Image of the Week: Tisha B'Av (Ninth of Av)
© D. Yael Bernhard
This coming week marks Tisha B'Av, the Ninth of Av on the Hebrew calendar – a day of mourning for Jews all over the world. The tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people on this day throughout the ages have changed the course of history, including the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70CE. As the massive blocks of stone were felled by the Romans, the long era of centralized Judaism came to an end. The first synagogues popped up in small communities, replacing ritual and sacrifice with worship and study. Jews were scattered and exiled in a diaspora that continues to this day in the multicultural Jewish communities all over the world.
Other tragedies have taken place on the Ninth of Av over the centuries, as antisemitism has risen in waves in response to plagues and droughts, conquests, crusades, and the many forms of human hate and prejudice that follow ignorance and upheaval. On this day in 1290, the Jews were expelled from England, and in 1306 they were expelled from France. In 1492, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain enforced an edict on the Ninth of Av that expelled over 350,000 Jews from their thriving communities – many of which were older than the United States is today. Infamous milestones in WWI and WWII were also reached on this day, bringing the dark legacy of Tisha B’Av into the 20th century. As the saying goes, history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, but it sure has a way of rhyming.
These catastrophes have left a scar on the collective soul of the Jewish people. Religious Jews observe Tisha B’Av with fasting, prayer, and reading the Book of Lamentations. The three weeks prior are also marked by mourning and refraining from certain activities.
But even for non-observant Jews, the Ninth of Av is a sober reminder of the history that has shaped our world. Not a Jew walks the earth whose ancestors have not been affected by the events commemorated on this day – and indeed, these effects ripple down the ages through Christian lineages as well.
New beginnings have also emerged from the ashes of the fires of destruction, including the rise of Rabbinic Judaism after the fall of the Second Temple; the flourishing of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) after the Inquisition; and the birth of the State of Israel after the Holocaust.
My painting of Tisha B’Av shows a solitary Jew grappling with all this history – for wrestling with complexity and paradox is embedded in the DNA of Jewish tradition. Turned inward and shedding tears, yet pregnant with hope for the future, the figure holds within her fragments of flames and ancient architecture reminiscent of the lost Temple. She is painted on a collage of textured rice papers pasted on the canvas to make a coarse, organic surface, like weathered Jerusalem stone. Out of this creased and jagged, flawed and irregular background, her flesh emerges – as if her own body were architecture, built of the history that she bears within.
We must all come to terms with our history, whether individual or societal, and do well to honor it, that it may inform a better future.
Tisha B’Av is the image for August 2024 in my newly-published calendar, The Jewish Eye 5784/2024 Calendar of Art – available in my webstore ($20 with shipping included) or on Amazon ($16.95). If you buy it from Amazon, please consider writing a review!
The original painting of Tisha B'Av sold almost immediately to a collector who is neither Jewish nor religious, and hangs somewhere in the suburbs of L.A. The owner claims the figure is alive, and that the flames undulate sometimes.
You can view the entire calendar here.
A good week to all!
D Yael Bernhard
children's books • fine art • illustration
