Tragedy or Triumph?

Here's some appropriate Erev Shabbos irony. Just when the sun is out, and last week's rainy stretch seems like a leftover June thing, and we think we can really begin to unwind, the "three weeks of remembering" commence, delivering the annual collective Jewish summertime buzzkill.

This somewhat fetishized period, commemorating all the bad s... that went down over two thousand years, courtesy of the Romans, Cossacks, Nazis, the crusaders, the inquisitors, and encompassing the destruction of BOTH first and second Temples in Jerusalem—reaches its zenith on Tisha B'av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of AV, or "the saddest day on the Jewish calendar."

In truth, however, it takes only a slight peeling back of some thin layers of missing the point, to recognize the absolute depth of positivity going on over here.

Really? How so?

All right. Look here then. Layer peeled. ("how'd you like me noooow")

So what is it that we see? Hmmm. This is very different. It sure looks like the collective unconscious of an entire people repeatedly told in every era and every contingent (paraphrasing the son in "Breaking Bad" saying) "why don't you just &#%€ die already?" —responding by flipping an emphatic birdie at history TTTO "I'm still standing, yeh yeh yeh..."

OK? That's what I'm trying to say. We aren't romanticizing our Tzoris.

There is a triumphant grin concealed behind every tear we have ever shed. And breaking it down to its raw simplicity—It doesn't get better than being around to tell the story of your own annihilation. Right?

The stories we tell might have a "victim" exterior, but the real story behind the story resonates with positivity, hope, and empowerment.

So I'll close with the promised irony. And delicious irony it is, that this week's Torah portion, PINCHAS, mentions all of the annual Jewish holidays, most of them containing Biblical requirements for CELEBRATION!

Reading the Torah portion equivalent of Party Central during THIS time skips over the Oy and goes right to the Joy. It does so by aligning thematically with the inner upbeat story hiding within the commemoration of so many centuries of persecution and destruction.

There it is. We so got this.