Tisha B'Av the 9th Day of Av

Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month called, Av. It was a day of national mourning. It was a fast day.

Regarding Tisha B’Av, our Talmud (Taanit, 26b) tells us that five national Jewish tragedies occurred in ancient times on this day. This is the day leaders of the Jewish people returned from a reconnaissance mission just as the Jewish people were about to enter the land of Israel for the first time, some 3,300 years ago. It was on the ninth of Av that these men persuaded the Jewish people that the land could not be conquered. As a consequence of that failure to trust G-d’s Promise, no male (except two) between the ages of 20 -60 was allowed to enter the land. G-d decreed that they would die in the desert.

On this day, both of our ancient Temples were destroyed. They were destroyed some 630+ years apart.

On this day, 52 years after the second Temple had been destroyed (in 70 CE), the Romans ploughed under the Temple Mount.

On this day, 65 years after the second Temple had been destroyed, Roman soldiers massacred all the inhabitants of the Jewish city Beitar.

Since then, the ninth of Av—and the three weeks leading up to it—have been marked with tragedy for the Jewish people—expulsions, murders, pogroms, etc. Even today, the 2014 ninth of Av began with a threat: just minutes before a scheduled cease-fire was set to begin between Hamas and Israel in 2014, Hamas fired a salvo of rockets into Israel. Two air raid sirens sounded, one after the other. They had to drop everything to go to our bomb shelter.