July 23, 2026|ט' אב ה' אלפים תשפ"ו Faith in the Ashes
Print ArticleEvery Tisha B'Av we confront the same question.
How do Jews continue believing after so much suffering?
Not just after the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, but after the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Chmielnicki massacres, the Holocaust, and, in our own lifetime, October 7.
Some questions have answers.
And some questions become lifelong companions.
One of the most powerful works ever written about this question is Yossel Rakover's Appeal to God by Zvi Kolitz. It is a work of historical fiction, but it is so authentic that for years many readers believed it had actually been discovered in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Kolitz imagines the final testament of a chasid named Yossel Rakover during the last hours of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Picture the scene.
Warsaw.
April 28, 1943.
The Germans have all but destroyed the ghetto.
Yossel is hiding inside one of the last buildings still standing. Heavy artillery pounds the walls around him. He knows he has less than an hour to live. His wife and children are already dead. Outside his window, the evening sky is glowing red—not from a beautiful sunset, but from the flames consuming the Jewish quarter of Warsaw.
This is not someone writing from the safety of an armchair.
This is a Jew writing his last words.
And what does he write?
Surprisingly, not words of resignation.
Not words of theological certainty.
And not words of easy faith.
He argues with God.
He protests.
He says something astonishing:
"I cannot extol You for the deeds that You tolerate. I bless You... for the very fact of Your existence."
He refuses to defend God.
He refuses to pretend he understands.
He does not silence his questions.
In fact, he asks one of the most painful questions imaginable:
"If You are not my Lord, then whose Lord are You? The Lord of the murderers?"
Imagine the audacity.
Standing in the ruins of Warsaw, with death only moments away, he dares to ask God whether He still belongs to the Jewish people.
But then something remarkable happens.
The letter turns.
Not because Yossel finds an answer.
He never does.
Instead, he tells a story his rebbe used to tell.
A Jew escapes the Spanish Inquisition with his wife and child. A storm kills his wife. The sea swallows his son. Standing utterly alone, he turns to God and says:
"You have done everything to make me stop believing in You... but it will not avail You in the least! You may take everything from me – I shall believe in You. I shall love You no matter what You do to test me."
Yossel says those words have now become his own.
And then he writes what may be the most moving conclusion in Holocaust literature:
"You have done everything to make me renounce You... but I die exactly as I have lived – a believer."
Notice what he does not say.
He never says,
"Now I understand."
He never says,
"Everything happens for a reason."
He never says,
"I see God's plan."
He dies with unanswered questions.
Yet he refuses to let go of God.
That may be the greatest act of faith of all – not believing because everything makes sense, but refusing to surrender the relationship even when nothing makes sense.
This tension is not unique to the Holocaust. It appears in perhaps the most disturbing passage in all of the Talmud.
Moshe ascends to Heaven and learns of a future Torah giant – Rabbi Akiva – whose brilliance will shape generations of Jewish learning. Awestruck, Moshe says, “Har’eini secharo. Show me his reward.” God tells Moshe to turn around. Moshe turns around and he sees she’shoklin besaro b’makolin.
He sees him being flayed alive with iron combs.
Moshe cries out:
Zo Torah v’zo sechorah?
This is Torah?
This is its reward?
And Hashem answers:
Shtok. Kach alah b’machshavah l’fanai.
Be silent. This is what I decided.
Perhaps no answer in all of Chazal feels more unsatisfying.
Moshe asks "Why?"
God responds,
"Be silent."
That is not an explanation.
If anything, it deepens the mystery.
Many commentaries struggle with these words.
One beautiful explanation comes from the Arvei Nachal. Rabbi Akiva spent his entire life longing to fulfill the mitzvah of loving God b’chol nafsh’cha – even if it cost him his life. According to this view, "kach alah b’machshavah" refers not only to God's decree but to Rabbi Akiva's own lifelong aspiration. His martyrdom became the culmination of the life he had consciously chosen.
Other sources develop the same idea.
The Siddur Shel Shabbat explains that Hashem was revealing Rabbi Akiva's own inner desire. His martyrdom demonstrated retroactively that "kol yamai hayiti mitz’ta’er" – his statement that all his life he was distressed that he was unable to fulfill the mitzvah of loving God with all his soul was genuine.
