 (Wikipedia defines “elegy” as follows: In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.)
It seems to me that there are several main themes running thru all the Kinos;
- We are desolate and desperate to find out why Hashem has apparently abandoned us.
- Our fathers have sinned and are no more, alas! But we bear their iniquities.
- We have pursued (with a Yoke) on our necks, alas! For we have pursued gratuitous hatred!
We list what our suffering is and then give the reason for each one showing the Ribono Shel Olam that we understand our sins and the punishments that we brought on ourselves as in midah k’neged midah – measure for measure.
We are crying and bemoaning our fate. In some kinos we give reasons for what has befallen us, as if we understand the concept of Midah k’neged Midah.
In others we just bemoan our losses and our paltry existence.
We beg God: “Hashiveinu Ado-nai eilecha v’nashuva, chdeish yameinu k’kedem - Restore us to thee, O Lord, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old.”
“Ki im ma-os, ma’astanu, katzafta aleinu ahd meod! – For if you have utterly rejected us, You have already been exceedingly wrath against us.”
And we repeat:
“Hashiveinu Ado-nai eilecha v’nashuva, chdeish yameinu k’kedem - Restore us to thee, O Lord, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old.”
Why are we crying?
Why are we moaning?
What are we crying about?
What is the purpose or goal of our crying on Tisha b’AV?
In over 3,000 years, have we ever once accomplished our goal . . . or are we stuck in a paradigm that is not working?
We are pretty much in the same state of despair that our ancestors fell into when the Meraglim (Spies) brought back their evil report. If feels to me like we are almost re-enacting that very night.
A cry of despair is a cry of one who has given up all hope.
The Passover Haggadah says:
B’chol dor vador, chayav adam lir-os es atzmo k’illu hu yatza miMitrayim, - In every generation, each person is obligated to view himself as if he, personally, was taken out of Egypt.
But nowhere is it written,
B’chol dor vador, chayav adam lir-os es atzmo k’illu haya b’dor haMeraglim - in every generation each person is obligated to view himself as if he, personally, was a part of the generation of the Spies (Meraglim).
Or: k’illu charav Beis HaMikdash b’yomov – as if the Holy Temple was destroyed in his lifetime.
This is all about PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder:
Paul MacLean’s Triune or Three Brain Theory:
In 1973, Dr. Paul McLean working out of MIT and the NIH, identified three parts to the brain:
The Primitive Brain is concerned with survival.
If I meet you in the street, I want to know only one thing. Am I going to eat you first or are you going to eat me first. That’s it. It is only concerned with survival needs:
Feeding, fleeing, fighting, primitive sensations, hunger, breathing, heart rate - it’s all about me, me, me.
That is called the Reptilian Brain.
The next higher level of development is called the Mammalian Brain a.k.a. the Limbic System. This is the seat of our emotions and is linked to memory. It registers reward and punishment, and controls our autonomic nervous system. It has no concept of time. Today, tomorrow, twenty years ago – it’s all the same. It’s the one that runs the show.
Then there’s the Neo Cortex or Pre-Frontal Cortex. This is where we do all our thinking and reasoning. It’s where we speak from, where we do planning.
When a trauma occurs, the Neo Cortex goes off line. It doesn’t register.
The trauma gets stuck in the Limbic System.
So if a person has a trauma and we send him to a psychologist, that will help only to a certain point, because the psychologist is talking to the thinking brain and that part of the brain did not register the trauma - it was offline. Like the blue screen on a computer.
What kind of Trauma are we talking about?
If a soldier is walking in Iraq steps on and IED, and gets his foot blown off, or his buddy who witnesses that happen.
But it can be as simple as a teacher or a parent calling a kid “Stupid!”
Or as complex as having the Meraglim (Spies) return from their spying mission and giving their evil report.
That is PTSD at its best. It’s TRIBAL OR COMMUNAL OR MASS PTSD.
We can talk to it from today till Moshiach comes and we won’t be able to clear it.
Not unless we know how to get into the Limbic System.
PTSD sets up a belief that the world is a dangerous place. It creates irrational flashbacks, terrors and fears.
Take, for example, a toddler who is playing with a white furry cat. Suddenly, something falls behind him with a loud bang. The child gets frightened and associates that fright with the white furry cat.
Later on in life, say at age 19 or even 20, based on the concept of “Stimulus Generalization (the basis of Pavlov’s experiments), he gets uncomfortable around people with white beards. They remind him of the white furry cat, along with the emotions that occurred at that time – fear, anxiety, shock -
but it’s not in his conscious, thinking brain, it’s in his limbic system. The memory of the event contains the physiology of the emotions. So any time he sees a man with a white beard, or a white, fluffy stuffed animal, he gets nervous and doesn’t know why. It’s under the radar.
We do the same thing with Tisha b’Av. Comes the seventeenth of Tamuz, the beginning of the three weeks, we go into mourning and start getting edgy. We worry about doing business deals and about going swimming. We tell stories about bad things that happened to people during the nine days, may the Merciful One protect us. We believe that it’s a time of puraniyos, an importune time.
Let’s examine some of the Kinos:
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