, legs. I should also wash my behind. I took off my panties and placed them on the pile formed by my jacket, scarf and shoes. My panties must have stunk. It was also the first time in sixty-seven days I had peeled them off. But no, actually I couldn’t smell anything. There is something mysterious about the sense of smell. For example, I’d been back for a long time, and I bathed at that same time twice a day—a real mania—scrubbing my body with a fine soap, I’d been back for weeks, yet I could still smell on me the odor of the camp, an odor of raw sewage and carrion. Yet, on that day, I removed my panties, stiff with dry diarrhea—if you think there was toilet paper, or anything like that, before the appearance of new-grown grass—yet the smell didn’t nauseate me.I went down into the running water, so cold it took my breath away. It hardly covered my ankles, but its contact amazed me, the forgotten contact of water on one’s skin.Now, where do I start? The face or the behind? Quickly, picking up water in my cupped hands, and leaning forward so as not to wet my dress, with its unbuttoned collar, I ran it over my face. Gently at first, because this sensation of water on my face was so new, so wonderful, but almost at once I got a grip on myself. There wasn’t a moment to lose, and I started to scrub myself vigorously, particularly behind the ears. Why do mothers always insist on the ears? It’s no dirtier than anything else.What could I have been thinking as I tried to cleanse my skin a section at a time? Probably of the last shower I’d taken on the day of arrival? After shaving our heads, they sent us to the showers. I still had my piece of soap and bath towel. For the rest, we had to leave our things in our valises, keep-ing nothing. I had emptied a small vial of perfume on my throat, the gift of a friend who slipped it into one of the last parcels I received before departure. Up to that point I’d saved this perfume, satisfied with uncorking it and breathing in its aroma in the evening, before falling asleep. Naked amid my companions, I stared tenderly at the vial—Orgueil [Pride] by Lelong; what a fine name for that day—and I poured it out slowly, between my breasts. Then, under the shower, I took care not to soap down the spot where the perfume had run in order to preserve its trace. I don’t believe that sweet-smelling trace lingered for any amount of time. It is true, however, as I just said, that our sense of smell was quickly obliterated. I had started to wash myself thoroughly when a kapo shouted for us to hurry, and the water stopped running. I had entered the drying room where Viva, Yvonne and the others, half-rinsed, were sitting. It made them laugh. It was the last bit of laughter ringing out among us. “How good you smell!” said one of them. “Let me sit down next to you for a moment. We won’t inhale delicate smells again.” She must have been from the Tours region, so elegantly did she express herself. “Inhale,” the word stuck in my memory together with the voice of the one who had spoken it, but I no longer know who she was, nor am I able to recapture her face.
Charlotte Delbo, "The Stream" in Writing in Witness : A Holocaust Reader. Ed. Eric J Sundquist (NY: SUNY Press, 2018).