There is a story that is told in Mishnah Yoma as the origin story for why certain tasks in the Temple were assigned based on a lottery. At first, the task of cleaning the altar from the ashes and detritus of the offerings from the previous day was not assigned. Rather, whoever wanted to perform the task did it. When more than one person wanted to clean the altar, an important task in the Temple, they basically raced for it. Whoever got to the top of the altar first, merited the job of cleaning the altar. Within the closed environment of the priests who worked in the Temple this was a prized job and so there was much competition for it. The mishnah recounts that two brothers were once running up the ramp to the altar and one pushed the other and the latter fell and broke his leg. When the court realized that the competition for this job was this risky, they changed the procedure so that a priest would win the job of cleaning the altar by a lottery and not a race.

This seems like a reasonable resolution to a perilous problem. 

However, if we look at the Tosefta, a text which was composed or edited contemporaneously to the Mishnah, we find a less savory version of this story. Two brothers were running up the ramp to the altar. When one saw that the other brother would win, the losing brother took a knife and stabbed his brother in the heart. 

The story continues that Rabbi Tzadoq came and stood on the steps of great hall on the Temple Mount and pronounced: “Listen to me my brothers, House of Israel!” He then described, in short, the ritual of the eglah arufah, the beheaded heifer (Deut. 21) This ritual was employed when a murdered body was found between cities and the murderer was unknown. The priests would measure between the cities and the city closest to the body would have to bring a heifer and slaughter it in a flowing river (or a dry wadi, depending on how you translate nahal eytan). The elders of that city would then declare “we did not kill this man.” 

Rabbi Tzadoq continued: “From where shall we measure? From the sanctuary or from the courts?” This was a rhetorical question since, first, everybody knew who the murderer was and second, as the Talmud explains, the Temple is exempt from the ritual of the beheaded heifer. Rabbi Tzadoq wanted to confront the people with the awfulness of what happened and, in fact “all of Israel were wracked with sobbing.” 

Unfortunately, the story does not end here.

The father of the stabbed priest comes and announces triumphantly: “My son is still dying and not yet dead, so the knife is not impure!!” The Tosefta then comments bitterly that “the impurity of a knife was worse for them than the spilling of blood.” The prooftext that the Tosefta cites is from II Kings 21, speaking of Menasheh, considered the most evil of the kings. “Moreover, Menasheh put so many innocent persons to death that he filled Jerusalem [with blood] from end to end….” The Palestinian Talmud, as if to make sure we get the meaning, adds the word lig’nai/in disgrace. 

The Tosefta adds one final line: “Because of the sin of murder the Divine Presence was taken up and the Temple was made impure.”

In this story Rabbi Tzadoq, a Sage who lived in the first century C.E., before and after the destruction of the Temple in 70, plays the role of Isaiah. As Isaiah did at the beginning of his eponymous book (which we read this past Shabbat as the haftarah), Rabbi Tzadoq calls out the perverse priorities of his community. A father who would stand over his dying son and exult in that the knife which had stabbed him was not yet impure, is a person who would cause the Divine Presence to depart from the Temple, since the Temple is no longer about worshipping God, but about something else. Something closer to what Isaiah said: “And when you lift up your hands, I will turn My eyes away from you; Though you pray at length, I will not listen. Your hands are stained with blood.” Those who would spill another’s blood to perform the Temple service, are not doing that for God. The most basic prerequisite of righteousness is not killing. Yet here is a story of killing ostensibly in order to do the Divine service.

This, finally, brings us to our own Tisha b’Av. We are often taught, and we often teach, that “baseless hatred caused the destruction of the Temple.” Therefore we should try to practice baseless love. Or at least stop hating so much. 

However, this story teaches us something more foundational. Once the shekhinah, the Divine Presence leaves, the Temple is but rocks and gold and smoke and fire. The Temple is already destroyed. It was not baseless hatred that caused the destruction, but murder in the name of God, for the sake of Divine service that caused the destruction. 

We are living through an era of unbelievable spilling of blood “for God.” Menasheh “filled Jerusalem [with blood] from end to end….” Today, metaphorically, and all too often literally, Jerusalem is being filled with blood. The West Bank is being filled with blood. Gaza is being filled with blood. All in the name of God.

A day does not go by when we do not see videos of young Jewish settler thugs with peyot and tzitzit harassing, beating, kicking, shooting, killing unarmed Palestinian men, women and children—the work of shooting and harassing is so holy that they do it on Shabbat. (And the IDF soldiers are passive observers at best.)

The Hebrew word for demolishing a Palestinian house with a tractor is now the verb form of the name of the person (lezarbav)—who considers himself a rabbi—who drives the tractor and talks about how much pleasure he gets from his work, all for the sake of God. 

How do we sit and mourn for the destruction of the Temple when we are destroying the Temple every day? Every act of destruction, murder, displacement, chases the diven presence from the land. 

From where will we measure to bring the beheaded heifer for atonement? From Khan Younis? From Masafer Yatta? From Susiya? From Silwan?

Are there enough tears?