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The Weeping Well and the Day Moses Learned the Temple Fell

Jerusalem burns, the young leap into a hidden well rather than face the sword, and Moses is roused to see the ruined House and challenge heaven's silence.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Children Who Chose the Well
  2. Moses Was Called to See the Broken House
  3. The Sun Beaten With Sixty Whips of Fire
  4. The Law He Threw Back at the Throne
  5. The Voice That Rises on the Ninth of Av

The smoke over Jerusalem hung so thick that the priests along the wall could not see the enemy climbing toward them. They could only hear it. Ladders scraping stone. The crack of a gate giving way. Down in the Temple court, a knot of young men and women stood at the mouth of a well and listened to the same sound come closer.

The Weeping Well and the Day Moses Learned the Temple Fell Click for full size

They had one choice left. The Roman sword, or the dark water. They took the water.

The Children Who Chose the Well

One by one they went over the rim. Not thrown. They stepped, or they leapt, some holding a hand, some holding a name, some holding nothing at all. The soldiers who reached the court a breath later found only the well and the quiet rising out of it, and they cursed, because a body at the bottom of a shaft is a victory no conqueror can parade.

The water closed over the last of them. Then the water began to grieve.

It was not a sound the living were meant to hear. A low mourning came up from the stone throat of the well, steady as a heartbeat, and it did not stop when the fires burned down, and it did not stop when the last of the exiles were driven out toward Babylon. The sanctuary was gone and would not come back. The well knew it before the mourners did, and it wept for all of them.

Moses Was Called to See the Broken House

Far from the ruined court, in the quiet place where he had been laid to rest, Moses was roused and told to come and see. They led him to the House he had never once entered, the House built by other hands generations after his death, and they showed him its walls pulled down and its courts heaped with the slain. Mothers lay beside their sons. The man who had argued Israel back from the brink of extinction more than once stood over the wreckage and, for the first time, had no argument to make.

So he lifted his eyes to the one witness that had watched the whole thing and had said nothing at all.

The Sun Beaten With Sixty Whips of Fire

"Cursed be you, sun," Moses shouted into the sky. "Why did you not go dark when the enemy walked into the Temple?"

And the sun answered him. "By your life, Moses, how could I go dark? They beat me with sixty whips of fire and said to me, 'Go, pour out your light.' I had no choice."

Even the sun had been a prisoner. Flogged with fire, forced to keep shining, made to pour clean daylight down onto the blood in the courts so that nothing was hidden and nothing was spared. It could not close its eye. No one in heaven or on earth had been allowed to look away.

The Law He Threw Back at the Throne

Then Moses turned from the sun to the throne of God. He did not plead this time. He brought a charge, and he built it out of the very words he had carried down the mountain.

"Master of the Universe," he said, "You wrote in Your own Torah, 'You shall not slaughter an ox or a sheep and its young on the same day.' And here are the mothers and here are the children, killed together in a single hour. Why are You silent?"

The question hung in the air the way the smoke hung over the city. This was the man who had once talked God out of consuming Israel after the golden calf, who had stood in the breach and won. Now he stood in a far worse breach and swung the Torah itself at heaven like a hammer. And heaven gave back nothing. No wind, no voice, no defense the way the sun had made a defense. The verdict had already fallen, and even Moses could not reopen the case.

The Voice That Rises on the Ninth of Av

The years turned. The stones stayed down. But once each year, on the night of the Ninth of Av, when Jews across the scattered world sit low on the ground and mourn the House that fell, the old well remembers its dead and begins again to weep.

And it is not alone. From the bare ground where the Temple stood, a sound of mourning and sighing lifts into the dark, and anyone who comes to pray among the ruins on that night hears it, the grief of the stone and the grief of the water braided together, and they weep until the weeping takes their strength and they sink down where they stand. The sun still pours its light. The well still pours its sorrow. And the question Moses shouted at the throne still waits, in the mouth of the water, for an answer that has not come.

