Parashat Devarim and the Book of Eichah: Two Sides of Loneliness

Social contact is essential for human beings’ survival. Children grow up abnormally when sufficient human contact is not provided, and, a recent New Yorker article reports, prisoners subjected to solitary confinement suffer extreme psychological distress, often with long term psychiatric repercussions. Isolation is one of the worst forms of torture.

It is no wonder, then, that the book of Lamentations (Eichah) – read on the upcoming Fast of Av, to commemorate the destruction of the temples and other Jewish calamities -- begins with a terrible cry of loneliness. Eikhah yashvah badad – “Alas, lonely sits the city!” The city is like a widow, says Jeremiah, lonely and longing for its happy past. Of all the terrible events that befell the Jewish people, its isolation is the first one mentioned, the emblem of tragedy and despair.

Tradition understands the temples’ destructions and the loneliness they engendered to be the just deserts of a cruel society, a society which, according to the Talmud, was known for its sin’at hinam, its baseless hatred.

One famous story tells of a man who made a party and instructed his servant to issue invitations to all his friends, including one man named Kamtza. Now in that same town there was also a man named bar Kamtza, who was the enemy of the party-giver. The servant mistakenly invited the wrong Kamtza, and bar Kamtza, the enemy, appeared at the party. The party-giver angrily demanded that he leave the party, but bar Kamtza, embarrassed, asked if he could stay and pay for his own food and drink. The party-giver cruelly refused, and bar Kamtza even offered to pay for all the food and drink at the party. But the party-giver insisted, and bar Kamtza was forcibly removed. Ultimately bar Kamtza became angry at all the sages at the party who did nothing to help him, and he went and informed against them to the Roman authorities, eventually leading to the destruction of the Temple (Talmud Gitin 55b).

And so it was the infliction of emotional pain and isolation on individuals within the community that ultimately led to the breakdown of the society as a whole, that led to the cry of loneliness and despair of the city itself. God heard the cry of the mistreated, and He made us all feel it. Eikhah yashvah badad. How we have all come to feel the loneliness bar Kamtza felt!

BUT there is an alternative. And the tradition offers it to us at the very same moment as it presents this painful glimpse into a cruel society. The alternative is presented through another Eikhah cry of loneliness. It is the cry of Moshe in this week’s parsha, parashat Devarim, a parsha which is always read on the shabbat before Tisha b’Av.

Moshe’s Eikhah cry is not the cry of despair we saw in Lamentations, but a cry for help, a call to solve the problem of aloneness. Eikhah esa levadi, “How can I carry this burden alone” (Dt 1:12), he asks. How can I handle the burdens of judging this large people on my own? He feels overwhelmed and isolated by the responsibility. But here there is a solution – other people can help him. Moshe solves his problem by getting others involved, by not going it alone. That is the key to loneliness. Other people must be willing and able to help. In Moshe’s case, a whole network of judges was arranged to share his burdens, to be his co-administrators, his helpmates.

At the dawn of society, in the Garden of Eden, Adam, too, experienced loneliness, and God recognized it as such. Lo tov heyot ha’adam levado. It is not good for man to be alone. What did God do? He understood that there is only one solution for such, the most basic of human problems. He made for Adam another person, a woman, to be with. Why? As an ezer kenegdo, as someone who could help him. That is exactly what the people at the party did not do for bar Kamtza. They did not help him in his isolation. And that is exactly what the city of Jerusalem did not have. Again and again, Jeremiah tells us eyn lah menahem, “She has none to comfort her.” Ahhh. That would have been the solution. Someone to be with, to help her and to comfort her.

The two and a half tribes at the end of this week’s parsha understand this solution. They act as help-mates to their fellow tribes. These two and a half tribes have already received their land holdings, on the eastern side of the Jordan river, in land that was already conquered by the Israelites. Nonetheless, these two and a half tribes agree to stand at the head of the army that will conquer the land on the other side of the Jordan, land that will be given to the other tribes. Here is an act of supreme social solidarity. These tribes do not abandon their brothers to fight on their own, but stand with them, as help-mates, as partners. There is no loneliness here.

We are all fundamentally alone. The question is how we approach that problem. Do we say to others: “You are an island. You can handle it all on your own.” Or do we serve, each of us, as help-mates for each other, creating a society where there need be no one truly alone? Our communal commemoration of Tisha b’Av, the experience of fasting and mourning together as a community, gives us a taste of just such social solidarity even as we commemorate its absence in other generations.

The rabbis understand that it is in our power to bring about either our own despair or own uplifting. They make the connection between the two cries of Eikhah, that of Moshe and that of Jeremiah in Lamentations, and they say: “If you are worthy, you will call out the call of Moshe’s Eikhah, and if you are not worthy, you will call out the call of Jeremiah’s Eikhah.”