Why I Mourn the Loss of the Temple

As we go through the Nine Days preparing to mourn the loss of the Beit HaMikdash, the Temple, on Tisha B’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, many are sharing what the loss means to them. I have decided to do so as well.

As a small child, I was fascinated by maps and floor plans (which I called “house maps”). My parents had subscribed to National Geographic for years and even before I could read, I would spread out the maps on the floor and pore over them – my mother said that instead of wall-to-wall carpeting, we had wall-to-wall maps. One place we lived, when I was in third and fourth grade, the Sunday paper featured a floor plan as part of a spotlight on a particular house and my mother would carefully cut out the floor plan for me once my parents were finished with the newspaper. I would spread them out in neighborhoods with my Matchbox cars in front of them.

I was raised evangelical – Southern Baptist and Assemblies of God. Evangelical Bibles usually have maps in the back, including floor plans of the Mishkan and Beit HaMikdash (Tabernacle and Temple as they call them) and I could draw the floor plan of the Mishkan with the altars, laver, table, candlestick, and Ark by the time I was nine. There was something about that holy floor plan that spoke very deeply to me. There was a neo-Pentecostal minister my father liked to listen to and he got his sermons on cassette tape. One series was about the Mishkan and there was an accompanying small booklet that I liked to look at. He saw the Mishkan as a model of the human soul.

It turns out that this idea was not original to him – kabbalistic and chasidish rabbis before him also see the Mishkan/Beit HaMikdash as the model of the human soul, the Jewish people’s collective soul, and indeed, the soul of all creation. I find this model very comforting and illuminative. The Ark with the tablets inside – both the broken pieces of the first set and the whole second set – this speaks to what is in the innermost depths of my own soul. The cherubim who face one another in times of harmony and face away from each other in times of strife.

The traditional understanding is that G!d has been exiled from the world after the destruction of the Temple, with the Jewish people then exiled from G!d as well. However, we know G!d is everywhere and, as Psalm 139 so beautifully teaches, G!d is closer to us that we are to ourselves. This has not changed – even if our perception of G!d’s presence is different.

The real exile is from our own souls. We no longer have the physical replica of our soul with us – it has been destroyed – and we are in exile, unable to understand who we are meant to be – unable to actualize our purpose, with the Ark of our covenant with G!d – both our collective Jewish covenant and the individual covenant each person has with Hashem – misplaced. The light of the seven-branched menorah illuminating our actions, the bread of the Presence sustaining us, the sweet incense bringing our prayers sweetly to the Divine – absent. The korbanos – the sacrifices of drawing near –to G!d and to ourselves and to one another– and the cleansing of the laver – we don’t have them and must find other ways to draw close.

It is this excruciating pain of being in exile from our own souls that is the real pain of Tisha B’Av. It is this journey back to our soul – the return – the teshuvah – that is the geulah we seek. But we cannot begin the journey until we feel this loss – this ultimate alienation – very deeply in our very bones. Until we come to desire the restoration of the Temple of our souls more deeply than any other desire.

May we feel this loss so keenly that we may set out on and complete this journey – with G!d and each other as our traveling companions – and experience geulah shleimah – complete redemption.

Tzitzis and Tefillin at Mincha on Tisha B'Av

I anticipated that it would feel weird and I would feel bereft by not wrapping tefillin and praying with a tallis at shacharis on Tisha B'Av - and I was right - the lack of gathering tzitzis from the four corners of tallis in the blessing before the Shema and holding them together for the Shema and into the blessing after indeed underlined the fragmentation the day mourns, including the fragmentation of oneself and the fragmentation of the relationship between G!d and the Jewish people.

But what I was not prepared for was the weird sense of alienation wearing the tallis and tefillin at Mincha would bring. The Shema is not recited at Mincha, and so the gathering together of the tzitzis did not occur - nor were any of the passages from the Torah about tefillin or tzitzis recited. Wearing them felt mostly empty and bereft of the meaning that recitation of these passages, gathering the tzitzis together, and touching the tefillin at their metion give to wearing them. So wearing them at Mincha helped ritualize the continued mourning, albeit more subdued mourning than the night and morning of Tisha B'Av.

Reflection on Kinah 41

 I gave this reflection at the South Philadelphia Shtiebel on Tisha B'Av, 5783, when Shtiebelers are invited to introduce different kinot

As many of you know, I was raised in a fundamentalist evangelical Christian home. I was taught that humanity is completely cut off from G!d and that all who don’t become evangelical Christians will experience eternal conscious torment in hell. My parents and churches taught that they and they alone had the truth – and all other religious viewpoints were not only wrong, but evil.

