This Kinah is based on the following Midrash: There and then Jeremiah went to the Cave of Machpelah and said to the Patriarchs of the world, “Arise, for the time has come when your presence is required before the Holy One, Blessed is He.” They said...
“Would that my head were water and my eye a fount of flowing tears.” (Based on Jeremiah 8:23) The First Crusade began with a call from the Church to liberate Jerusalem from the Moslems, but Jewish communities were attacked, ravaged, pillaged and murdered all along the...
Or Ha-hayyim (Hayyim ibn Attar, 18c. Morocco) understands ka as referring to a moment in the past. The term refers to that midnig
On October 28, 1941, Ruchele Jager was herded with more than a thousand other Jews into the Dom Katolicki (The Catholic Center) in Bolechow, Ukraine. The 16 year old girl was forced to watch as the Rabbi she had known since she was a small...
This Kinah is based on the Talmud (Gittin 58a): Our Rabbis have taught: R. Joshua b. Hananiah once happened to go to the great city of Rome, and he was told there that there was in the prison a Jewish child with beautiful eyes and face...
In this elegy composed by an unknown author describing the anguish of a survivor of an unknown massacred community we share the pain of countless communities and individuals who have suffered the tortures of exile over the ages. The Kinah describes the weeping of all the...
“Incline Your ear, my Lord, to the licentious ones who blaspheme saying, ‘Whom do I have to fear in heaven?” One of the major themes in Eichah - Lamentations, and Tisha B’Av is, “You wrapped Yourself in a cloud that no prayer can pierce.” (Lamentations 3:44)...
Dedicated To Meir & Jenny Solomon: “Heading east” was the deed he chose to clothe himself in. Friends sought to dissuade Rabbi Yehuda Halevi. He argued with them. To one, he wrote an angry poem. “Your words were salved with smoothest myrhh,” it began with...
“And You have said, “I will surely do good with you!” “So, why, when worthless men desecrated Your Name, did You fail to pour out Your fury upon them? This Kinah reminds me of a poem written by Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra almost 1,000 years ago about the...
“If it could happen that women ate the fruit of their own womb, the babes of their care - alas, woe is me.” On the 5th of July, 1946, Matylda Gelernter, 38 years of age, made a deposition in Katowice about what happened in the town...
The world was shocked and horrified by the images of the concentration camps. General Eisenhower insisted that the scenes be recorded for posterity. No one could deny the Holocaust. This was the first time that the world understood the suffering of the Jewish people. No one...