Okay, Aicha. I'm not going to lie, I'm not super excited to write these next few blog posts but I'll power through them. Disclaimer: They probably won't be full of any happiness or positivity. Anyway, here's #1 of Aicha blog posts 2014:
Reading through Aicha is not the most fun thing you could ever do. It makes Kohelet look like a roller coaster ride. It's sad and negative and maybe it's because of the whole "Sally" story but Yerushalayim starts to sound pretty annoying after she goes on and on about her loneliness for 22 pasukim. The city is lonely and all of her people have left her, and she makes sure that G-d knows that. At first, she is angry. Her friends betrayed her and are now her enemies. She has no one to comfort her and G-d is the one who afflicted all of this pain onto her. The Mekonan (Yirmiahu) gives the objective account. He's kindof like our insider who's telling us how it actually is. He says that Yerushalayim sinned and it was her actions that caused all of this to happen. Now her enemies laugh at her and Yerushalayim won't stop crying. Her cheeks are even wet with tears. During the first part she is angry with G-d and feels lonely because her "friends" have abandoned her. During the second part she still blames G-d for the excessive punishment He afflicted onto her and is sad because there is no one to comfort her. Eventually she admits to having rebelled and realizes why this is happening to her. All of this is passim 1-20.
Honestly, during all of those pasukim, I was bored. I even stopped taking notes (even though I usually try since the people around me prefer to write a novel every class) because it just seemed like every pasuk was saying the exact same thing. Every once in a while there would be a pasuk that would indicate that she reached a new stage in her grieving process, but other than that, I was tired of hearing from this seemingly sad and lonely and annoying woman. I understand that it was an extremely sad and depressing time in our history but Aicha makes Yerushalayim seem like that old woman who just cries about her past all day and you just want to tell her to stop and move on.
The first place that I saw that she was not come immature girl like Sally who is crying because she was mean and that drove away her friends was in pasukim 21-22. She says that her enemies are glad to see her in pain and she asks G-d to "let them be like [her]." She asks G-d to punish her enemies like He has punished her. At first it seems like this is an immature request. It's like Sally is fighting with her former friends and she is the one who gets caught. After she gets her punishment she tells her principal that she understands why she's being punished but her friends should be punished as well. If she's going down, then she's taking all of them with her. That is one way to look at it. In fact, that is probably how I'd view it if I was reading this on my own. In class we talked about a different approach to this request. If Sally's friends were to forgive her and take her back, being the immature little girl she is, she'd probably go back to them without a second thought. People want to be liked. They want to have friends. They want to feel special. All the time you see people get hurt by their "friends" or their boyfriend/girlfriend but as soon as they get the option to go back, they run back into it. This is the problem that abused women face. They keep running back into an unhealthy relationship as soon as their boyfriend/husband wants them back. This is unhealthy and immature. You must be able to see the different between what is good for you and what is healthy and what is only dragging you down.
Yerushalayim is able to realize that these "friends" are not good for her. They led her astray and caused her to sin. She asks G-d to punish them because she knows that she will never take them back and they are the ones that caused all of this pain and destruction on Bnei Yisrael by causing her to sin.
It takes a while, but these two pasukim show us that there is more to Yerushalayim than just wet cheeks and loneliness. I have a feeling there's still much more crying and sadness left so I'll just stay strong and try to get through it.
I think that the example with Sally helps make Eicha a little more bearable. And it fits really perfectly which is cool, too.
ReplyDeleteThe imagery of the wet cheeks is very poetic. I like it. Though, like most things in Eicha, it's very sad.
I really enjoyed this blog. It was a nice summary of everything we have learned. I liked how you talked about how abused women keep on returning and that brings them down even more because that is completely true. When I first heard about the crying I felt very bad for Yerushalyim but as the passukim went on and it dragged out, I also got a little bored. The end passukim brought in a little more ease.
ReplyDeleteWhile I understand how boring reading through the sorrow of Yerushalayim can be, I think it is extremely important to truly understand what "she was feeling". It can be repetitive at times, but I think it really shows how much of an impact the situation had on the people. I don't think she sounds immature at all, I think it's perfectly normal to want to cry and complain and be negative about such a horrible situation. Sure, at first she blames it on other people, but once she takes responsibilities for her sins, it seems more like an appropriate response. She is deeply saddened by what she did and it implies that she feels guilty. She just wants to express how she is feeling.
ReplyDelete