I rejected this view and majored in Judaic studies with a minor in Hebrew in college. I found several teachings in the Talmud that transformed my life, even as I remained Christian, ultimately becoming clergy, albeit a very liberal one who believed that other religions, particularly Judaism, taught truth. I attended my first Tisha B’Av service around that time, at the Temple on Peachtree, a historic Reform synagogue in Atlanta, and it was a powerful and meaningful service. The knowledge that the synagogue had been bombed during the civil rights era made it even more powerful.

Many years later, I found myself drawn to worship regularly in Jewish spaces, and I attended several more Tisha B’Av services, including the Zoom service from the Shtiebel in 2020 when the mezuzot were taken down from the first location on Passayunk, and I continued to be moved by the observance. But nothing prepared me for the Tisha B’Av service in 2021.

As we sat on the floor of Rabbanit Dasi’s home on 13^th Street, surrounded by burning candles, I found myself weeping, brushing away tears, hoping no one would notice. Despite all the study of the tragedies that befell the Jewish people over the millennia, only there, sitting on the floor, did it fully hit home. And a big part of the pain was the recognition that much of the horrific persecution of the Jewish people came at the hands of the Christianity I had been a part of my whole life. I had known this intellectually for a long time – but this was the first time I felt it in the depths of my soul. And I knew that even as I had been trying for my entire adult life to change the Christian church, to help rid it of its deep drive to persecute those who are different, that I could not make much of a dent.

And it shattered me.

The next day, Chaim Fruchter gave an introduction to this kinah, which laments the burning of 12,000 copies of the Talmud (among other sacred Jewish texts) by King Louis IX of France, at the urging of Pope Gregory IX, in a time before the printing press when manuscripts were precious. I became angry as I realized that many Christians – including many liberal Christian denominations – regard this wicked man as a saint – for example, he is the person “Saint” Louis, Missouri is named for and the Catholic Cathedral there is dedicated to him.

I finally decided to become Jewish earlier this year, converting a few days before Shavuot. There is so much of profound value in Judaism that nourishes my soul, and I have found, over the past several years, that being a part of the Jewish community enables me to thrive in a way I never did before.

But as a convert, part of the profound pain of the day for me is the realization that my ancestors and the religion they believed in – and that was my spiritual home for most of my life – is the source of much of the pain of this day. I mourn the loss of the Torah that was destroyed, in France and elsewhere.

May my mourning – our mourning - serve as a tikkun to help bring about geulah shleimah – complete redemption.

 

On being a glutton with a half-empty stomach

Powerful Tisha B'Av service tonight.

What hit me the hardest was Lamentations 1:11 - the Artscroll translation in the Tisha B'Av siddur I was using has this translation:

All her people are sighing, searching for bread. They traded their treasures for food to stay alive. "Look, HASHEM, and behold what a glutton I have become!"

The Koren Tisha B'Av siddur, which I also had with me, translated the last phrase instead as, "look how abject I have become."

The word in question, זוֹלֵלָֽה, which I looked up when I got home, could legitimately be translated either way - and the 2006 JPS Tanakh has "how abject" with a footnote saying it could be, with bitter irony, "what a glutton" and notes that the word is used in that sense in Proverbs 23:20-21.

The glutton translation resonates with me not only because of the bitter irony that can be read in the verse but also because it speaks to the experience of oppression, whether abject physical poverty or emotional or spiritual abuse. When one can only barely - if even that - meet one's basic needs and must give up the luxuries that give life joy to do so, one can begin to see the meeting of one's basic needs as gluttony, rather than as basic needs. One experiences this in emotionally abusive relationships, where one is made to feel guilty for wanting the bare minimum needed for emotional and spiritual well-being, as if one were asking for too much and were somehow selfish for wanting it.

May we all experience redemption and never be made to feel like gluttons when our stomachs are half-empty.

Multiplicity and Unity in the blessings before the Shema - and Tisha B'Av

 A couple of thoughts from davening this morning:

1. Tallis gadol and tefillin will not be worn at Shacharit tomorrow for Tisha B'Av but at Mincha. I have written before about how the act of gathering the tzitzis from the four corners of the tallis gadol near the end of the second blessing before the Shema and holding them together while reciting the Shema is very meaningful for me, because I feel myself integrating the different parts of myself into one whole that is an image and likeness of the Oneness of G!d that we proclaim in the Shema. I wonder if not being able to do this tomorrow morning will intensify the feeling of destruction and alienation of Tisha B'Av - that, just as we don't have the Beis HaMikdash to connect us to G!d - so we don't have tefillin and tallis gadol either, at least for Shacharit. I will report back (likely on Friday) whether this intuition proves correct.

