jUmPIN' JULY DEALS The Danger And The Possibility :•5•5A.F,4 '36 month lease based on 12,000 mi. per year and approved credit, plus tax, title, plate doc. & acquisition fees. Total dues at signing $1045. RABBI ARTHUR WASKOW Special to the Jewish News he Temples burn. No sur- prise: the Holy Temple is a microcosm of our universe, so it burns in searing dry midsummer when there is no rain, when the chamsin wind scorches the A earth until the land itself seems ready to burn. We are exhausted: the burnout of our- selves and souls. And yet, with all its pain, the image turns to birthing. The rabbis Tisha BAv of the Talmud teach that on the afternoon of Tisha B'Av, the very day of the destruction, Mashiach — Messiah — is born; not yet to come into the fullness of messianic time, but already birthing new life. This is a teaching that in our own lives we know is true. When someone we love.dies, Jewish wisdom teaches that we must lift a shovel full of earth to place upon the coffin. With our own muscles, we must acknowledge that the death has happened. Only then are we freed into new life. And in the same way, when an old idea dies, or an old friendship, or a worn-out social system — when these things die — we must mourn them fully and deeply if we are to free our- selves to move forward into new life. We could have dismissed the burning of the Jewish Temple as a momentary military defeat. The Babylonians burned the building? So what, that is what armies do. The Romans destroyed it once again? So what, that is what all empires do. Instead, we affirmed that this destruction encoded an existential, archetypal truth. God's Own Self went into exile. This notion that Tisha B'Av encodes a universal truth is not an invention of the modern age. Long ago, the rabbis of the Talmud assigned as the prophetic .• 42EDO • •• sta. /tIket tt, Mod's< Aad f.td 103 OF•aa"'••4 : •••••• • ' '36 month lease based on 12,000 mi. per year and approved credit. $2350 due at signing, plus tax, title, plate & doc. fees. 248-471-0044 www.billcookauto.com VOLKSWAGEN Farmington Hills 37911 Grand River W. of Halsted HOURS: Mon. & Thurs. 9-9 • Tues., Wed. & Fri. 9-6 Our My Window on the WorldTM and Once Upon A Time' programs help preschoolers get a leg up. We provide them with activities in math, reading, science and music. And since young children learn best through hands-on-experience, it's a good idea to involve their feet, too. Farmington Hills Farmington West Bloomfield 6615 Middlebelt Road 38325 West 14 Mile Road 25005 Middlebelt Road (248) 477-4040 (248) 661-5850 (248) 855-1963 BASSONOVA Cy Lisnov 1-696 to Hoover, Right on Hoover, Left on Ten Mile one blk., Right on Gibson Pure Silk Sweaters $95 Spring Suits $125 Gabardine Back Elastic Pants $39 Poly Cotton Pants & Shorts $25 EVERY SATURDAY 10 a.m.-4 p.m. COMFORT INN • FARMINGTON HILLS (12 Mile Just East of Orchard Lake Rd.) (248) 471-9220 Mon-Fri call (810) 754-6360 NOW SELLING AT WARREN FACTORY 24343 Gibson Dr., 2nd Blk., 2nd Bldg. on Rt. MON.-FRI. I p.m. to 5 p.m. 7/16 1999 44 Detroit Jewish News KinderCare ;••• ?"*. Threach gmtv apautnty /IX f.tody And wait, Ottcol..1,ea remember a‘;* vd !saes of anocal as,t realkott ke 4,ek rezhe the a bane {ANA bxkt ••• reading of the Fast of Av, the book that begins eicha! — the howling outcry of the book of Lamentations, "How lonely sits the city" And then the rabbis ask the terrifying question: Where and when was this wailing "eicha" first heard? And they answer that it was when God first called ayekka (the same con- sonants with only dif- ferent vowels), "Where are you??!!" to Adam after the misdoing in the Garden of Delight. This is not an answer out of Jewish pain for the sake of Jewish history. It is an answer that brings the Temple's burning into every individual human heart, and all the human race. The first and deepest exile: spiritual galut. To say it is "spiritual" is not to cut it off from earth- iness; indeed, this first misdoing in the Garden of Delight was precisely that we ate wrongly from the earth, and the result was that we were cut off from earth and found ourselves at war with her. Every spiritual exile involves an ethi- cal/political alienation, and every politi- cal exile is rooted in a spiritual failure. The political exile and the burning of the Temple come because we have as a society failed to encounter God. We have exiled ourselves. As the rabbis taught, the first exile came because we embraced idols insteacr\ of the One Breath that breathes the uni- verse — idols that are only bits and pieces of the Whole, idols that have no life in them. We, not just the Jewish people but the whole human race, stand today on the brink of burning the holiest Temple — the whole earth. The fire that besets us comes from a new form of idolatry: techno-idolatry. It is not the technology itself but our addiction/idolatry of it that endangers us. Automobiles are useful, but to make tens of millions of them when we know that the carbon dioxide they produce is scorching the globe, that is addiction.