And that too is perhaps why the book of Lamentations -- literally beginning with "Eicha" -- focuses on a catastrophic humbling and diminishment of numbers. "How (alas!) she sits alone, the city once great with people." The challenge of the book of Eicha, as you have alluded to before, is to be humbled by that diminishment without it causing us to wallow in victimhood, to acquire from the shock of aloneness the strength and determination to stand together again when the occasion demands.
And that too is perhaps why the book of Lamentations -- literally beginning with "Eicha" -- focuses on a catastrophic humbling and diminishment of numbers. "How (alas!) she sits alone, the city once great with people." The challenge of the book of Eicha, as you have alluded to before, is to be humbled by that diminishment without it causing us to wallow in victimhood, to acquire from the shock of aloneness the strength and determination to stand together again when the occasion demands.