Tisha B'Av teaches defiance, hope

AMY HIRSHBERG-LEDERMAN

In observance of Tisha B'Av in Jerusalem, people sit on the ground at the base of the Western Wall and read from the book of Lamentations. This year the holiday begins at sundown on Aug. 6.

Photo courtesy of AP Photo/Zoom 77

I never really heard of Tisha B'Av when I was growing up. Although my family celebrated major Jewish holidays like Rosh Hashana, Hanukkah and Passover, I never learned much about the "minor league" holidays like Shmini Atzeret and Lag B'Omer in the small New Jersey town where I grew up.

It wasn't until I spent my junior year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem that I first heard about it.

Tisha B'Av (the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, which falls on Aug. 7 this year) is the saddest day of the Jewish year: It is the day that officially commemorates national Jewish mourning. Tisha B'Av is the anniversary of the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. by the Romans. With an uncanny sense of historic irony, it is also the date of some of the worst disasters and expulsions that occurred in Jewish history.

In 1190, Tisha B'Av marked the day that the Jews of York, England, were slaughtered; it also was the day they were expelled from England 100 years later. It commemorated the imprisonment of the Jews in France in 1305 and marked the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Italy ghettoized its Florence Jews on Tisha B'Av in 1571 and Austria forced them out of Vienna in 1670.

The devastating pattern of deportation and death continued into the modern age beginning with Russia's mobilization toward World War I on the ninth of Av which led to the expulsion of all Jews from the border provinces a year later. The Nazis took pleasure in organizing murderous actions against the Jewish community on Tisha B'Av, such as commencing the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to the death camps at Treblinka.

The Jewish religious responses to these events were identical to those that are followed when a family member dies. Extensive mourning rituals were developed by the Talmudic rabbis to help the community deal with the profound grief and loss they would continue to experience from losing their homes, families and communities. Today, more than 2,500 years after the destruction of the First Temple, we continue to reenact the feelings of our ancestors by engaging in traditional mourning practices such as fasting and restricting our physical comfort by not bathing, not wearing leather shoes, makeup or perfume and refraining from sexual relations. The public reading of Lamentations occurs in synagogues while congregants often sit on the floor or low stools in the traditional style of mourners.

Local Tisha B'Av Services

In some ways, Tisha B'Av is the holiday that reminds us that the Jewish way of life - its traditions, practices, culture and land - have been targeted for extinction since the beginning of Jewish time. History bears witness to the multiplicity of efforts to eradicate the heart and soul of the Jewish people by deporting them from the land of Israel, destroying their religious centers of worship and physically destroying, isolating or removing them from community life.

But what history has repeatedly failed to recognize is one truly amazing fact: Each time Jewish survival is threatened, the Jewish response that emerges is one of hope and defiance. Tragedy has always been a catalyst for Jewish national, religious and personal introspection providing Jewish leaders from Ezra the prophet to Theodor Herzl with the opportunity to reiterate the Jewish belief that redemption is possible for every Jew and for the Jewish nation as a whole. Since the creation of the first Jewish Community Center (the Bet Knesset) in Babylon to the creation of the state of Israel, Jews have responded to historic crises with two words: faith and community. Faith, that if we live according to the commandments, we will be restored to the land of Israel and knowledge that only through working, living, studying, praying and building our lives together as a community will Jewish survival be possible.

Amy Hirshberg-Lederman is a free-lance writer from Tucson.

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