“According to Jewish tradition, it is the date on which five specific national disasters occurred, including the destruction of the First and Second temples. In our communal mourning on that date, we also call to mind other calamities that have befallen our people”, stresses Dr. Faydra Shapiro, the Director of the Israel Center for Jewish-Christian Relations, in her commentary for the Catholic University of Lublin Heschel Center. This year, on 12-13 August, Jews are celebrating Tisha B’Av.
Tisha B’Av simply means “the Ninth day of the month of Av.” Which doesn’t sound particularly meaningful in itself. But this date has always been an inauspicious one in Jewish history, a day of national tragedy on the Jewish calendar.
According to Jewish tradition, it is the date on which five specific national disasters occurred, including the destruction of the First and Second temples. In our communal mourning on that date, we also call to mind other calamities that have befallen our people, including the Crusades, the expulsion of the Jews from various countries in Europe, and the Shoah.
The day is focused on mourning, marked by five things that we don’t do, from sunrise until nightfall the following day:
No eating or drinking
No washing
No self-annointing with perfumes and such
No sexual relations
No wearing of leather shoes
So in some ways it is a lot like Yom Kippur, although Yom Kippur is a joyful fast and Tisha B’Av is a mournful one, where we sit on the floor and abstain even from the joy of studying Torah, except for the book of Lamentations and Job.
This year we have an additional event to mourn: on October 7 of last year, thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and massacred over a thousand people. Some 250 Israeli civilians were taken hostage into Gaza, including women, children and elderly. We are a nation at war and a nation in mourning.
Yet, we are hopeful.
I’ll paraphrase a story told in the Talmud:
After the destruction of the Second Temple, a group of rabbis went to Jerusalem. When they reached the Temple Mount, they saw a fox emerging from the place of the Holy of Holies. The rabbis started weeping; but Rabbi Akiva laughed.
They asked Rabbi Akiva: “Why are you laughing?”
He replied: “Why are you weeping?”
They said to Rabbi Akiva: “A place so holy is now so desolate that foxes enter it, and we shouldn’t weep?”
Rabbi Akiva replied: “That is precisely why I laughed! Just as I witness prophecies of destruction have been fulfilled, so I can trust that the prophecies of redemption and rebuilding will be fulfilled.
With these words they replied to him: “Akiva, you have consoled us! Akiva, you have consoled us!”
May we all be consoled during these mournful, frightening times, by the hopeful expectation of the future we are promised by God.
About the author:
Dr. Faydra Shapiro is a specialist in contemporary Jewish-Christian relations and is the Director of the Israel Center for Jewish-Christian Relations. She received the National Jewish Book Award for her first publication (2006). Her most recent book, with Gavin d’Costa, is Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel. Dr. Shapiro is also a Senior Fellow at the Philos Project https://philosproject.org and a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Religions at Tel Hai College in Israel.
