Four days and three nights we were neighbors. They saw me and my children walking and on our return, we saw them pitching their tents in Sacher Park, sleeping late every night and getting up early to demonstrate. Every time I looked in their direction, without planning, Leah Goldberg's words echoed in me: "In front of your window and mine, the same garden, the same view. And one innocent day I may love the things that your eye caressed."
They may not think like me, and I will dress differently and think differently, but at the entrance to their tent, and in front of my window, Jerusalem will stand in silent reproach. The common landscape of all of us. Beautiful landscape, hexagon world, Kiryat Melech.
Yoni Rikner
The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas argued that the salvation of the world is from a face-to-face perspective. When you look at each other's faces, he will say, it grows out of the others – responsibility. It seems to me that the process today needs to be reversed: only by looking at the shared responsibility, at the beautiful landscape of all of us, maybe in the end we will look shamefully at each other. To me, this is the definition of the Third Temple.
Easy to ridicule
It's easy to mock a vision that seeks a third home. The Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, when the Temple was destroyed, will say that He pours out His wrath on "trees and stones." So what do we cry about on the night of Tisha B'Av - about stones?
The Western Wall (archive), photo: Oren Ben Hakon
The crying is for this third, who will come and decide between us, will decide our sitting alone, one in his tent. On that first Tisha B'Av night, in the desert, the people weep in their tents. The third house is the common window of two different people to one view, through a shared dream.
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov has a wonderful definition of a kingdom torn in two: He will call this undecided situation a draw. There will be those who think that this is the pinnacle of desires to live like this, man in his tent, democracy at its best. Rebbe Nachman will not ask us to think the same things and agree on the same things, but this situation, the draw, is terrible in his eyes, it is toxic, it is a frightening alienation.
In the name of all Israel
In one of his wonderful and mystical teachings, he will write: "And his draw written in the Talmud is irreparable!" Why did you remove the letter Nun from the correction?! The Nun will embody fall, it will embody destruction. Rebbe Nachman will once again insert from the back door our Nunim into the word "Tiko": "And we will make out of it the word 'lamentation,' which is the letters 'tikkun,' and Hashem will redeem us and the lamentations will be turned into tikkun and the tie will be corrected." Wow.
Tisha B'Av at the Western Wall (archive photo), photo: Oren Ben Hakon
The lamentations of Tisha B'Av belong to all of us. They will require us to look to a third, common point, to a home where we will live together and caress the things that each other's eyes caressed.
The crying on this night is different from all the crying. This crying is to wash their eyes, so that they can look at this beauty, beautiful to worship for many years to come. So don't look at each other for now, it's okay, just look Jerusalem in the eye. That's enough. And our sages will say: "Bakhei - an acronym: in the name of all Israel."
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