The kinah shavat suru meni - הקינה שבת סורו מני

On Tisha B’av there is a custom to recite kinot, prayers that re-call the suffering that happened when the Bet ha-Mikdash was destroyed or for other events. The kinot can be viewed as replacing selihot, which are the usual extra prayers that we recite on the other fast days, but not on Tisha B’av.

The kinah Shavat suru meni is the first kinah that is recited in the daytime, and it is written by R. Elazar haKalir, who lived in the land of Israel, maybe around the 6th or 7th century. The kinah consists of nine stanzas, the first eight are based on the last eight letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and the ninth kinah has the acrostic of the name Elazar.

The kinah follows Megillat Eicah by quoting words or phrases from Megillat Eicah to begin each line of each stanza. Each stanza follows the same pattern in quoting Eicah, and while the kinah follows the order of the Hebrew alphabet, it follows Eicah in a backwards fashion since the first quote in each stanza is from the last chapter of Eicah, and the last quote in each stanza is from the first chapter of Eicah. 

To be more specific, the first word of the first eight stanzas is not in alphabetical order, but is the first word from the last eight verses of chapter five of Megillat Eicah, which is the only chapter in Eicah which does not follow alphabetical order. Afterwards, the stanza has a word from chapter four in Eicah. The next three lines in each stanza begin with words from the third chapter of Eicah, which record three lines for each letter of the alphabet. The following line in the stanza begins with the corresponding word in the second chapter of Eicah, and the last line of each stanza is a phrase from the first chapter of Eicah. All these words from chapter four to chapter one begin with the same letter, and the letter of each stanza follow the order of the aleph bet, starting from the letter samech. This intricate pattern shows the artistry of R. Elazar haKalir, and as this is the first kinah that is recited during the day it connects all the kinot with Eicah.

This kinah shows the development of the custom of reciting kinot on Tisha B’av by the fact that it begins with the letter samech, and then follows the Hebrew alphabet for the next eight letters. What happened to the stanzas of the first fourteen letters of the Hebrew alphabet? In turns out that the beginning of the kinah, which follows the first fourteen letters of the Hebrew alphabet, has been found as a kerovot in the repetition of the Shemoneh Esrei by the chazzan. The kerovot were prayers that a chazzan would add in the repetition of the Shemoneh Esrei on certain occasions.

Daniel Goldschmidt (2002, pp. 7-16) in his introduction to the kinot discusses the development of the custom of reciting kinot on Tisha B’av. He notes that initially (6th century?, 7th century?) the kinot were recited as kerovot in the morning of Tisha B’av when the chazzan would recite the Shemoneh Esrei, but as the kinot got longer, then they were moved from being part of the repetition of the Shemoneh Esrei to being recited as an independent unit after the reading of the Torah and Haftorah in Shacharit. Apparently, this kinah, Shavat suru meni, was only one-third moved, either on purpose or by mistake, and the first two-thirds of the kinah are no longer recited on Tisha B’av.

The stanza of the letter kuf refers to various other nations who did not help the Jewish people. The last line in the stanza is from Eicah 1:19, that the Jewish people called to her lovers but they deceived her. This line in Eicah (also Eicah 1:2) refers to the lack of support the Jewish people received from Egypt when the Babylonians were attacking Jerusalem in 586 BCE. After the Babylonians had defeated Egypt in 605 BCE, the kingdom of Yehuda was under Babylonian rule. However, it seems that in 591 BCE, Zedekaiah, a son of Yoshiyahu, tried to break away from Babylonian rule and he made an agreement with Egypt. This caused the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar to attack Jerusalem, and this led to the destruction of the first Bet ha-Mikdash in 586 BCE. Yirmiyahu 37:5 records that Egypt’s army initially came to help Zedekaiah, but when the Babylonians came back and surrounded the city for two years (January 588 BCE to July 586 BCE), the Egyptians provided no help, and this is what Eicah 1:19 and the line in the kinah are referring to.

The penultimate stanza, which is based on the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, taf, is a call for revenge. This call also appears in the end of chapters one, three and four in Eicah, and in several of the kinot, especially those composed for the tragedies of the Jews in Germany from the Crusaders. The desire for revenge is problematic. Many people view revenge as an act of justice since if there is no allowance for people to take revenge, then many times murderers go free. Was it wrong for people after WWII to take revenge and kill Nazis who killed Jews? However, revenge killings also lead to innocent people being killed. Was R. Elazar haKalir, writing maybe 500 - 600 years after the destruction of the second Bet ha-Mikdash, in this kinah really calling for people to take revenge? R. Jonathan Sacks (2016, p. 246) quotes two scholars who argue that when people ask G-d to take revenge they are sparing humans from taking revenge. Thus, here and in the other kinot, the call of revenge should be understood as a prayer to G-d to punish the people who harm the Jewish people, but not as a call for people to take revenge themselves.