10 Thoughts for Shabbat Hazon and Tisha B’Av
This Shabbat is called Shabbat Hazon, the “Shabbat of Vision,” after the opening words of the sobering prophetic reading from Isaiah. It’s the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av—the national day of Jewish mourning.
Tisha B’Av—which begins this Saturday night and lasts through Sunday—commemorates the destruction of both Temples, as well as many other calamities throughout Jewish history. It’s the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. We sit low, don’t bathe, forego leather shoes, and read the book of Eicha (Lamentations) along with later kinot (dirges).
Still, there’s always a future in Jewish mourning. The rabbis taught that the Messiah will be born on Tisha B’Av. Even in our lowest moment, we choose hope.
Here are 10 thoughts—sobering and hopeful alike—I’m holding this week:
1. A Bit Too Close
Before October 7th 2023, I loved Tisha B’Av. It felt like an exercise in Jewish peoplehood. I would reach back to Jews across history who were despised and hated, and say: I am not indifferent. I am down here with you.
But this year I’m dreading it. It feels less about the past and more about the present and impending future. I know many of us have been holding Tisha B’Av’s mood for weeks:
In a world where Israel’s international legitimacy is in unprecedented crisis. Where antisemitism is surging. Where trust in the Israeli government is unraveling—even among its own citizens. Where credible reports confirm a looming hunger crisis and immense suffering among innocent Gazans. Where Hamas is winning the information war. Where no ceasefire is in sight, and the hostages are still not home.
This year, Tisha B’Av feels too familiar, too present. This too we should mourn.
2. After Disaster
This week we also begin Devarim, Deuteronomy, the fifth and final book of the Torah—Moses’ farewell speeches to the Israelites before they cross into the promised land. But here’s what strikes me: Moses isn’t speaking to the generation that left Egypt. They’re gone—they catastrophically sinned with the spies and rejected the land (according to the Rabbis, this happened on Tisha B’Av). Moses is addressing their children and grandchildren—a post-disaster people.
Much of what Moses says is harsh—rebuke, warning, reminders of failure. But as I read Devarim this year, I hear something else: the voice of a people who refuse to be defined by disaster. This is not a book obsessed with the trauma of the past—it’s obsessed with using the mistakes of the past to learn how to build a future.
3. Between Blame and Responsibility
So many conversations about Gaza’s hunger crisis have centered on blame—why doesn’t the world see Hamas as the evil masterminds behind it? And yes, they are. They have stolen so much of the aid—and part of their strategy is starving their people to malign Israel.
But I keep thinking about the rabbis’ response after the Second Temple’s destruction. They hated Rome, who had destroyed the Temple, but Rome became a footnote. As I’ve written years ago, what mattered more was Jewish agency—how civil infighting weakened them against Rome. The rabbis didn’t dwell on the evil of monsters—not because they didn’t believe they were evil but because they understood that to be a Jew is to be eternal, and that we must find agency in our condition.
There is a difference between victim-blaming and taking responsibility. The rabbis chose responsibility. That’s the beginning of agency—and of repair. What is our responsibility now?
4. Crying in Ashdod
Every Tisha B’Av, I return in my mind to one I spent with my Saba and Abuela z”l in Ashdod. I recall my Saba, Rabbi David Carciente, sitting on the floor and reading sad liturgical poems about misfortunes that struck the Jewish people—from the Temple’s destruction to the Inquisition.
But Saba David didn’t just read them. He cried real tears streaming down his face.
That’s what this day teaches me: Yes, Tisha B’Av is about figuring out what we’ve done wrong. But it’s also about loving each other so fiercely that we reach back to those Jews who felt despised, and embrace them across time.
Amidst all the noise and cacophony, one thing will always be clear: we are stronger when we love each other more than our enemies hate us.
5. Hope and Despair Are Neighbors
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi wrote about how closely Jewish hope and despair live next to each other. They’re not opposites; they’re neighbors. He writes:
Only when we become painfully aware of the historical depths of Jewish despair, only when we take it seriously, will we begin to realize that Jewish hope is not an historical “given” to be taken for granted, but an historical problem that we have not yet begun to recognize, let alone comprehend.
In other words, the depth of Jewish despair shows the magnitude of Jewish agency when Jews opted for hope.
