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Tisha B’Av (literally, the 9th Day of the Hebrew month of Av) is an annual day of public mourning in the Jewish community. According to ancient tradition, both Temples erected in Jerusalem were destroyed (in 586 b.c.e & 70 c.e.) on the same day-the 9th of Av. This year, Tisha B’Av is observed from Monday evening to Tuesday evening, August 12-13.
Though referred to as a “day of mourning”, in fact it is a day of learning, and re-learning, a lesson the world continually fails to heed. The real tragedy of the 9thof Av was not the destruction of the ancient Temples, nor the dispersion of the Jewish population, but that it could have been prevented. Had the leaders of their times addressed the corruption within their own ranks, and the wanton hatred and rampant immorality within the greater community, they may have prevented their own demise. They didn’t, and the rest is history!
The lesson of Tisha B’Av is simple: When you have the opportunity to forestall or prevent disaster, take it. Historically, this lesson is more easily said than done. The dustpan of extinct civilizations and nations is full of decisions not made, courses of action not taken.
Shortly after the devastating murders on October 7, 2023, New York Times opinion writer, David Brooks, made the following observation: “[On December 23, 2000] the Palestinians were offered a path to having their own nation on roughly 95 percent of the land in the West Bank and 100 percent of the land in the Gaza Strip. Under that outline, Israel would also swap some of its own land to compensate the Palestinians in exchange for maintaining 80 percent of its settler presence in the West Bank.”
“The Palestinians would control, in President Bill Clinton’s formulation, “Arab areas” of East Jerusalem. And on the most sensitive religious sites, there would have been divided sovereignty or jurisdiction, with Palestinians controlling the Haram al-Sharif (including the Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques) and Israel controlling the Western Wall and the holy space of which it is a part. There would also be a return of many refugees into the new Palestinian state (without the right of return to Israel itself).”
“There were a million complexities — and many errors made by the Israeli, Palestinian and American sides along the way. But this offer pointed the way to the sort of fair solution negotiators had been struggling their way toward for years. It is hard to see this kind of option ever being on the table again. And the Palestinians let it slip away.”
The Jewish observance of Tisha B’Av is one day in a calendar year when the central focus is discovered in the haunting refrain of what if? . . . . in the hope of finding resolution.
Rabbi Howard Siegel
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