2. The first blessing begins with a misquote of Isaiah 45:7, talking about G!d's creation of both light and dark, and peace/wholeness and evil (in Isaiah)/everything (in the prayer). We say with the seraphim from Isaiah's vision in Isaiah 6, "Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh" - and the seraphim have six wings. We say with the voice Ezekiel heard, "Blessed is the glory of G!d from its Place" - and the voice is accompanied by the sound of the four wings each of the chayot that he saw in the first chapter. And the blessing ends with the chatimah blessing G!d for creating the Lights - of which there are two great ones, in Genesis 1 - the sun and the moon. Six, four, and two - in contrast to G!d being One. The blessing seems to go out of its way to emphasize the multiplicity of creation in contrast to the Oneness of G!d. And then, in the second blessing, we pray to be gathered from the four corners of the earth - and it ends blessing G!d for blessing the people Israel with love - ahavah - which has the same gematria (13) as One - echad (also 13).

My thoughts during davening today.

Tefillin, Patriarchs, and the Nine Days

 

Pannullo, Tommie Spain

Over the past couple of years, I've internalized the sequence of the seven patriarchs associated with the seven lower sefirot - Avraham/Chesed, Yitzchok/Gevurah, Yaakov/Tiferet, Moshe/Netzach, Aharon/Hod, Yosef/Yesod, and David/Malchut - and I tend to think of them whenever a sequence of seven comes up, for example, in the Amidah. *

Over the past couple of years, I've internalized the sequence of the seven patriarchs associated with the seven lower sefirot - Avraham/Chesed, Yitzchok/Gevurah, Yaakov/Tiferet, Moshe/Netzach, Aharon/Hod, Yosef/Yesod, and David/Malchut - and I tend to think of them whenever a sequence of seven comes up, for example, in the Amidah. *

Since I've become Jewish and started wrapping tefillin, I have silently in my mind gone through the list of patriarchs as I wrap seven times around my arm, a name with each wrapping, as a way of counting but in a more mindful and spiritually resonant way.

Today, as I did so, the signficant losses each patriarch experienced loomed large in my mind- Avraham losing Hagar, Yishmael, almost sacrificing Yitzchok, and Sarah; Yitzchok almost being sacrificed and experiencing the heartache associated with his sons; Yaakov fleeing his home, losing Leah and Rachel, and being separated from Yosef; Moshe not being able to go into the Promised Land; Aharon losing Nadav and Abihu and not being able to mourn; Yosef being betrayed by his brothers and falsely imprisoned; and David losing Yonatan and Avshalom. (This list is not comprehensive.

And this experience immersed my more deeply in the Nine Days.

* I realize that this is a very masculine association - several proposals have been made to associate matriarchs with the sefirot, but it is not unifor. The one that resonates with me is Tamar - since my Hebrew name is Tomer Yitzchok - and she is associated with Yosef and Yesod - Yosef is the only man in the Torah described as HaTzadik - the Righteous - and Yehudah says that Tamar is tzadkah mimeni - more righteous than I. I think that those wanting to adopt this practice with matriarchs will likely find the practice revealing great insight.

My Experience on Tisha B'Av, 5781

[Written on Tisha B'Av, 5781/2021]

For a non-Jew, I’ve had a lot of Jewish experiences, starting with my first visit to an Orthodox synagogue in 1981 when I was in high school (accompanied by my first purchase of Jewish prayer books). I majored in Judaic studies with a minor in Hebrew in college and took many Jewish studies courses in divinity school, including three with a Chasidic rebbe in Maimonides in which I was the only non-Jewish student in the class (in at least one, the only one not an Orthodox Jewish man). I’ve attended at least 25 Passover seders, 3 Tu B’Shevat seders (four if you count the one on Zoom last year during the pandemic), at least 9 years of in-person High Holy Day services (15 if you count livestreaming), and many, many Shabbat services. Even two Shalom Zachor celebrations and a bris. This was my fourth Tisha B’Av. I’ve learned daf yomi (daily Talmud) for over a year now, have completed the first year of the Center for Contemporary Mussar program, and have been attending a chasidus shiur for a few months. I own 84 Jewish prayerbooks, not counting a dozen and a half haggadahs for Passaover (and one for Tu B’Shevat). And a lot of other Jewish books. I’ve carried a tiny copy of Tehillim (Psalms) in my wallet for going on three decades.