From the depth of Jewish despair comes the audacity of Jewish hope. In Devarim, Moses dedicates his last year time to delivering speeches because he believes this new generation can build what their parents couldn’t. Jewish hope and despair, interwoven.
6. When Being Right Goes Wrong
I listened to this week’s Call Me Back podcast with Dan Senor and Ari Shavit. Shavit asks: What if Israelis focused not just on what is just, but what is smart?
As Israel bleeding support around the world, what must we do to make things better?
It reminded me of the sobering Talmudic story (Gittin 56a) about how the destruction came about. There’s a famous story about two men who fought—Kamtza and Bar Kamtza—one detail of the story often kept less known: When the Roman emperor sent a blemished animal as an offering (manipulated by Bar Kamza who wanted to hurt the Jewish people), the rabbis debated whether to accept the blemished animal—which typically they were not permitted to offer—to avoid insulting Rome. The sages tell us they consulted a rabbi who made the call: Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas refused the gift on grounds of principle.
The Talmud concludes: “The excessive piety of Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas destroyed our Temple, burned our sanctuary, and exiled us from our land.”
He was right. And disastrously wrong.
Sometimes rigid righteousness destroys what flexibility might save. Sometimes being principled can be catastrophically impractical. We have to be smart, not just right.
This is precisely where the rabbis placed their focus in recounting the Temple’s destruction: not on external enemies, but on our own failures—internal strife, zealotry, and a people too fractured to withstand Rome. That message feels all too close today.
To better understand this, I highly recommend watching Haggadot HaChurban, Legends of Destruction—a brilliant film that captures these themes.
7. A Myth That Tells the Truth
Here’s a story I don’t believe happened, but I think it captures who we are: Napoleon was walking through the Jewish quarter of Paris on Tisha B’Av and heard weeping from a synagogue. When he asked what was happening, he was told the Jews were mourning the destruction of their Temple.
“When did this happen?” Napoleon asked, surprised. Surely, he would have heard if a temple had been destroyed.
When told it was nearly 1,800 years ago, he supposedly said: “A people that can mourn for so long over the destruction of their Temple will surely see it rebuilt.”
8. Counting Every Year
Sephardic Jews have a custom of announcing, each Tisha B’Av night before leaving shul, how many years have passed since the destruction of the Temple.
This year we will say: “Listen, oh our brothers of the house of Israel… today we count 1,957 years from the destruction of our Bet haMiqdash.” (According to the traditional Sephardic account, the Second Temple was destroyed in 68 C.E.)
We don’t round it. We don’t let time make it abstract. We count every year we’ve lived without redemption.
9. When the Messiah Is Born
There’s an ancient Jewish tradition that says the Messiah will be born on Tisha B’Av—that in our moment of deepest mourning, redemption quietly enters the world.
For our Wondering Jews podcast, Noam and I spoke with Rabbi YY Jacobson, one of the most prominent Chabad rabbis today. When we asked him about how Chabad thinks of the Rebbe and the Messiah, he said something stunning: “That’s a distraction—the real question is whether we can each see ourselves as the messiah that can bring redemption.”
I’m holding this idea close this Tisha Beav. Can the Messiah inside each of us be born?
10. The People of Eternity
The words that I keep choosing to return to these days are: “עם הנצח לא מפחד מדרך ארוכה”—the people of eternity are not afraid of the long road.
The Jewish people could have fallen apart after the sin of the spies, when they realized their parents wouldn’t enter the land. But they didn’t. We could have collapsed after the destruction of each Temple, after every exile, pogrom, and inquisition. But we didn’t. Generation after generation, Jews kept building, investing, and moving forward—buoyed by the belief that a new generation is always coming, and that children can fulfill their parents’ dreams.
That’s what it means to be a people of eternity. Not that we’re immune to pain, not that we always avoid being self-destructive, but that we’re willing to walk through it—because we know the story isn’t over.
This Tisha B’Av, as we sit on the floor and remember 1,957 years of longing—as we reflect on our own failures and wrongdoings—may we also remember: we are still here. Still building. Still hoping. Still refusing to let despair have the final word.
As they say in Israel—may it be a meaningful fast. And may we merit to see the consolation of Zion and our people.
