Tisha be'Av, Tu be'Av and a harrowing hostage account

Just over a week ago, on the night of Tisha Be’Av, I started making my way through Eli Sharabi’s account of his experiences as a hostage in Gaza. The book is direct and to the point, providing readers with the impression that they have a constant birds-eye view of Eli’s suffering and survival techniques throughout his time in captivity.

While the whole book creates a tension and anxiety that makes it difficult to put down, there is one particular passage that jumped out at me from the page. This passage relates how, at one point of his ordeal, he was confined into a small tunnel area together with a number of other hostages. Their captors would provide meagre meals of pitta and dips to the entire group without apportioning food between them.

Eli is struck by the way in which the hostages seem to split into two groups: those who are single and do not have children instinctively grab what they can to assuage their persistent hunger while those who are married with children approach automatically with a different perspective. They identify the needs of the whole group as those of their own and look for a way to apportion the food fairly.

Upon reading this my mind jumped to a teaching in the Tosefta Sanhedrin (chap. 7) that one who is a eunuch or one without children is disqualified from presiding over capital cases. As it was explained to me, a person who is in a full marital and family relationship looks at the world, and in particular, people, in a different way. This is not a criticism of those who are not in such a situation – but it would explain why Judaism (and perhaps religion in general) places such an emphasis on the pivotal role of family.

With Tu Be’Av – often referred to as the Jewish Valentine’s Day – being marked yesterday, it is a timely reminder of how sexual activity is not restricted or seen as negative by the Torah. Rather, the Torah seeks to channel such activity in a manner that minimises its ability to influence the mind towards viewing sex from a purely self-centred perspective. This is why Jewish law promotes sexual intercourse within the strict confines of marriage – a meaningful relationship based on mutual love and respect. In the context of a relationship of this nature, which is predicated on giving rather than taking, an activity which could otherwise embody the most extreme form of self-gratification and even exploitation now becomes an opportunity to superimpose a higher set of values upon the person’s inherently selfish focus.

The notion that sexuality can be profoundly transformed and elevated when placed in the context of marriage is developed by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who writes:

“If you should inquire as to the essence and meaning of the institution of marriage, I would say that through marriage the miraculous transition from the I-it contact to the I-you relationship occurs. Marriage personalizes sexuality as the joint experience of the I and the you.”

It would seem that Eli Sharabi’s anecdote that individuals who have experienced this form of relationship gain an altogether different way of relating to all other people that they encounter – not just those in their immediate family.

Rav Soloveitchik taught in this vein that two different people can perform an identical act of kindness – yet the attitudes that govern these acts can make them effectively worlds apart.

A regular person, he writes, will perform an act of charity, giving a coin to a poor person.

Regarding a normal act of kindness:

“I am committed to genuinely helping a poor man, am genuinely committed to furthering his wellbeing … [M]y personality is still individual, still unique, still all-exclusive. I help out the Thou but he remains other to me.”

For a person who has truly internalised the Torah’s message of loving others as themselves, however:

“my personality shifts from being all-exclusive to being all-inclusive. The poor man is no longer an other separate from me. In God-like fashion my helping him out becomes a way of letting him share in my existence and reality. My helping him out thus becomes an act of imitatio Dei, an act of God-like hesed in the sense that I do not simple give to him, but I identify with him”.

A profound message contained in just one small passage of Eli Sharabi’s powerful and educational account of how to survive and retain one’s human dignity in the most challenging and degrading circumstances.

We continue to pray constantly for the rest of the hostages – including some of Eli’s tunnel-mates – to be released immediately.

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