Tisha BavTemple DestructionMosesMartyrdomDivine SilenceJerusalem
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From the tradition

Sources

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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Ha-Ma'amar 3, p. 91Kabbalistic Literature

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria-hosted English translation · CC-BY

There's a story, a haunting one, about a well within the Temple court in Jerusalem. It's known as the Weeping Well, and its story is woven into the very fabric of the Ninth of Av, Tisha B'Av, the day we mourn the destruction of the Temple.

The story goes that when the Temple was being destroyed, when chaos reigned and unspeakable horrors unfolded, young people, desperate to escape the Roman sword, threw themselves into this well.

Here’s the heart-wrenching part: Ha-Ma'amar and Kesef Tzaruf both tell us that even now, on Tisha B'Av, when Jews around the world are mourning the devastation of the Temple, a great weeping can be heard coming from that well (Ha-Ma'amar 3, p. 91, Kesef Tzaruf 160b).

The echoes of that ancient sorrow?

But it doesn't end there. The story continues, saying that on that same night, a voice of mourning and sighing rises from the Temple site itself. According to the tale, anyone who prays there can hear this lament, this unending sorrow. And those who hear it are overcome with weeping until they faint.

This isn't just a story about a well; it's a myth of martyrdom, reminiscent of the story of Masada. It speaks to the ultimate sacrifice, the choice made in the face of unbearable suffering. This idea of choosing death over dishonor and subjugation resonates throughout Jewish history.

But perhaps more profoundly, this tale captures how the tragedy of the Temple's destruction continues to haunt us, to echo through the generations. The weeping of the well is our own weeping, the collective sorrow of a people forever marked by loss.: Is the Weeping Well simply a story, or is it a potent symbol of the enduring pain and resilience of the Jewish people? Does it serve as a reminder that even in the face of unimaginable loss, memory and mourning can connect us to our past and to each other? What does it mean to hear the echoes of the past in our present?

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Eikhah RabbahEikhah Rabbah

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · CC-BY

That raw, visceral feeling is at the heart of a powerful story about Moses and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Moses, our leader, the one who brought us out of Egypt, learning that the Beit Hamikdash, the Temple, has been destroyed. The people, slaughtered or exiled. The world, irrevocably broken. According to Tree of Souls, by Howard Schwartz, Moses, overcome with grief and rage, doesn’t turn inward. He turns upward.

He cries out, "Cursed be you, sun! Why did you not become dark when the enemy entered the Temple?" (Lamentations Rabbah, Proem 24).

Blaming the sun, this ancient symbol, perhaps the earliest symbol, of God's power and light. But the sun, in this story, has a defense. It replies to Moses, "By your life, Moses, how could I become dark when they beat me with sixty whips of fire, saying, 'Go pour forth your light!' I had no choice!" (Lamentations Rabbah, Proem 24).

The sun, too, was powerless. Forced to witness the horror, unable to intervene.

Then, Moses turns his anger towards God. He says, "Master of the Universe, You have written in Your Torah, 'No animal from the herd or from the flock shall be slaughtered on the same day with its young' (Leviticus 22:28). But many mothers and sons have been killed. Why are You silent?" (Lamentations Rabbah, Proem 24).

It's a searing question, a direct challenge to divine justice. How can God, who forbids such cruelty, allow this unimaginable slaughter to occur?

This story, found in Lamentations Rabbah, isn't just about Moses's grief. It's about the audacity of faith. We see it echoed in Abraham's bargaining with God over Sodom (Genesis 18:22-33). Moses, though, takes it a step further.

He confronts God directly, much as he did after the Golden Calf incident (Exodus 32:9-14). He's not afraid to question, to demand answers, because his relationship with God is so profound, so intimate, and his concern for the fate of his people, Am Yisrael, is so absolute.

The rabbis who crafted these midrashim (rabbinic interpretive commentary), these interpretations, weren't afraid to confront difficult questions. They poured their own pain and anger into the figure of Moses, allowing him to voice the unspeakable grief of a nation in ruins.

What does this story tell us? Perhaps that anger, even anger directed at God, can be a form of prayer. That questioning, even challenging, is a vital part of faith. That even in the face of unimaginable loss, we can still find the courage to demand justice and accountability. And maybe, just maybe, to be heard.

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