And I don’t believe I’ve ever been as deeply emotionally affected as I was by this year’s Tisha B’Av observance.

To be sure, the other years were meaningful. The first two times, I only attended one service (the evening service). Last year, I participated in two evening services by Zoom, sitting on the floor by candlelight for the first and being moved by the removal of mezuzot from a year-old shtiebel’s first location, as well as a couple of Zoom classes the next day. (And another year, I had a wonderful conversation on Tisha B’Av morning with an Orthodox coworker who had not taken the day off but was fasting – he had great insights.)

A large part of what made it so powerful for me this year was being there in person for all three services of the day (and Maariv of Motzei Tisha B’Av) as well as for the afternoon program of four classes (and another one on Zoom when I was home in between morning and afternoon sessions) – spending 11 or 12 hours with Orthodox Jewish friends observing the day with a great deal of kavannah certainly influenced my experience. I did not fast, but from leaving the house at 2 until sitting down to dinner a little after 9, I had no food or drink – the mild hunger was not bad, but the lack of beverages did affect me. The services and classes were all very well done and quite meaningful. The arc of the day, from the intensity of the evening service in dim light sitting on the floor with candles about, punctuated by thunder and lightning, with a packed room of mostly younger people seriously mourning, leaving in silence, to the quieter morning service, still sitting on the floor, followed by reflections on the kinnot (I actually gave one myself and was quite moved by the others), to the afternoon where we returned to furniture. The rabbanit made the point that the day was to feel like a shiva call, and it did feel like a funeral observance, moving from more intense mourning to the sort of quiet remembrance with mixed laughter and tears.

But what affected me the most was the burden of centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. I’ve read the inspirational Easter sermon of John Chrysostom and heard it read at Easter Vigils – and the knowledge that his virulent hateful screeds against the Jews were able to be reprinted by the Nazis eliminates the possibility of any of his writings being sacred to me. The simplicity of the Good Friday liturgy has a stark beauty to it – but the knowledge that it at one time had anti-Jewish elements that inspired Christian mobs to attack and murder and loot their Jewish neighbors makes me grieve in a rather different way than the liturgy intends. Martin Luther made necessary reforms, necessitating a break from a church that had become thoroughly corrupt – and, again, wrote anti-Jewish attacks so vicious the Nazis printed them. I love the music of Johann Sebastian Bach inspired by Lutheran liturgy. I appreciate that many Lutheran churches have engaged in repentance of their part in anti-Semitism and in helping foster an environment that made the Holocaust possible – and yet I wonder if any act short of stripping Luther’s name from their churches can be enough. The Roman Catholic denomination commendably repented at Vatican II with Nostra Aetate, and yet anti-Semitism remains – I know someone who in this millennium studied in a diocesan seminary with a professor who has publicly defended the kidnapping of a Jewish child baptized secretly by a maid against the will of his parents and raised as a Catholic. And the evangelical world in which I was raised attempts to convert the Jews to their version of Christianity and have no problem with using the word “crusade” to describe their evangelistic efforts. I’m regularly asked by Jews if I have Jewish ancestry – and, given the fact that my ancestors are almost all from England and Scotland, who expelled the Jews in the thirteenth century, I must shake my head no. France and Spain followed suit, with Roman Catholic clergy leading the Inquisition in Spain, forcing Jews to convert, flee, or die, with only a minority of the Jewish population surviving with their Judaism intact. And the Eastern Orthodox, unlike Catholics, Anglicans, and many Protestants, have never reckoned with their anti-Semitism and history of pogroms and their liturgy remains intact with hatred of the Jewish people being a major theme of the Holy Week liturgy.

And I found myself tearing up at Maariv as we davened and listened to the chanting of Eicha, the biblical book of Lamentations, and the kinnot, the dirges that are a major part of the day’s liturgy. I would have sobbed had I not wanted to attract attention. The next morning, several of us gave reflections on different kinnot (myself included). One in particular that really affected me was a reflection on a kinnah mourning the burning of many copies of the Talmud during the reign of Louis IX the king of France in the thirteenth century. How horrifying to me that anyone could be so evil as to destroy a sacred work, even if it is a sacred work of another religion - and this was in the days before printing, when there were far fewer copies of such works, all written in manuscript form. The fact that my friend who gave this reflection celebrated completion of studying the entire Talmud about a week and a half ago (which he mentioned as a reason he chose this kinnah to reflect upon) made this all the more poignant - and I am grateful I was able to attend the celebratory feast, or siyyum, commemorating his achievement.

