Heavy Heart on Tisha B'av

August 15th marks the end of the somber Jewish Holiday known as Tisha B’av, or 9th day of the Jewish month of Av. It is a day of mourning in memory of the many horrible tragedies that have befallen Jews and mankind on this day, such as:

* The Biblical mission of the spies, whose slanderous report on the Land of Israel doomed the entire generation who were brought out of Egypt to die in the desert without entering Eretz Yisroel.

* The destruction of the first (and holiest) Temple, Soloman’s Temple, at the hand of the Babylonians in 586 BCE.

* The destruction of the second Temple at the hand of the Romans in 70 CE.

* The final crushing of Bar Kochbah’s revolt against the Romans in 133 CE.

* The launching of the first Crusade, 1095 CE.

* The expulsion of the Jews from England, 1290 CE

* The expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Spanish Inquisition), 1492 CE

* WW I declared, beginning perhaps the worst period of anti-Semitism in world history, and eventually culminating with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, 1914

* Deportations from Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp begin, 1942. The start of the “Final Solution”.

Yes, all those events took place on Tisha B’av, or 9th of Av. Sadly, coming up in less than a week, on the very day we’ll be celebrating VJ day, and Tisha B’av’s mourning comes to an end, Ariel Sharon will launch the first ever large scale Jewish pogrom, deporting nearly 10,000 Jews from their homes by force from Gaza and Northern Samaria, demolishing their homes, their towns, their synagogues and their cemeteries.

So, the piece of Land in which David slayed Goliath, and Sampson battled the Phillistines, will become entirely Judenrein for the first time in over 3,000 years. This will be a bitter and tragic day indeed, and a day in which Jews and Gentiles everywhere should say prayers in the hope that somehow, someway, this evil does not come to pass.

Yehudi Lo Megaresh Yehudi!

-MZ