Tisha b'Av
By Stan Goodenough
Tisha B'Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, is a day of mourning on which the Jewish people commemorate the many tragedies that have befallen them, some of the worst which have "coincidentally" occurred on this specific date.
The Ninth of Av usually falls in August. It is a date on which, traditionally, five national calamities befell the Jews:
- In 1312 BC, Moses issued the command forbidding the Israelites from entering the Promised Land after they lost faith in God and listened to the bad report brought by 10 of the 12 spies sent to reconnoitre the Land of Israel.
- In 586 BC. Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonians destroyed the First Temple during the taking of Jerusalem during which 100,000 Jews were killed and millions went into exile.
- In AD 70 Titus and his Roman legionnaires destroyed the Temple, leaving not one stone atop another. Throughout the Land of Israel, around two million Jews died at Roman hands, another million were exiled.
- In AD 135 the Roman Emperor Hadrian crushed the Bar Kochba revolt, slaughtering over 100,000 Jews.
- The Romans plowed the Temple area and its surroundings under and rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city which they renamed Aelia Capitolina. Jews were forbidden access to the city.
Other tragedies that occurred on Tisha b'Av include:
- The declaration of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II. Tens of thousands of Jews were killed, and many Jewish communities were wiped out.
- The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
- The outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Resentment that festered in defeated Germany following that war set the stage for the Holocaust.
- The deportation began of Warsaw's Jews.
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