Tisha Ba'av Thoughts: For these things I weep

I read today from Rabbi JB Soloveichik’s The Lord is Righteous in All His Ways about the kinnot 
that were written to remember the crusades. He describes the way the Jewish communities in 
Germany were shattered, and that all of the Torah scholarship that had been centered in Germany 
completely vanished. He talks about the miracle that Rashi performed , moving the center of 
Torah learning to France, which was not as devastated by the crusades, and thus he saved the 
Torah from utter annihilation.

In his discussion about the crusades, Rabbi Soloveichik also tells the story of communities that
 chose to commit suicide rather than convert. They would begin by killing the children, then each 
other and finally kill themselves in order to avoid the choice of convert or die. The possibility that 
they might be killed and then their children kidnapped and converted and raised as christians was 
so unacceptable to them that these parents took it upon themselves to kill their own children. 
I read this story with tears in my eyes, and pain in my heart. 

Megillat Eicha, the Biblical book of Lamentations, also talks about parents killing their children. I read 
Eicha last night, and I am always horrified when I get to the verses about the women cooki
ng and 
eating their own (2:20, 4:10), as the poet uses this image to depict how horrifying their situation was. 
This is similar to the dehumanization that people describe during the Holocaust, or during 
 the siege of Leningrad in the soviet union in WWII. It’s basically maslow’s hierarchy of needs-- 
when people are starving, they are sometimes pushed beyond their human limits of ethics in order 
to survive, and will do things that are morally deplorable, like kill for a piece of bread. 

However, there is this recurring theme of being pushed to a limit and then killing one’s own that requires 
more consideration. When we think about abortion, and the politics that surrounds the issue today, it 
strikes me that mothers frequently do not consider babies inside of them as other, separate beings from 
themselves. This changes to some extent when a baby is born, but not completely. The relationship that 
a baby has with her mother is one of total dependence, and so the situation changes only slightly when 
she exits the womb. Thus, it seems to me, that parents might still feel both responsibility as well as 
rights over the child’s life. This would explain why a woman starving desperately, would cook and 
eat her own before the neighbor’s child.

This story is one of tragedy, and everyone who reads about the destruction and the devastation that 
we mourn on the 9th of Av understands that it is only from sheer desperation that a woman would come 
to such a despicable conclusion. What troubles me today, though, is that the choice lies before every 
woman who is tasked with carrying a child today. Instead of understanding the great responsibility and 
the gift that is contained in a pregnancy, too many women today see the choice in front of them-- to kill 
the baby or to suffer the consequences. There is something so morally bankrupt in this choice. I am 
not saying there is never a circumstance in which terminating a pregnancy can be necessary. I am 
saying that it does not have to be a choice every woman with a positive pregnancy test should be 
faced with.

I recently watched a woman talk about her abortion story on youtube, and I think her story is all too 
common. At 19, she is biologically at her prime for childbearing. Her body so wants to get pregnant 
that despite the hormones she feeds it, the body finds a way to ovulate and to fertilize. Her baby is 
so young and helpless, it is what she calls a “ball of cells.”

This is a picture of a 6 week ultrasound.

This girl, like many in her situation, was on the pill, and had no plans to have a baby. The pregnancy was 
inconvenient, and didn’t fit into her plans to bike across Europe with her boyfriend, and make money and 
get older before she became a mom. Thus, even though she found herself as an adult, part of a 
consensual relationship, in a family with a real support system and with funds to travel freely, she opted to 
end what could have been a healthy pregnancy.

I feel for this girl, and I think that the fault is with a system that constantly places the choice before her. 
People criticize Ben Shapiro for his pro-life position, since he is a man. Here’s the thing: it seems to me 
that women might recuse themselves from the court of law that asks the question, is this baby separate 
from you? The same way these women should not be able to decide when the baby is born. We cannot 
separate the biological connection we have to these babies. The differentiation process is long in humans, 
and these days it can last into adulthood.

Imagine a baby kangaroo being born. It looks just like the 6 week-old fetus, and it miraculously comes out 
and climbs into its mother’s pouch, unassisted. It grows there for 9 months, and the it is ready to be born. 
Imagine a kangaroo momma birthing the tiny, unprotected egg of a baby and then throwing it in the garbage. 
It is against all of nature to fathom such a thing. I am not talking about the Mother kangaroo being able to live
 with itself as it grows older, or having to watch its friends go through pregnancy and motherhood while she 
watches enviously. I am saying there is something fundamental about a mother nurturing her young that when 
it doesn’t take place, a great injustice has taken place. As humans, we ought to have more compassion for 
our young, not less than the other mammals.

Out culture has taken Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and flipped it on its head. We so take for granted the 
ability to eat and to feel safe and part of a family that we throw away the gift of life in order to travel and 
make money. The society is broken, and the choice is morally bankrupt all too often. I’m not a politician, 
but it seems clear to me that something has to change.