אֵיכָ֣ה …How has the city that was once so populous remained lonely! She has become like a widow! She that was great among the nations, a princess among the provinces, has become tributary. (Eicha 1:1)

אַיֶּֽכָּה… And HASHEM Elochim called to man, and He said to him, “Where are you?” (Breishis 3:9)

One of my favorite cartoons depicts a man crawling in the desert and staring at a sign with an arrow pointing that reads, “You Are Here!”. How absurd! Everybody’s gotta be someplace, but in the context of no context, without the rest of the map, that piece of information is useless. On the flipside, if one is studying a giant map of the New York City subway system, he is equally lost without that arrow indicating, “You Are Here!” What worse than being is lost, however, is not even realizing that one is actually lost. So, along comes Tisha B’Av to remind us and help us discover, “You Are Here!”

The first and most profound question ever asked, persists in its asking, demanding an answer, still. When Adam, the first man, took a giant step away from HASHEM, HASHEM called out to him and asked, “AYECHA- Where are you!?” HASHEM knows, as my GPS, where man is but the question is for man to answer. He needs to know where he is, in relation to HASHEM. It’s as if HASHEM is saying, “I am still here, but where have you gone?!” Now man must respond! Where are we?

Our sages recognized in that same one-word question an exact resemblance to the question that launches EICHA that we read on Tisha B’Av. It’s the exact same four letters with different vowels. The question that is begging for an answer there is “EICHA – HOW!” How did we get here? How did this happen? If we can figure out how we got here then maybe we can find our way back to where we belong.

Years back I was running a prison program. Once, I brought in a guest speaker. The prisoners crave to know what’s going on “out there”. They live vicariously through the adventures of others. They nudged the Rabbi to tell them where he had been. He answered, “I was just in the world’s largest prison and there I confronted the most-fierce warden”. Some started to guess which place and which person he was referring to. After they got quiet, he told them, “The largest prison in the world is the whole world!” I felt an awkward silence in the room and I glanced up sideways signaling that he ought not to continue peddling these soft parables or this was going to be a long night or a short night. As I expected, they chorused, “All of us would love to go to that prison! Let us go out there!” The second answer shed light on the first and his words became poignantly clear. “Who’s that fierce warden? Myself!”

He explained “This guard keeps you from going a few feet to your left and right! This one stops you from getting beyond that point! I have my limitations too. If I travel north, I cannot go south. Of course, my limitations are far more expansive than yours. On the horizontal plane, but who keeps us from going up, from climbing vertically, transcending the confines of this place and reaching the fullness of our real potential, even here in prison? Nobody stops us but ourselves!”

After that visit to the prison, we launched a new orientation program for anyone entering the prison system. We would ask him, “Where do you live?” The fellow would answer, “Green Haven!” The question would persist, “Where do you live?” The answer would expand to “New York”. Again, the question and then, “America” and next “the world?”! Very nice but where are you??? We repeated till it became real: “You are in front of HASHEM!” If that’s your mind-set then you are not in prison! Sure, your feet are here in this shoe but that’s not where you need to be a whole day!

The Baal Shem Tov said, “Wherever a person’s mind is, that is where he is entirely!” We can be standing in Times Square and our heads can be in New Square or we can be in Wallmart and our minds are at The Western Wall! It can be the other way, as well.

With one Holy thought, a flash in the mind we can be inside the Holy of Holies. From there we can answer optimally, the cosmic question, “AYECHA, where are you?”, as Abraham Avinu answered the call, “Heneini” – “Here I am!” So, again on Tisha B’Av, here we are!

Cover image: You are Here Graffiti by Ken Kistler, with CC BY-NC-SA 0.0 license on Public Domain Pictures