Gleanings from the Hebrew Calendar

Tishah b’Av (8th/9th August 2011)

The ninth of Av is the traditional collective symbol of the Jewish people’s greatest disasters, failures, sufferings and exiles. Its stature as a 25 hour day of fasting is shared only with Yom Kippur. On the 9th Av in 586 B.C. the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonian forces of Nebuchadnezzar with many deportations at that time. On or about the same time some 600 years after the Babylonian captivity, in 70 A.D., the Roman legions of Titus destroyed the second Temple. Again, on or about the same day in 135 A.D. Bar Kokba’s fortress at Betar fell to Hadrian’s army, marking the end of the last vestige of Jewish self-government until 1948.

For all of these tragedies to coincide on one day takes some interpreting but received wisdom suggest that they are all of a piece. All periods of exile stem from the first events in 586 B.C. which had been brought about by God’s will to punish His people who had besmirched their capital, strayed from His teachings and sinned greatly (especially guilty of the sin of idolatry).

Tefillin

The liturgy of Tishah b’Av includes the five poems of the Book of Lamentations. Observance of this day requires a rigorous confrontation with one’s own weaknesses. It is a day of fasting - and a day when those that observe it are forbidden to wear leather shoes, to bathe, to wash anything. They do not greet friends or acquaintances and the Torah is not studied except for those passages that are immediately relevant to the day. Tefillin are not worn until afternoon prayers because they are considered ‘glorification’.

But even if it is a day of great mourning, at the heart of it there is still hope because Jeremiah’s lament contains the words:

"Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘Therefore I hope in Him!’ The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly For the salvation of the Lord." (Lam.3:22–26)