I study daf yomi, a daily page of Talmud through this shul and have been doing so a little over a year (after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to read on my own). I enjoy it, get a lot out of it spiritually, and have become friends with my fellow students. After hearing this during this morning's service, I am even more glad to be engaged in Talmud study, which I hope can serve as an act of tikkun or repair in response to the destruction of this sacred text, both in France in the 13th century and in other times and places.

When I got home from the morning service, I looked up Louis IX and it sickens me to my stomach that this wicked man is commemorated as a “saint” not only by the Roman Catholic denomination (thanks to a thirteenth-century pope who not only canonized this vile genocidal tyrant but kicked a member of his court in the head and threw ashes in the eyes of an archbishop he didn’t like), but by the Episcopal Church as well.  I want to tell my Episcopal priest friends, for whom celebration of his feast is optional, that if they celebrate Mass of his feast or commemorate him in the office (and this latter goes for religious and laity as well), they are committing a sin in doing so – same goes for the Independent Sacramental Movement of which I am a part.

Last Sunday, I went to Lakewood, NJ, with friends as a road trip. Lakewood is a heavily Jewish town, with the world's second largest yeshiva, and we visited an amazing Jewish bookstore. I only bought one book, but I was drawn to buy it when I saw it - the Esh Kodesh of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, the Piaseczner Rebbe, z"tz"l - sometimes referred to as the "Warsaw Ghetto Rebbe". I had been wanting to read his writings. He helped keep the Jewish community going in the Warsaw Ghetto during the dark days of the Holocaust and was himself murdered by the Nazis. The remarkable thing about this book, a collection of teachings he gave on Shabbat afternoons, was that he put the manuscript in a metal canister with a note to forward the teachings and buried it. Miraculously, it was found and the teachings have been published. This miraculous story came to mind as we were reading the kinnah.

When the murder at the Poway Chabad shul happened in 2019, in addition to sending a small donation (as I had done for the Pittsburgh synagogue as well), I bought a number of books from Chabad’s publishing arm. This might have been self-serving, but I’m glad I did – because anti-Semites seek not only to destroy Jews but Jewish books as well, and I want to take a stand against that hatred. I’m glad I have Tanya and the Chabad machzor and Haggadah and a pocket book of Tehillim that I carry in my shirt pocket when I am in Jewish spaces (and use regularly – including at Minchah, when we davened for someone who was undergoing surgery and I pulled it out for Psalm 121 which we chanted together).

Tisha B'Av this year was one of the most emotionally intense Jewish experiences I've had. I started writing up my experiences just now to share, but after writing 1,716 words and not getting everything down on paper and those words being too raw to share, I'm not ready to share yet. [I'm sharing it almost a year later.] Let's just say that I really felt intensely the very shameful burden of well over a millennium and a half of quite violent and vicious Christian persecution of the Jewish people.

Thoughts about Kinah 11 - 5781, shared at South Philadelphia Shtiebel on Tisha B'Av

This kinah is based on Eicha 4, which tradition believes Yirmiyahu wrote as lament for killing of Yoshiyahu in battle. The first word of each verse of Eicha 4 is used as the first word of each verse of this kinah. It is not a kinah lamenting the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash, but of the killing of a tzaddik, which the rabbis teach is like the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash.

Yoshiyahu’s father Amon assassinated when Yoshiyahu was 8 years old, and he became king. A Sefer Torah was found and he set about abolishing avodah zarah from Yehudah and restoring the observance of Torah and mitzvot to Israel.

The Egyptians wanted to travel through Yehudah to wage war with Assyria. Yirmiyahu advised Yoshiyahu to let them – but he did not, and fought them in battle, in which he was killed. He realized his sin and his last words are captured in Eicha 1:18 – HaShem is righteous, for I have rebelled against His word.

Why did he fail to heed the words of Yirmiyahu in a catastrophic way that cost him his life?

It must have been quite traumatic for him to lose his father to assassins at the early age of 8. I can only imagine the lack of trust he felt in others, particularly the Egyptians. And to discover the Sefer Torah and learn of the ways his father had sinned in stopping the sacrifices in the Beis HaMikdash and even burning the Torah. Reading of the redemption from Egypt – how could he allow them to come through?

