By the Rivers of Babylon

By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept as we remembered Zion.                    Psalms 137:1 Jeremiah said to them (the Israelite exiles):”I take heaven and earth as my witnesses, if you had cried but once while still in Zion, you would not have been exiled.”          Midrash Tehilim 137

      At first glance, Jeremiah’s comment is difficult to understand, since the time for crying would seemingly be after  the Temple’s destruction and Israel’s subsequent exile from its Land.

However, there are cries of sorrow and cries of joy. Jeremiah’s intention is: had the Israelites cried tears of joy (even once) during the time they were in Zion, thereby expressing their joy at the Temple’s existence, then they would not have been exiled.

        Two verses later, we find the Babylonian captors’ taunt of the Levites (who were responsible for musical accompaniment of the Temple service):

For there our captors asked us to sing; our tormentors requested songs of joy: "Sing us a song of Zion!" they said.

The Midrash [Breishit Rabbati, Parashat vaYetzei] provides the Levites’ response:

World class fools; had we but sung (the song of Zion) we would not have been exiled from our Land.”

    The first Midrash elucidates the second. Rabbi Shimshon Pinkus comments that crying flows from within a person and therefore is an expression of a deep attachment. Accordingly, we can understand the Levites’ response to be: had we but sung a song of Zion which originated from within us, from our hearts and souls, we would not have been exiled.

      In truth, the exiled Israelites took Jerusalem with them to Babylonia and to all corners of the earth to which we were subsequently exiled. It is unique in world history for a nation to have been exiled from its land and return to re-establish its sovereignty, and we have done it twice, with the second exile having lasted 1878 years! It is clear that the reason we Jews were privileged to return to Jerusalem is the simple fact that we never abandoned her. Throughout the years of exile, three times daily and whenever reciting the Grace After Meals, we continued to pray for the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the Holy City is prominent in all our rituals. This connection to our eternal capital has allowed us to return, while all those who tried to keep us from her have disappeared from history.

      May the tears of sorrow we shed over Jerusalem in her destruction bring us to be privileged to cry tears of joy at her rebuilding, and may we merit singing songs of Zion which originate from the depths of our hearts and souls, within the rebuilt Jerusalem.

This Dvar Torah is dedicated to the memory of my wife. Sunday, 14 Menaḥem Av, would have been our 44^th wedding anniversary. It was the tears of joy which Gloria shed in Jerusalem which first attracted me to her. Through God’s grace, we had more than 41 years together to cry tears of joy and of sorrow within the Holy City, with the joyful tears exceeding the sorrowful ones.