On Tisha B’Av, Lamentation for a Swimming Pool in Jerusalem

It has been nearly a year since the closure of the Jerusalem Pool. The lot that housed the Olympic-size pool is now a giant hole in the ground, and an upscale supermarket is expanding into the area that once housed the complex’s one-room gym. Instead of the hundreds of children who used to splash in the kiddie pool each summer, now there are just a few manned tractors clearing away the rubble behind a billboard advertising the luxury condominium that will be built on the site. A few weeks ago, on the eve of the 17th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, I walked past at 9 p.m. and saw a giant crane hauling the two-story aquamarine waterslide over the billboards into a waiting truck. As I stood there, mourning the demolition of the pool where I swam nearly every morning for over a decade, I could hear in my head the haunting chant of the book of Lamentations, whose words I modified only slightly: Alas! How lonely sits the city pool, once great with people. (1:1)

The book of Lamentations is traditionally attributed to Jeremiah, who was mourning the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians in the sixth century B.C.E. The walls of the city were breached, the Temple was set aflame, and Jerusalem was left desolate. This tragedy is commemorated every year on the ninth of Av, a day marked by fasting, mourning, and the chanting of Lamentations and other dirges. According to Jewish tradition, the ninth of Av was a day when five tragedies befell the Jewish people: not just the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians, but also the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, the return of the dispirited spies sent by Moses to scout out the Promised Land, the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt, and the plowing of Jerusalem to dust by the Roman general Turnus Rufus.

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