Tragically, he was unable to heal the trauma from his childhood and learn new ways of interacting with others, including the Egyptians.

The kinah also mentions that he died because, although he ended public idolatry, the people continued avodah zarah in secret. It may seem unfair that he is punished for the sins of others of which he was unaware, but as the king, he was responsible for them.

How can we use Yoshiyahu’s life and death in our own lives to turn from the things that can prove to be our undoing and accept life?

We can learn that the traumas we have experienced affect us but do not define us, and learn to bring the wisdom of HaShem to each moment, listening to the wise counsel of others who, like Yirmiyahu, can help us to see clearly.

And we can do more cheshbon hanefesh, accounting of the soul, to uncover not just the obvious ways in which we turn from HaShem but the hidden avodah zarah that hides behind the doors of our hearts.

May we find refuah and teshuvah for our souls and our lives and may this Tisha B’Av be the beginning of redemption. Amen.

St. Louis and the Talmud

(I especially urge all of my Christian friends, particularly Roman Catholic, Episcopal, and independent sacramental Christians, to read this, particularly in preparation for August 25.)

For a little over a year, most days I have participated in a daf yomi, or daily Talmud, class through the South Philadelphia Shtiebel, an Orthodox synagogue in Philadelphia. The rabbis of the Talmud discuss a wide variety of topics and we in the class add our own questions and thoughts to the discussion. I find it very enriching and frequently find theological meaning in the text, despite not being Jewish myself.

There is a custom to celebrate completion of a tractate, one of the divisions of the Talmud that may take a few weeks or months to complete, with a siyyum, or feast. Since I started this during the pandemic, our practice has been to perhaps start a little early and each offer an observation or teaching from the tractate and then share a l’chaim, or festive beverage, on Zoom. However, in July, my friend Harold Chaim Fruchter, at the completion of the tractate we were studying, also completed studying the entire Talmud, since that is the point where he joined daf yomi seven and a half years ago. He and his wife Rena hosted a wonderful dinner at their home and he gave a short talk about his experience as we finished the class. It was a very joyous occasion.

A week and a half later, I experienced something very different in the observance of Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year, mourning the destruction of both the first two Temples as well as many other calamities that befell the Jewish people through the millenia. One of the characteristics of this fast day is the recitation of kinot, or laments written to commemorate various tragedies through history. Different people (myself included) were asked to give a reflection on a particular kinah. All of the ones I heard others give were profoundly moving, but the one that affected me the most was the one Chaim gave, on a lament over the destruction of over 12,000 copies of the Talmud in France by orders of King Louis IX, at the urging of Pope Gregory IX. The juxtaposition of his siyyum and his reflection on the kinah was quite poignant. I do not understand the blasphemy inherent in destroying a sacred work of this nature and I was horrified. King Louis also led two crusades, which resulted in much death and destruction as well, as well as confiscating Jewish property and expelling some of the French Jews.

But what horrified me the most was the realization that Louis is still regarded as a saint in both the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches, as well as by many in the independent sacramental movement. His feast is observed on August 25. He is regarded as a patron of the Third Order of St. Francis. To its credit, the Episcopal Church at least acknowledges his antisemitism and burning of the 12,000 copies of the Talmud, among other acts of violence against the Jews, in his biography in the liturgical book Lesser Feasts and Fasts. In both the modern Roman Catholic and Episcopal rites, the observance of the feast is optional. I hope and pray all churches may remove him from their calendars and cease to venerate him as a saint.

However, I would like to suggest to Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, independent sacramental Christians, and other Christians that this day be used as a day of repentance for Christian antisemitism and reflection on how Christians can combat this scourge, unfortunately still with us today. I would also like to suggest that Christians take the opportunity to learn from the Talmud, which has much spiritual wisdom to teach us, and to that end I offer one amazing teaching by the Talmudic sage Beruriah that has profoundly affected my spiritual life since I first learned it in college. When her husband prayed for vengeance against bandits who had robbed him, citing the last verse of Psalm 104, “Let sinners disappear from the earth, and the wicked be no more” – Beruriah said the reading should be “Let SINS disappear from the earth, and the wicked will be no more” – because they will have done teshuvah and no longer be wicked – and he did so and they repented. I have thought of this interpretation each time I have recited that psalm in the intervening 30-odd years! One excellent place to start to learn more is Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s (z”l) book The Essential Talmud.

May the shameful antisemitic legacy of King Louis IX be a lesson to all of us to abandon hatred, especially antisemitism.