The Three Weeks and the Arc of Jewish History

What a Jewish Comedian and a Time of Mourning Teach Us about Persistence

The weekend is almost upon us. And this brings certain questions to mind.

Questions like, What are they doing in synagogue this weekend? Also, what should I watch on TV?

Well, I have answers for you! In synagogue, they’ll be reading from the Book of Numbers (Parashat Pinchas, to be exact), and from the Book of Jeremiah — which is a banger.

As for what to watch: Let me suggest a Gary Gulman comedy special.

Gary Gulman, and yes, he is Jewish!

Gulman is a 6’6” Jewish stand-up comedian, one of those intelligent, hyper-literate stand-ups who constructs jokes out of the names of state abbreviations and the agony of choosing a password that is at once impossible to guess but also easy to remember.

One of my all-time favorite jokes is his bit about how, while Jerry Seinfeld has a private garage in Manhattan to store his car collection, Gulman doesn’t have room on his counter for his toaster.

Gulman also makes comedy from darker topics — clinical depression, his impoverished childhood, and antisemitism.

“Some people hate Jews. Fine, alright, it’s been done. I mean, that’s part of my problem with it. Could you hate somebody new? I’m not giving you any suggestions, but the Belgians have had a good run.”

To be clear, The Wondering Jew does not endorse hatred of the Belgians, or anybody, for that matter. And neither does Gulman, of course.

The point is that when Jews face another round of bigotry and discrimination and hardship, we can at least wryly observe that we have been down this road before, many times.

Nicolas Poussin – “The Destruction and Sack of the Temple of Jerusalem,” 1626

I was reminded of Gulman’s joke this week because we’ve entered a period in the Jewish calendar called the Three Weeks.

This marks the twenty-one days in the Hebrew calendar between the 17th of Tammuz and the Ninth of Av (Tisha B’Av). Both these days, by tradition, saw a number of great disasters in Jewish history. Most prominently, it was on the Ninth of Av in 70 CE that the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans.

It’s not easy to communicate in a single newsletter — or even a year’s worth — the disastrous and far-reaching consequences of the Temple’s destruction and the Roman conquest of Jerusalem.

But you might think of it this way: Imagine if the United States was conquered by a foreign power, Washington, D.C. was burned to the ground, and every American was forced to leave the country for the next two thousand years.

The Three Weeks are a time of mourning and remembrance. Traditionally, no weddings or parties are held, and people refrain from cutting their hair or buying new clothing. As Tisha B’Av gets closer, other activities are avoided, as well: hot showers, doing laundry, eating meat and drinking wine (except on Shabbat).

Triumphal March Following the Sack of Jerusalem, from the Arch of Titus, 81 CE

You can be forgiven for not knowing it’s the Three Weeks.

In my post about Shavuot, I argued that you can judge a Jewish holiday’s notoriety by whether the New York City Department of Transportation cancels alternate side parking for it.

Not only do you have to continue to move your car during the Three Weeks, if you called the DOT and told them about it, they’d probably just hang up on you.

A somber holiday in the middle of summer, primarily based around events that happened thousands of years ago — that’s an uphill climb in the modern attention economy.

But as Gulman’s joke about antisemitism reminds us, there’s been no shortage of hard times in our history.

And we can find a certain strength in that fact.

The Western Wall, Jerusalem

To continue the earlier thought experiment, imagine if two thousand years after America’s destruction, there were still millions of Americans all over the world, celebrating the Fourth of July and arguing over what Thomas Jefferson meant by “the pursuit of happiness.”

That’s the analogous situation for the Jewish people. Even after the calamity of the Second Temple’s destruction — and all the calamities that preceded it and the innumerable ones that followed — we’re still here. It is pretty amazing, when you think about it.

I don’t believe you can overstate how frightening and disorienting the times we’re living through right now are for Jews all across the globe. But a look at our history confirms that we have been through worse, and come out the other side.

That’s what makes the Three Weeks worth contemplating, this year in particular: not only to mourn what’s been lost, but also to bear in mind what’s been survived.

The Romans may have destroyed the Second Temple and sacked Jerusalem. But we’re the ones still around to do stand-up comedy, telling jokes about shopping at Trader Joe’s and pronouncing the ch- in challah.

So maybe take a moment in the coming days to reflect on the long arc of Jewish history. And consider also how that arc continues, right down to today.