Read on Tisha B’Av, the verses of the biblical book of Eikhah/Lamentations have a contemporary resonance in this terrible summer of starvation and destruction in Gaza. Rather than reading Eikhah as only being about Jewish suffering, in 2025 we need to expand our reading to the suffering Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza. Eikhah is about physical and spiritual suffering, about being abandoned by others, about owning up to the wrongs that have brought such devastation. In this selection of verses from Eikhah, the voices of both Palestine and Israel clamor to be heard, speaking sometimes together, sometimes past each other, pouring out their anger and despair.
Download the PDF below for Langner’s new reading.
