Before entering the Land of Israel Moses sent twelve spies to report on the situation there as a prelude to planning the conquest of the land. Upon hearing the spies’ assessment, their description of the well-fortified cities and the giants who inhabited them, “the entire congregation lifted up their voice and cried; and the people wept that night” (Numbers 14:1). The Talmud discusses the ramifications of their crying: “Rabbah said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: ‘That night was the ninth of Av. The Holy One Blessed Is He said to them: You cried for no reason – [therefore] I will establish for you [on this night] a crying for generations’” (Ta’anit 29a).
There are two possible valid approaches to interpreting God’s decision to establish on this night “a crying for generations”: a rational approach and a mystical one. From a rational perspective, we could understand God’s words to indicate that the people’s rejection of His promise to bring them into the Promised Land will have ramifications for future generations. In other words, the sins of the parents will be visited upon their children; a classic ‘karmic’ or causal argument. This impact began immediately with the generation that died in the desert (the males between the ages of twenty and sixty, except for Joshua and Caleb), and continued into their children’s generation, which had to wander for forty years until the time was right to enter the Promised Land.
Additionally, God could be stating that the majority of Jews in the future would repeat the same error. In other words, there would be many times in the future when the Jewish people would have the opportunity to return to Israel, but only a minority would grasp the opportunity and have the faith to actually return. For example, when Cyrus presented the Jews with the opportunity to return to Israel and rebuild the Second Temple, only a pitiful few returned to Israel. The majority of Jews remained in Babylon. (This story is recounted in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.) This same opportunity has arisen today, as the Zionist movement has encouraged Jews to return to Israel for over one hundred years. While this time, almost half the Jewish population of the world has returned, the majority of Jews still reside outside of Israel (though it is predicted that soon a majority of Jews worldwide will be in Israel, the first time in nearly 2,500 years).
On a different note, the mystical approach proposes that events which transpire on a particular date may leave deep impressions on that moment in the very fabric of time; or to use the Talmud’s phrase, certain events will reverberate “for generations.” Somehow the crying on that particular ninth of Av was embedded in all future iterations of that same calendar date. If time is viewed as strictly linear this proposition makes no apparent sense. Although, one might admit that cause and effect demand that the crying on that night have a profound effect on the future in some capacity, it would not necessarily be felt on every recurring ninth of Av in the future. However, if time is envisioned as a spiral, as we have discussed, the notion that what occurs on a particular calendar date will affect that same date in the future makes much more sense. For if time spirals ever-upwards, then the same point is passed every year, albeit on ever-higher levels of the spiral. Thus, every moment in time is both entirely new and yet profoundly influenced by the past which it inevitably echoes.
Returning to our original Talmudic discussion of God establishing the Ninth of Av as a crying for generations, it is important to point out that it actually takes place in the context of a larger statement, that over the course of history (up till that point) there were five major misfortunes that took place on the ninth of Av, including the destruction of both Temples (Ta’anit 29a). Since this statement was written in the Talmud, many more terrible events have occurred on this date, including the expulsions from England in 1290 and Spain in 1492, as well as key events during World War One and Two. The uncanny number of calamities that have befallen the Jewish people throughout history on the ninth of Av leaves no doubt as to God’s harsh response to the crying on that auspicious night. Although, it does leave us to contemplate and try to comprehend the spiritual and material truth underlying this phenomenon and how it impacts time and history.
One way of explaining this phenomenon is by comparing time to space. According to Einstein, gravity operates through the curvature of space. The greater the mass the more space is curved, thus creating the pull of gravity. This explains how the planets’ rotation around the sun and the moon’s orbit around the earth actually works. The pull of gravity caused by the sun’s tremendous mass warps space in a manner that creates the planets’ orderly circuits around it. The same holds true for the moon’s rotation around the earth.
Einstein further revealed that space and time are intrinsically connected. Consequently, if we apply the same paradigm of how gravity works to time, we can surmise that certain actions or events, whether for good or ill, create a “mass,” as it were, of energy that impacts (or warps) the field of future time; causing other events to revolve around it, so to speak. The more intense the thought, speech or action, the greater the impression made on the fabric of time. Thus, past and contemporary actions have the power to make their mark on the future through the spiral nature of time.
From this perspective, we can see how the initial events that occurred on the ninth of Av, the report of the spies and the destruction of both Temples, have impacted this date for all future generations. This explains the preponderance of calamitous events that continue to occur on this date. However, as we have discussed, there is an even deeper imprint beneath all of the suffering and negativity — that is the Messianic potential for the primordial light of ultimate redemption to be revealed from within this broken state on this very date. It is up to us to access and amplify that deeper echo reverberating like the “cooing of a dove” from within the ruins of our collective history and individual lives in order to rectify the world and reveal the inevitable Third Temple, which will be a “house of prayer for all peoples.”
