Rabbi Benjamin Segal on the 'Book of Lamentations'

Next week, The Book of Lamentations (Eicha – which in English means “How can it have happened?”) will be read on Tisha B’Av, the annual day of mourning. Having written a new commentary on this book, I can only feel that reading it in 5784 (2024) resembles nothing less than peering into an ancient dusty mirror to find eerie reflections of oneself.

Long ago, Nahmanides (Ramban, 13th century) commented (in the recently discovered introduction to his commentary on Lamentations, the full text of which is still missing) that if there was but one author of Lamentations, he nevertheless wrote the book as if it were written by five separate individuals.

That is both insightful and accurate. The chapters are written as four different formats of alphabetic acrostic, with each proclaiming its isolation by going “from A to Z,” while the fifth, including 22 verses as per the alphabet’s count, is not an acrostic.

We can now also see, after the first chapter, that each elegist reacted to the chapters that came before, offering in each instance an alternative approach. It is in that dynamic dialogue that the book finds much of its fascination, and it is within those presentations we find five echoes of our present shock and confusion.

Chapter One’s heart-rending metaphor of a desperate bewildered widow in tears dramatically communicates the overwhelming sadness. She constantly seeks comfort but finds none. The Lord seems not to see. One need not search long and hard to find echoes today.

The second elegist, however, although greatly appreciative of the first and imitative of many of his or her usages, seems to cry out: “Not only sadness, but anger, burning anger!” Here the descriptions of the deity’s actions are described by a tremendous variety of violent terms, and by the end of the chapter the guide word “enemy,” used in the singular, hints not only at the Babylonians but also at the Holy One, blessed be He. Again, one recognizes the reactions not only around us but also in ourselves.

There are always those who believe that they can explain tragedy and encompass it in some positive overview. So it is in the case of the third elegist, who uses personal experience to claim that God is good and forgiving, thus ultimately recommending prayer.

Explanations fall short

However, the chapter collapses in on itself when the people pray but report back that the deity does not answer. The poet continues to hope for personal salvation, but this longest chapter ends as a recorded failure of the efforts on the national level.

Our [current] time is similar. Explanations are offered, but we realize that they fall short. There is no pathway to adequate response, and it is not received from on high.

The following elegist, the fourth, having seen Chapter Three, accepts the narrative of that chapter and therefore uniquely includes no prayer. The poet turns instead to third-person reportage, framed in terms of hyperbolic metaphors and references.

Ultimately, the attempt to describe from a distance falls apart, and the author finds some solace in the use of the first-person plural, “we,” much as we today are witness to the comfort granted by the community.

At the end, the poet escapes into a baseless assertion that things will surely get better. Once again, the echoes to modernity are chilling.

It is the fifth and final elegy that is the most depressing of all. Articulated as a prayer that recites the horrors of the destruction in curt, insistent descriptions, ultimately there is a demand that the Holy One be the one to initiate a change. Distressingly, this verse is followed by one further declaration (liturgy adds a calming repetition at the end, which is not considered here): “But no – “You have totally rejected us.” Any hope is so dim that it is almost not seen. Do we not feel so on occasion even today?

Not long afterward, emerging Jewish tradition would ameliorate the bitter ending by repeating the next to the last verse (“Return us to You…”) in order to end the book on a more positive note, and, through the prophecies in Isaiah 40-66, assuring a reversal. Some of these prophecies were later slotted as the seven haftarah readings after Tisha B’Av.

But we owe The Book of Lamentations its own due. It ends in depression, a last reflection of the opening “How can it be?” but now on steroids. This courage to so end the book was in part a gift to Jewish thinking across the millennia. We accept the responsibility of not hiding from observed truth, and if we (temporarily?) have no explanations, so be it. What happened is not to be easily swept aside. We must confront it and confront it again.

That dusty, ancient mirror turns out to be one of our most valuable possessions. ■

The writer, a rabbi, is the author of a new commentary, Lamentations: Doors to Darkness (Gefen Publishing and Schechter Institute), completing his cycle on all five megillot (scrolls). He is a former president of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies.