‘My eyes water Be’eri’

If time is not a flat circle but a spiral, if each year is a little different than the year before, even as the holidays that shape it remain unchanged, then this year is a time when the spiral got bent. Remember when one of the curves on your Slinky got bent, and you couldn’t quite get it to sit perfectly in a coil again?

That’s what this year has been like.

This year, on erev Tisha B’Av, as we sat on the floor in the darkened shul, just before we read about the horrors, cruelty, grief, and despair in Eicha, in the haunting melody that somehow mixes pain and beauty and uses the beauty to sear the pain into our brains, my rabbi, Roly Matalon, talked about how, despite the inherent drama, despite the words and the music and the darkness, it’s been hard to immerse ourselves fully in it. It’s always been somewhat of an abstraction. It’s necessarily a bit performative. We have to imagine ourselves into the story.

That was far less true this year. October 7 was just 10 months ago.

We always sing kinot — elegies — and other lamentations between the chapters of Eicha. This year, our rabbis added three, each in grieving memory of a kibbutz gutted and its people butchered on October 7. One, written by a survivor of Kfar Aza, is called “Lamentation for a Beloved Land.” Another, “How She Sat Alone: A Lamentation,” is by a survivor of Nahal Oz.

The third, Kinat Be’eri, has words written by the Israeli musician Yagel Haroush, which he set to the music of a traditional Moroccan piyyut. We sang it in Hebrew, but our song sheets included a translation by Yehudah Cohn.

Each of the five verses begins with Eicha.

“Eicha Be’eri” — “How my well has become my grave.”

“Eicha Torah — “How the Torah, arrayed and displayed, with all its splendor could be of no aid!”

“Eicha Israel — “How Israel, on a day of God-calling and asking for life, got mayhem instead!”

“Eicha imahot — “How those mothers, girls, young women, were led away captive, as in a pogrom!”

And “Ve’eichah etma bore roma” — “How I have wondered, creator on high….”

Rabbi Matalon explained his choice of this kina, and its power.

Yagel Haroush is a musician and composer who is well-versed in Middle Eastern Jewish music, and particularly in the music of Morocco, he said. The melody to which Haroush set his words traditionally is used on Shmini Atzeret, and then the words are the plea for rain; that version also traditionally is used on Tisha B’Av.

“Haroush asked one of his teachers why the melody for rain is the same melody that is used for Tisha B’Av, and his teacher told him that it’s because when we pray for rain, we are praying for life,” Rabbi Matalon said. To pray for rain is to acknowledge the uncertainty of life and to exercise our faith in asking for it. That same uncertainty, and ultimately that same faith, is part of Tisha B’Av.

Another reason, he said, came from a friend, who was quoting his grandfather in Morocco. The plea for rain on Shmini Atzeret is tied to Tisha B’Av through that melody because Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah are the culmination of the High Holy Days, and Jews would be leaving Jerusalem filled with joyous exhaustion; they’d fulfilled the mitzvot, and surely they must have earned the rewards to which they knew they were entitled. But no, Roly’s friend’s grandfather said. You cannot ask for rain with any sense of entitlement. Despite everything you’ve done, still you have not earned it. The request must come with humility — and how better to get a sense of humility than to evoke Tisha B’Av?

And what better time of year to ask for water than on Tisha B’Av? Fasting Jews yearn for water to drink that day. It also falls during the hottest, driest time of year in Israel. The parched land itself cracks for water.

Also, and of course, October 7 was Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah in Israel. Now, when we think of despair, we think immediately of those once-joyous days.

The end of Yagel Haroush’s kina, as we sang it, felt like a punch in the stomach. This is how it ends:

“So now arise to light my lamp,

“From your spring of mercy heal my wound,

“As welling with tears my eyes water Be’eri.”

Be’eri. Just the word draws tears.

But, Rabbi Matalon said, like traditional kinot, like the book of Eicha, whose darkness is pierced by hope in the end, this kina, which is filled with despair, also ends with hope.

That last line. “As welling with tears my eyes water Be’eri.” The name of the kibbutz, a place where hopeful Jews went to live close to Gaza, working toward friendship, finding slaughter, is enough to evoke tears.

But read it again.

“My eyes water Be’eri.” The tears I shed will help water this place, and that will help it move toward hope. Be’eri means “my well.” Water, like light, is hope.

So Tisha B’Av does not offer an easy way out of despair. The pain is real. It cannot be sung away. But the simple fact that once again there we were, on the floor, in the dark, hearing these words, singing these songs, means that somehow, on some level, we still have some hope. If we did not, we would not be there.

“We are thirsty,” Rabbi Matalon said. “The earth needs water. The holidays are coming, and we are going to try to bridge the gap between now and then. We will try to bring abundance and water again, even though now it feels like death.”

We’ll still be here.

—JP

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