Question of the Week: Who was Gedaliah?

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Elizabeth Applebaum
AppleTree Editor

T

he outpouring of grief that is the
central element of the Tisha b"A\,
observance takes many forms,
such as fasting. Ironically, our despair
for the Ninth of Av is not expressed
silently, but through poetry and song.
To be sure. the poems and songs of
Tisha b'Av are not cheery little ditties
but somber laments known in Hebrew
as kinot, meaning "elegies" or 'dirges.
Traditionally, we recite almost 50 of .
,
these mournful compositions: five in the

,

evening service (following the recitation

of Eicha, The Book of Lamentations)
and 45 to 50 during the morning ser-

vice.
Many of the kinot are of unknown

.

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MARK TISHA B'AV.

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Jews praying at the Western Wall on Tisha b'Av.

authorship. Others are identified by the
composer's name woven into the vers-
es. For example, Rabbi Shlomo ibn
Gabirol of 1 1 th-century Spain, whose
kina usually is the fourth recited on the
night of Tisha b'Av, used the letters of
his name (shin, lamed; mem, hey) to
begin each of the stanzas.
The most frequently read kinot are
those composed by Elazar Ha-Kalir, the
greatest and most prolific of the early
Jewish liturgical poets. It is believed that
he resided in Tiberias, though when he
lived is a matter of scholarly conjecture.
He has been placed anywhere from .
the second to the 1 1 th centuries C.E.
Based on his st,, le of Hebrew and the