In the sixth century before the common era, the kingdom of Judah and its capital in Jerusalem

were besieged by the Babylonian forces of Nebuchadnezzar II. After a protracted period of

deprivation and starvation, the walls of Jerusalem

were finally breached, and on the Hebrew date of the 9th of the month of Av, the Tisha Beav,

the temple that David dreamed of, and that Solomon built, the temple that had stood in Jerusalem

for centuries, was plundered and destroyed. The inhabitants of the city were massacred,

and the survivors were taken into captivity. The destruction of the temple was and remains one of the

most traumatic national experiences in Jewish history. The Hebrew Bible records the experience

of that siege and massacre in the book of Echa, known in English as the Book of Lamentations.

Its five poetic chapters, all of them highly structured literarily, also contain some of the most

grotesque and poignant language of oppression and suffering in all of biblical literature.

There are descriptions of mothers driven to such

desperation that they resort to cannibalism. There is the haunting description of a man whose body

has so withered from starvation that his skin hangs on him like desiccated wool. And Lamentations

expresses a range of emotional responses to the trauma. Some seemingly in line with

Jeremiah's chastening prophecy that understand the destruction of the city as a just punishment

for a sinful people, meet it out by a just God. Others direct enormous reservoirs of frustration,

desperation, even bitterness at God.

Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. My guest today is the rabbi and

academic Bible scholar Joshua Berman of Bar-Ilan University. Professor Berman has just

published a new commentary called The Book of Lamentations that is just out from

Cambridge University Press. His interpretation and his terrific new book frame our discussion

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