Tish'a b'Av random thoughts

[rhu]

Sitting in my house, on the floor, with the lights low, chanting Eichah (Lamentations), thinking of families sitting in bomb shelters in the Galil, doing the same.

For these things I weep, my eyes shed tears....
My young women and men have been taken into captivity.
I called to my allies, but they deceived me....
You have decreed that terror shall surround me as [crowded as] a festival....
But the Lord will not cast man off forever....
Nor crush underfoot the prisoners of the earth....
Restore us to You, O Lord, that we may return, and renew our days as they were before.

And remembering ten years ago, reading a different scroll, one that was supposed to be joyous, the scroll of Esther, but reading it sitting on the floor of a hotel room in Tel Aviv, with fear and with sorrow, instead of hearing it read in shul, with joy and gladness.