#Sefer Nechemiya

[todaysjewishholiday]

4 Menachem Av 5784 (7-8 August 2024)

After the Babylonians destroyed the Beit HaMikdash and burned and broken down most of the city of Jerusalem and its encircling walls, they deported much of the surviving population of the city and of other urban centers throughout the kingdom of Judah, as well as the nobles and bureaucrats from throughout the kingdom. Agricultural laborers and itinerants were left behind but it was a thorough effort to break all possibility for self-governance and Jewish independence going forward. Internal displacement was a major Babylonian imperial strategy for control, borrowed from their predecessors in the Neo-Assyrian empire. The cruelty was the point, and it worked remarkably well.

47 years after the destruction of Jerusalem and final exile of the captives (the Babylonians having taken earlier waves of Jewish captives to other places within the empire earlier in their campaign of control over the kingdom of Judah) the Persians led by Cyrus conquered the Babylonian heartland and seized the reigns of empire. Cyrus had a different strategy for maintaining power, based in winning the support and trust of groups who had suffered under Neo-Assyrian and Babylonian conquest (including the people of Assur and Babylonia). Cyrus allowed deported populations to return to their ancestral homes and provided support for the religious practices of numerous groups throughout the empire, provided they remained loyal subjects of the Persian regime. This approach made Cyrus massively popular throughout the empire, including with priests and priestesses of the traditional Babylonian pantheon who had objected to the later emperors interventions in religious affairs.

The Jews were ecstatic. But Judah was still in ruins and severe societal chaos brought about by the Babylonian destruction of the entire social and religious fabric of the kingdom following Tzidkiyahu’s final revolt. Many of the exiles, though overjoyed to have the freedom to return, chose to remain in the lives they’d built within the wealthier center of the empire rather than returning to the despoiled land of their ancestors to try to build society back amidst the rubble.

Nearly a hundred years after Cyrus’ decree, the returnees were still limping along, living in a city that was mostly ruins, bickering with each other.

It’s in this context that Sefer Nechemiya was composed. It’s the autobiography of a high ranking Jewish member of the Persian court who hears circa Kislev 3316 about the the sorry state of things in Jerusalem, and decides it’s time for him to return to the city of his ancestors. Nechemiya receives imperial permission and an appointment as the provincial governor, and sets out.

Once there, he seeks to rally the people of the city to repair the city’s protective walls. According to Sefer Nechemiya, the work of repairing the walls of the city began on the 4th of Av 3316, 5 days short of 142 years after the cataclysm of Tisha B’Av 3174. Nechemiya’s story and that of the reconstruction of the Beit HaMikdash itself reminds us that there is hope even in times of despair. In the midst of the Nine Days, when we grieve one of Judaism’s biggest tragedies, we’re reminded as well of what can happen when we seek to mend what’s broken. Like Nechemiya, we live in broken and dangerous times. May we also find ways to take steps to repair the world.