Strings Attached and the Disengagement Process
While life is mostly about engagement; there are times when we must disengage. Disengagement is positive when it is from a stifling atmosphere.
STRINGS ATTACHED AND THE DISENGAGEMENT
PROCESS
Expulsion!
As we prepare for the Shabbat that precedes Tisha B’Av, the national day of mourning the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, we cannot help but to think about the tragic expulsion of thousands of Jews from their homes in Israel.
Whatever one’s politics may be with regard to Israel and the various “peace-processes,” one cannot fail to empathize with the thousands of Jews who will be forced to leave their homes, synagogues, cemeteries that will all be destroyed, without any indication that it will lead to anything positive. And even if it would have a positive outcome, it would still be a tragedy. Just think if we were told by our government that we will be uprooted from our homes and communities that were built with blood, sweat and tears. Even if it were for a good cause, how would we feel?
How meaningful will we find our recitation of Lamentations on the upcoming day of Tisha B’Av; the day that marks the beginning of our exile, when we were driven out of our land.
Disengagement from Exile
If there is a silver lining in this euphemistic “disengagement” process is that it is a valid and positive symbol for another form of disengagement that we must engage in—disengagement from exile.
Exile, as discussed on many occasions, is not just a geographical concept. It is also a state of mind. We can be in our own home or homeland and feel no special feeling for it as if we were in a strange and foreign place. We can even feel alienated from our true inner selves, our spiritual and G-dly essence.
This sense of spiritual alienation is what the destruction of the Temple accomplished, and this is what we have mourned for, for close to 2,000 years—the loss of our ability to feel at home with our G-d, Torah, people and land. We can even live in Jerusalem and not feel connected there. This is Galus-exile. And it is this thought process that we must disengage from.
G-d’s Disengagement
There is yet another dimension of “disengagement” that is now relevant.
Our Sages tell us that G-d performs all of the Mitzvoscommandments that He commanded us to do. So if G-d wants us to disengage, how does G-d fulfill His disengagement?
Perhaps, we can find the answer in a Talmudic passage that employs the term “disengage-l’natko.”
No Strings Attached—Literally!
The Talmud discusses the laws of a get, a divorce document, which must be given by the husband to the wife for it to take effect. When a husband gives her the getdocument, but is still holding on to it, is an invalid get.
The Talmud discusses an exception to the foregoing rule. In a case where the husband holds a string that is attached to the get and has the capacity to “disengage” the get from the wife by pulling the string, the get is invalid and they are not divorced. There can be no real separation from another as long as one has the ability to retrieve and “disengage” the instrument of divorce from the other.
The analogue to this is that the relationship between G-d and the Jewish people has been Biblically compared to a marriage. The period of exile that commenced on Tisha B’Av is likened to a divorce. However, G-d always has a “string attached” to the so called divorce process, which he is ready to pull—and disengage it—from our hands, thereby reversing the exile and returning us to our original loving marriage.
If there is room for disengagement talk in this Tisha B’Av period it is about our need to disengage from the mindset of Galus, and to beseech G-d to disengage from the getdivorce process known as exile.
May we all realize the fulfillment of the prophetic promise that these sad days will be transformed into days of celebration and festivity, when the fast day of Tisha B’Av will be known as the “feast” day.
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Devarim by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