Whether or not one accepts this approach, it teaches something profound.
Rabbi Akiva's death was not meaningless suffering.
It was the completion of the life he himself had chosen.
But I don't think that is the primary message of the Gemara.
Because Rabbi Akiva is not supposed to become our aspiration.
We are not supposed to long for martyrdom.
Judaism is a religion that sanctifies life.
When we say every day
B’chol nafsh’cha,
we are not hoping that God takes our lives.
We are saying:
"If He does, my relationship with Him remains."
That is very different.
Rabbi Akiva is an extreme case.
Tisha B'Av is an extreme day.
But they teach us how to live ordinary lives.
Most of us will never face Rabbi Akiva's test.
But all of us carry questions that have no easy answers.
Questions about suffering.
Questions about loss.
Questions about prayers that seem to go unanswered.
Questions about why life can feel so unfair.
Intellectually, we often cannot answer.
And perhaps we are not meant to.
Moshe himself wasn't answered.
So why do we continue?
Not because every question has been answered.
But because we belong to a people that refused to abandon God even when the questions remained.
Rabbi Akiva.
Yossel Rakover.
Not people who understood.
People who endured.
People who refused to surrender their relationship with God even while arguing with Him.
That is why Yossel's closing words are so powerful.
He writes:
"I have followed Him even when He rejected me... I have loved Him, and I love Him even when He hurls me to the earth..."
And then, echoing the story his rebbe taught him, he concludes:
"You have done everything to make me renounce You... but I die exactly as I have lived, a believer."
He never claims understanding.
He claims relationship.
Perhaps that is why Hashem tells Moshe,
Shtok.
Not because questions are forbidden.
Moshe asked.
Avraham asked.
Iyov asked.
Yirmiyahu asked.
And Yossel Rakover asked.
Judaism has never demanded blind faith. It has always made room for painful questions.
But there comes a point where no explanation can comfort the mourner. No philosophy can rebuild the Beit HaMikdash. No answer can return a murdered child to his parents.
At that moment, Hashem does not answer Moshe's question.
He asks something of Moshe instead.
Can you remain in the relationship even when you cannot understand Me?
That is the challenge of every generation.
It was Rabbi Akiva's.
It was Yossel Rakover's.
And it is ours.
Every generation has cried,
Zo Torah v’zo sechorah?
Every generation has pleaded,
עד מתי?
And every generation has somehow found the strength to whisper once more,
Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem echad.
That is why we gather tonight.
Not because we have answers.
Because we have memories.
Tonight we mourn a Beit HaMikdash that burned.
We mourn the Jews slaughtered in Jerusalem, in York, in Mainz, in Kishinev, in Auschwitz, in Warsaw.
Tonight that chain of mourning stretches one link further.
We mourn the victims of October 7, those murdered in terror since then, and the soldiers who gave their lives defending Am Yisrael.
Tonight we join generations of Jewish mourning.
Yirmiyahu.
Rabbi Akiva.
Yossel Rakover.
And now, us.
Tisha B'Av is not the night to explain suffering.
It is the night to refuse to forget it.
Our enemies believed that if they destroyed our cities, our families, and our sanctuaries, eventually they would destroy our faith.
The Babylonians failed.
The Romans failed.
The Crusaders failed.
The Nazis failed.
And Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran will fail.
The strength of the Jewish people has never been that we understood God.
It has always been that we never stopped turning toward Him.
We have argued with God.
We have cried before God.
But we have never stopped turning toward Him.
So tonight, if all we can do is sit on the floor...
If all we can do is cry...
If all we can do is whisper the words Rabbi Akiva whispered with his final breath—
Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem echad –
then we are part of a chain that no empire has ever been able to break.
Tonight we do not declare that we understand.
Tonight we declare something even greater:
We still remember.
We still mourn.
We still believe.
And because we still believe, we still hope.
We hope for the day when the One whose ways we cannot yet understand will reveal Himself once again, rebuild Zion, wipe away every tear from every face, and transform the mourning of Tisha B'Av into everlasting joy.
May we merit to see that day speedily in our days. Amen.