Tisha B'Av (the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av) is a day dedicated to the mourning of the destruction of the first Temple by the Babylonians in the year 586 BCE and the second Temple by the Romans in the year 70 AD. This year Tisha B'Av will be commemorated on July 26, 2015.
Jewish people who follow the tradition observe this date with traditional fasting, chanting from the Book of Lamentations which has a uniquely somber melody and following Jewish mourning traditions. It is indeed a solemn day. one can sense it immediately upon entering any synagogue which holds services for the day.
Amazing! We mourn events which happened thousands of years ago! The sadness and the sense of lost lingers and lingers generation after generation. The national and religious pain may be somewhat numb by now but it is still very much a part of our collective memory, our collective psyche.
What is even more amazing is that we mourn the destruction of a place where animal sacrifice was the way to draw us close to G-d. In fact, it was the primary function of the Temple. Today of course, we do not practice animal sacrifice at all and will not even do so if the Temple is to be rebuilt.
As we explore our spirituality, we now believe that while the Temple's physical building was destroyed, its Holiness never disappeared. As the Temple was burning at the hands of the Babylonians and later on by the Romans, the burning building shifted its energy and its holiness from its burning ashes directly into our living HEARTS. Therefore each one of us carries the holiness of the Temple, the extension of G-d's spirit, in our Jewish "Neshama," our soul.
So why mourn the destruction of a building, its main purpose animal sacrifice? If the original two tablets tucked in the Holy of Holies ever survived they would be nothing but sand by now (remember "Raiders of the Lost Ark?")
It is interesting to note that the 9th day of AV also commemorates other major national disasters in our history which amazingly took place at the same date in different times in our history. The following are a few of them:
132 A major revolt against Rome by the Jews led by the Bar Kochbah (53 years after the destruction of the Temple) was crushed
1095 First Crusade was declared by Pope Urban II. As a result, 10,000 Jews killed in the first month of the Crusade. Death and destruction totally obliterated many communities in Rhineland and France. By comparison to the number of Jews in Europe at the time, the killing was compatible to the 20th century Holocaust.
1290 Expulsion of Jews from England: Pogroms and confiscation of all Jewish property
1492 Inquisition in Spain and Portugal culminates in the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsual. Families separated, many die by drowning, massive loss of property. The royal expulsion decree was publicized on 9 Av 1492.
1942 Deportations fro Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp began
When reading all these events which happened on the 9th day of the month of Av, we get a different perspective on the significance of the day, especially with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 which is now considered one of the most advanced democracies in the world and third in the world of technology.
While Tisha B'Av is a day of mourning of some of the many catastrophic events in our history, it has now become a day that symbolizes the triumph of Hope out of repeated disasters, a Phoenix which keeps rising out of the ashes.It reminds us that we are evergreen, indestructible. It re-emphasizes that the Temple is in the heart of every Jew and that the Shechina, the Light of G-d which once hovered over the Holy of Holies in the Temple (the location of the ark of covenant) is still alive and well in us, the Jewish people, the carriers of G-d's Light.
May Tisha B'Av remind us to continue to do the job we came here to do, bring this Light to our families, our communities, Mother Earth, the World!
