Shabbos Tisha B'Av

Click here to listen to a talk delivered last night in "The Shul on the Beach" in Venice, CA. A special thank you goes to Joni Ziff for organizing the program and to all the wonderful people who attended.

What happens when Tisha B'Av falls out on Shabbos? 

What do we need to do to bring an end to the Galus? 

Listen and find out how the answers to these two questions are related.

Tisha B'Av audio

Firstly, an overdue thank you to Mordechai Dixler, who created Ekiruv and Torah Media which graciously hosts these MP3 files. Yasher Koach!

The link below is an audio shiur delivered last year in Selwyn's office on the 2nd of Av 5769. It is an attempt to view the destruction of Jerusalem from God's perspective.

• Of Man, Temple & Divine Desire
  

(The shiur is based on an article published in the JSN's Focus journal in 2006. It can be downloaded here. Find it on page 40.)

Below is a link to this year's Rosh Chodesh Av shiur at Selwyn's office. While warning against the trend of turning Tisha B'Av into Yom Kippur, it explains why Tisha B'Av is a prerequisite for meaningful Teshuva on the High Holidays.

• Tisha B'Av: Mourning, Meaning & Misconceptions

In the Mood for Tisha B'Av?

Sunday was the seventeenth of Taamuz and next Shabbat is the first of Av. Which means one thing: Tisha B’Av is approaching. On Tisha B’Av, Jerusalem was lost and the Temple was destroyed. It is the day we were exiled from our homeland and the day the Diaspora began. It is the saddest day of the year and we need to start preparing for it now.

Of all the Jewish days on the calendar, Tisha B’Av is the most difficult to observe. Nobody has trouble relating to the festive holidays. All year we look forward to Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot. Everybody loves Chanukah and Purim. Even when it comes to Yom Kippur, as hard as it may be for us to face the challenge of personal growth, we still manage to experience the holiness of the day by giving repentance our best shot. Tisha B’Av, however, is another story. On Tisha B’Av you can’t satisfy yourself by going through the motions. There are no motions. There are only tears. Either you have them or you don’t.

On Tisha B’Av there is no Shofar to blow, no Seder to lead, and no Menorah to light. It does not call for any external action at all. What it calls for is emotion. Fasting and mourning are simultaneously the means to inspire somber reflection and the natural reaction to the burning issues of the day. Tisha B’Av demands consciousness of our national history, empathy for our national pain, and sharing our national aspirations. Tisha B’Av is aimed directly at our hearts, and that is why it is such a challenge.

There is a popular misconception that observing Tisha B’Av is only for Jews who are passionate about Judaism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Such mistaken thinking is the result of an ignorance of how mitzvot operate. Jewish identity is by no means a required prerequisite for the observance of Tisha B’Av. Quite the opposite. The observance of Tisha B’Av itself generates Jewish identity.

It is not expected that people will naturally feel joy on the holidays or grief on Tisha B’Av. If it came to us naturally, there would be no mitzvah. Our job is to make the effort to inspire these feelings within. By focusing on the tragedies of our history, by empathizing with the suffering of our people, and by recognizing that Divine intervention is our only hope, we connect with our past, we unite with our people, and we awaken our souls. That is the mitzvah of Tisha B’Av.

The Talmud tells us that the Second Temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred. A breakdown of community is something G-d does not tolerate. So He left. After functioning as a sanctuary for G-d’s Presence for 420 years, the Temple became no more than an empty building.

Having been destroyed spiritually, it was only a matter of time before it was destroyed physically. It stands to reason that as long as hatred exists among Jews, the Divine Presence will not return to Jerusalem.

But it is not the mere eradication of hate that we are after. Love is our goal. How can we uproot the evil of hate, replace it with love, and put an end to our exile? Tisha B’Av is the answer.

It is very easy to talk about love, unity, and identity, but how do you know if it is real? We convince ourselves that we have fulfilled the mitzvah of loving our fellow Jews, but have we? The question we need to ask ourselves is this: Do we share the joys of our brothers and sisters? Do we feel their pain? Do we feel for the nation as a whole? Such feelings do not materialize by themselves; they need to be cultivated and developed. It is for this reason that we have Tisha B’Av. On Tisha B’Av we move beyond self-centeredness into other-centeredness. We deepen our relationship with our fellow Jews by allowing the suppressed love and concern within our souls to break through to the surface.

Today we have been over-saturated with tragedy and our hearts have hardened. We have lost our sensitivity and we have forgotten how to cry. Tisha B’Av restores our hearts back to the warm, empathetic Jewish heart that it was designed to be. By mourning the tragedies of our history right down to the present day, we teach our hearts to feel again. The sadness of Tisha B’Av is not a depression that breaks you; it is a compassionate sadness that fixes and heals.

On Tisha B'Av, we mourn our distance from G-d, we cleanse any residue of hate from our hearts, and we forge a more meaningful relationship with our people, our land, and our G-d. Every Jew needs Tisha B’Av. But in order the have a successful Tisha B’Av, one cannot wait until the ninth of Av. Preparations must begin weeks in advance.

The inner work of Tisha B’Av is too important and too difficult for just one day. The mourning period therefore begins three weeks earlier on the seventeenth of Tammuz. The mourning starts on a low level, easily accessible to all. Slowly, as we enter the month of Av, the mourning intensifies until the climax is reached on the fast of Tisha B’Av.

