Adina Roth – Head of Jewish Life

The Party that Brought our World Down

Some years ago, I read a powerful article about how kind parents create kind children. The writer of the piece was suggesting that parents play an important role in cultivating a culture of kindness among their children. She even said parents should teach their children to invite the ‘less popular’ children to birthday parties, prioritising inclusivity over personal preference.

This week as we mark Tisha B’av, we remember that our Temple was destroyed because an ‘unpopular kid’ was excluded from an ancient party. #truestory! The Talmud in the Tractate of Gittin relates that in Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple, there was a man who nursed a ferrible with someone called Bar Kamtza. At the same time, he had a friend by the uncannily similar name of Kamtza. One day the Ferribled Man threw a party and dispatched his servant with invitations. The servant made a fatal error, delivering the invitation not to Kamtza (the friend), but Bar Kamtza (the non-friend.) Bar Kamtza was delighted, perhaps seeing the invitation as an opportunity for rapprochement and he showed up at the party. He had dished himself up some food when Ferribled Man chanced upon the mistaken guest. “Get out,” he said. Realising very quickly that his invitation was a mistake, Bar Kamtza tried to save face and asked if he could at least finish his food. The host would not hear of it. Bar Kamtza then pleaded he would cover the costs of up to half the party but the host insisted on his expulsion. The Rabbis, moral leaders of Jerusalem and guests at the party, witnessed the humiliating scene without saying a word.

As the story has it, Bar Kamtza was aggrieved at being ousted in front of the entire community. He was especially angry at the Rabbis for witnessing his humiliation without batting an eyelid. He went to the Roman Caesar and created a ruse, leading the Caesar to think that the Jewish people disrespected him. This provoked the Caesar to bring a siege against Jerusalem and eventually, to destroy our Temple.

Kamtza and Bar Kamtza are really ‘every human’. Kamtza is the guy who gets the party invites and Bar Kamtza is the guy who doesn’t! It has always struck me that there is a tiny difference in their names, pointing to the idea that we construct differences around people but at the end of the day, we are all human…fundamentally the same. South African poet, Sipho Sepamla, reminds us in his poem, Da Same Da Same, that one person is not so different from another and that all human beings share the commons of heart. In the poor man’s dialect he chants, “dis heart go-go da same”.

Our Rabbis are careful to tell us that the Temple was not destroyed because of some failure in ritualistic worship. Rather, the destruction of the Temple is linked to baseless hatred, sinat chinam. It all comes down to a party! Poet David Whyte tells us “there is no house like the house of belonging”. The Jewish people had become masters of exclusion and something had failed in our spiritual practice. Our Temple (referred to as a bayit, a home) had become an empty structure stripped of ethical content.

There are multiple broken pieces of our world, but baseless hatred is repaired by baseless kindness, the painstaking work of cultivating ourselves and our children into mensches. We can extend an invitation to a ‘less popular’ kid, or teach our kids to connect with children who might be outside their comfort zone. Perhaps, we don’t need the physical structure of a Temple anymore, but we all need the spiritual home of feeling included, “There is no house like the house of belonging”.

Shabbat Shalom