Tisha B’Av – Remember, Mourn, Endure, Triumph.

                      

Kedoshot -- Some of the girls and women who were slaughtered Al Kiddush HaShem (fo the sanctification of G-d's name) in the October 7th attacks.

Tisha B’Av – Remember, Mourn, Endure, Triumph.

By Howard Barbanel.

There is no sadder day on a Jewish calendar that is rife with them. Tisha B’Av, the Ninth day of the month of Av is a day of fasting, reciting Lamentations, reading the Scroll of Eicha and reflecting on the countless woes that have befallen our people across the millennia.

There is an old joke that says, “all Jewish holidays are, they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.” This is not that kind of a day. On this day they did succeed in killing vast numbers of us and so there is no eating.

It was in the year 586 BCE that the Kingdom of Judea along with the King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem were destroyed by the Babylonians. Lost forever was Moses’ Ark of the Covenant which contained the tablets of stone engraved by G-d himself, all the holy vessels but more importantly, the direct connection with G-d’s divine presence which rested upon the Holy of Holies each Yom Kippur.

In the year 70 CE Jerusalem and the second Temple fell to the Romans who hauled away the giant Menorah which can be seen carved into the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum. In the war against Rome more than 800 Jewish villages and towns were destroyed, countless slaughtered and enslaved.

The remnant of Judea rebelled against Rome some 60 years later and the last Jewish stronghold of Betar was overrun putting an end to the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE. A year later the Romans plowed the site of the Temple Mount to erase our presence there. Yet Jews never ceased living in the Land of Israel from that day to this.

But the Tisha B’Av tragedies are not done yet…The Crusades were launched on this day in the year 1096, the Jews of England were expelled in 1290; the expulsion from Spain in 1492; Hitler’s “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” was approved on this day in 1941 and the start of mass deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka began on Tish B’Av 1942. The cumulative generations of Jewish martyrs from all the above are so plentiful that they defy being numbered.

So, what does this have to do with us today? So many of these tragedies occurred far, far in the past. We lack “footage” and images from most of them, relying on the written testimony of our ancestors. How can we wrap our heads around the innumerable dead and mourn for them?

In the Passover Haggadah we say that in every generation there arise against us those who would annihilate us, but the Holy One Blessed Be He delivers us from their hands. Right now, today, in our faces here in the US and across the Earth the Jewish people are confronting a violent tsunami of antisemitism both verbal and physical. Just two days ago we saw a Hitlerian speech by New York’s Mayor Mamdani. Social media is a cesspool of incessant hate.

Chapter Three of the Scroll of Eicha says “You have heard their insults, Lord, all their designs regarding me. The speech and thoughts of my enemies are against me all day long.”

The miasma of enmity against us can seem overwhelming. How best to easily identify with it and mourn? I’d like to suggest recalling all of the young Jewish women who were murdered and sexually violated during the October 7^th invasion of Southern Israel by Hamas almost three years ago. If there is anything that was a greater recent tangible assault on our people and on our honor, I’m at a loss to put my finger on it. In Chapter Five of Eicha, Jeremiah writes “they ravaged women in Zion; maidens in the towns of Judah.” In Chapter Three, “my eyes have brought me grief over the daughters of my city.” In a new Kinah (dirge or lamentation) by Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon about the Gaza war, he writes, “roses were murdered, a desecration of G-d name…how did the precious children of Zion fall into the hand of accursed rapists, the plucked of cheek were given over to the attackers?”

See the screenshot images of some of our murdered daughters accompanying this article and internalize the grief. Beating back the attackers and the would-be annihilators from Gaza, the IDF soldiers transformed grief into rage and rage into resolve. Resolve that the lives and honor of our women and of our children and of our elderly will be avenged, now, before our eyes and future occurrences prevented. What kind of people would we be if we let this go unanswered?

For this we are accused of “genocide,” but if thousands of women in any other country were sullied and grotesquely murdered what would their leaders and their armies do? Chapter Three of Eicha ends by saying “Pay them back their due, Lord, as they have done. Give them a broken heart; may your curse be upon them! Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens…”

Thankfully, Tisha B’Av is but one day on the Jewish calendar. From our holy ashes a new, bright Jewish future has emerged in Israel. Better to be reviled than pitied. As we have survived past challenges so will we triumph over those of today and tomorrow. The struggle to defend G-d’s truth in the world is never ending. The forces of evil cannot be permitted to prevail. Our 3,500-year Jewish journey will endure and that endurance is the ultimate Jewish victory.