I heard this growing up makes me cry every time...

amother

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 5:12 pm

The woman in the times when the B''HMK was destroyed, used to eat their own kids out of starvation...
Can someone clarify and or elaborate.
It was always read from Eicho

613mitzvahgirl

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 5:14 pm

I heard this too.. it’s so heartbreaking 😢😢I always hear ppl say you have such delicious cheeks I can eat them.. I guess they never really looked in Eicha.. 😢

amother

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 5:25 pm

Its such a scary thought!
I guess the kids where dead already.
Would you be able to give more detail? What happened before and after?

amother

Snapdragon

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 5:41 pm

There have been mang times when people were literally starving and didn't eat their children
Why did they do so at the time

amother

Sapphire

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 5:46 pm

amother Snapdragon wrote:

There have been mang times when people were literally starving and didn't eat their children
Why did they do so at the time

I don't know. It says they were driven out of their minds.

amother

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 5:46 pm

amother Snapdragon wrote:

There have been mang times when people were literally starving and didn't eat their children
Why did they do so at the time

I know!
That was my though initially. How hungry where they that they had to eat their kids!
Think WW2.

amother

Springgreen

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 6:32 pm

I think they ate their bodies. They had nowhere to get rid of them, so because of the smell also it was better to eat them. Not that they killed them to eat.

amother

Lightblue

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 6:33 pm

amother OP wrote:

I know!
That was my though initially. How hungry where they that they had to eat their kids!
Think WW2.

There was cannibalism in WW2. I've read it in a few Holocaust books/accounts.
In the book Gutka by Gutta Sternbuch when she described the terrible hunger in the Warsaw ghetto, she described it as being the same sort of hunger during the churban. (The accounts of cannibalism were not from the ghettos though, but from the camps near the end of the war, shortly before liberation and came after years of starvation.)

flowerpower

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 6:33 pm

The story of someone measuring her kid every year to see how much he grew. Then she was so hungry that she ate him🤷🏻‍♀️

amother

Scarlet

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 6:40 pm

The measuring was because she used to donate his weight in gold to the Bais HaMikdash, out of gratitude for having a child.

amother

Seashell

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 7:11 pm

I once hear din a speech- sorry I don’t remember by who- that it was a part of the gezeira- that the women whose natural will is for their child to have everything good, a woman who hurts for her child….these same women’s’ hearts were turned and they did this …as a result of the gezeira - that their hearts should be turned.

That’s what I learned.

Sometimes I think about it in relation to traumatized individuals who hurt others as a result of their own pain- but that’s my own thoughts, 2 cents.
.

May we be nig’Al b’karov.

amother

Tealblue

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 8:55 pm

amother OP wrote:

The woman in the times when the B''HMK was destroyed, used to eat their own kids out of starvation...
Can someone clarify and or elaborate.
It was always read from Eicho

This is written in the kinnos. This is from memory but I believe it’s kinnah י״ז although I might be wrong. The churban was an unfathomably tragic time

amother

Aquamarine

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 9:28 pm

amother Cinnamon wrote:

I know there was cannibalism in Russia during the cold War. Horrific.

Bc of starvation?

amother

Snapdragon

Wed, Jul 26 2023, 11:42 pm

amother Cinnamon wrote:

I know there was cannibalism in Russia during the cold War. Horrific.

They were selling body parts in public for the meat in 1920s
Google has images (TW)

amother

Dandelion

Thu, Jul 27 2023, 6:56 am

It's pretty explicit. It's one of the reasons I don't read Eicha. I can't stomach it. And not just this passage, many many of them are too horrible to read.

Luckily I'm the spouse who gets stuck home with the kids during Eicha.

Eicha 2:20
רְאֵ֤ה יְהֹוָה֙ וְֽהַבִּ֔יטָה לְמִ֖י עוֹלַ֣לְתָּ כֹּ֑ה אִם־תֹּאכַ֨לְנָה נָשִׁ֤ים פִּרְיָם֙ עֹלְלֵ֣י טִפֻּחִ֔ים אִם־יֵהָרֵ֛ג בְּמִקְדַּ֥שׁ אֲדֹנָ֖י כֹּהֵ֥ן וְנָבִֽיא׃ {ס}

See, O Lord, and behold, to whom [else] have You done thus! Will women devour their own offspring, children that are petted? Will priest and prophet be slain in the Sanctuary of the Lord?
(translation courtesy of chabad.org)

amother

Brass

Thu, Jul 27 2023, 1:29 pm

From a shiur that I heard:
The tremendous suffering of the Jewish people at that time destroyed their nature and their humanity. It twisted the moral fibers of their being so they could rationalize even the most savage behavior. Somehow they thought, “I gave my child life. Now he needs to give that life to me so that I can survive.” Of course this is depraved reasoning. No sane person would think this way. But their agony and suffering warped their minds.

amother

Brass

Thu, Jul 27 2023, 1:32 pm

amother Lightblue wrote:

Rav Soloveitchik said that all of the suffering that we read about in Eicha and the kinnos, also happened during that Holocaust. I believe that he was agianst having new kinnos added for the Holocaust, and said that kinnah 17 about women eating their own children can refer to what happened in the Holocaust as well as during the churban.