There are no shortcuts. It is difficult to experience a meaningful Tisha B’Av if the earlier stages are skipped. But if one prepares properly during the “Three Weeks,” learning the lessons of our painful history, observing the mourning practices of the period and slowly increasing consciousness of the sad state of the Jewish world, then Tisha B’Av will be what it was meant to be. A day on which the core of our Jewish identity is revealed in all of its beauty. There is no other day like it.

The Mother of All Tragedies

Jerusalem, 70 C.E. The 9th of Av; an eyewitness account:

While the Temple blazed, the victors plundered everything that fell in their way and slaughtered wholesale all who were caught. No pity was shown for age, no reverence for rank; children and greybeards, laity and priests alike were massacred; every class was pursed and encompassed in the grasp of war, whether supplicants for mercy or offering resistance.
The roar of the flames streaming far and wide mingled with the groans of the fallen victims; and, owing to the height of the hill and the mass of the burning pile, one would have thought that the whole city was ablaze. And then the din – nothing more deafening or appalling could be conceived than that. There were the war-cries of the Roman legions sweeping onward in mass, the howls of the rebels encircled by fire and sword, the rush of the people, who, cut off above, fled panic-stricken only to fall into the arms of the foe, and the shrieks as they met their fate. With the cries on the hill were blended those of the multitude in the city below; and now many who were emaciated and tongue-tied from starvation, when they beheld the sanctuary on fire, gathered strength once more for lamentations and wailing.

Josephus, The Jewish War, VI. 271-274

The mother of all tragedies:

The Mishnah tells us (Ta’anit 26a) that five tragic events took place on Tishah B’Av: the sin of the spies, the destruction of the two Temples, the fall of Beitar, and the plowing up of the city of Jerusalem. When the Mishnah writes this, it is not just counting these events. The Mishnah is saying something else, that there is something intrinsic to this day that is responsible for these tragedies. And, in fact, there are not only five, but more than five events that occurred on this day since the time this was written in the Mishnah. Other, later, tragic events also occurred on this day. For example, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 was on Tishah B’Av. And you will find many more as well. It is the day of catastrophe as far as Jewish history is concerned. It is the day of tragedy, as if the day itself was somehow responsible. The day is fatal…
Our history is saturated with pogroms, persecutions, catastrophic events, and all kinds of misfortunes separate and apart from the Temple’s destruction. Half a million Jews, perhaps, were killed during the Middle Ages! Nonetheless, the Rishonim (medieval Rabbinic leaders) were silent. For some reason that we do not understand, they were reluctant to set aside a separate day of fasting and mourning to remember those who were killed for the sanctification of G-d’s Name in the centuries after the destruction of the Temples. Rashi says (II Chron. 35:25) that Tishah B’Av is the day to mourn for any Jewish tragedy. There can be no additional days set aside for mourning and grief, separately designated days of commemoration…
The destruction of the Temple is an all-inclusive concept. If the Temple’s destruction deserves mourning, it is incumbent upon us to mention and feel a sense of mourning on Tishah B’Av for all the catastrophes, tragedies, sufferings, and disasters that happened to the Jewish people during our more than nineteen hundred years of exile, because all of them are a direct result of the Temple’s destruction. Had the destiny of the Temples been different, all the catastrophes and disasters would never have happened. If not for the Temples’ destruction, the Crusades and the Hitler Holocaust, for example, would not have taken place. Everything, every disaster, is a result of the Temples’ destruction; that destruction is responsible for everything.

R. J.B. Soloveitchik, The Lord is Righteous in All His Ways, pgs. 208-214

Why do we still mourn? Isn’t the city rebuilt?

Much impressed by appearances, the casual uninformed observer might well have reason to ask, ‘Why do we continue to plead so desperately for Jerusalem to be rebuilt? True, we have no Temple and we cannot sacrifice offerings, but we can hardly say the city still lays in ruins!’
This question can be answered with an analogy to the patient who receives a heart transplant. The patient is up and around and appears to be healthy, but he is filled with anxiety lest his new heart be rejected or malfunction…
Similarly, the heart of mankind in general and the Jews in particular is the Beis HaMikdash, the Holy Temple. In that location, Adam was created and there G-d breathed life into his nostrils. G-d continued to pump vitality into mankind through the Temple until it was destroyed. Now, we are still maintained, but it is not the same. We are weak and fragile, susceptible to spiritual and moral contamination and disease. We are easily worn out. The whole system can collapse at any time.

R. A.C. Feuer, The Complete Tishah B’Av Service, pg. xv

The Diaspora Jew looks east:

Yerushalayim, rising in its throat-catching beauty on the shores of the Mediterranean, but for all that, lodged firmly in our hearts. Loyalty and longing. A city pining for her children and they? And they, undeterred by endless centuries, unhampered by weary distance, defiantly remain eternal wanderers because they know that outside Yerushalayim they can never really be home.

R. M.M. Eisemann, Harp Strings & Heart Strings, pg. 67

A bold prayer of hope:

Why do You ignore us eternally; forsake us for so long? Bring us back to You, G-d, and we shall return; renew our days as of old. For even if You were disgusted [with our behavior], You have already raged sufficiently against us.

Lamentations, 5:20-22