Is It Time to Rethink Tisha B’Av?

We’re not really quite sure if the Second Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed on Tisha B’Av, the ninth of Av, the date that has become a traditional day of deep mourning in Judaism.

The destruction of the First Temple by Nebuchadnezzar is recorded by the Book of Jeremiah has occurring on not the ninth, but the 10th — when the Babylonian king set fire to the temple and “all the houses of Jerusalem.” (Jeremiah 52:12)

It is Josephus that puts the date of Titus’ destruction of the Second Temple as the 10th of Av (again, not the ninth), specifically referring to the date as that of the First Temple’s demise (The Jewish War, 6:1)

“And now that fatal day was come, according to the revolution of ages,” he said, a fatalistic, convenient dating.

In other words, somehow the Second Temple was doomed to be destroyed on precisely the same date as the first.

The Mishnah alleges five “calamities” on this date: the punishment of the spies for their faithless report on the land of Canaan; the destruction of the First, and then the Second, Temple; the quelling of the Bar Kochba revolt; and the eventual leveling of the land around the Temple site.

There is indeed a convenience to this grouping. Just as was true for Josephus – and for the writers of the Mishnah — putting these events of uncertain dates together amplifies the gravity of this terrible day.

In other words, it is a day when bad things always happened — and, by implication, bad things will always happen.

Now, if you peruse the post-biblical history of the Jewish people, you will not lack for calamities in the month of Av — particularly around the first and second week of the month.

From the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 to the AMIA bombing (also the 10th of Av), it’s a period when, indeed, bad things seem to to befall Jews.

But has this commemoration become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Do we expect bad things to happen? Do the enemies of the people of Israel know this, and purposely plan their greatest misdeeds for this period?

The calamities of the month of Av returned to the conversation this week with the threat of a potential Iranian attack on Israel. While it did not occur on the Ninth, the gravity of the date is not exactly a secret to the Iranian regime — in other words, they know this is our bad day — and it would have not been a surprise had they chosen it.

In the nearly two millennia since the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE, this has become a full day of mourning, replete with fasting and countless prohibitions for the observant. A serious holiday with a severity somehow rivaling Yom Kippur.

But let’s also remember that this is a post-Biblical holiday — one that is not rooted in the Bible, nor any divine proclamation. One I might call a “synthetic” holiday.

That is to say we, by tradition and custom — chose — to make this an annual, serious, mournful commemoration and fast.

But it seems to me that it has become something else – a day of self pity, of self loathing, marking the terrible things that have happened to us, somehow on the very same day.

But why do we need Tisha B’Av? Do we need a day each year to recount all of the terrible things that have happened to us, fatalistically grouping them on the same exact date? Do we need reminders of our trials, which, if you follow Jewish history, seem to happen all year round?

Somehow, despite all of our tragedies, we survive. We persist. We live. We are exiled and we wander. And then we return home. It is a remarkable history of resilience — one so improbable as to seem impossible.

And yet here we are, as we were before there was a temple at all, as we were after every one of these aforementioned calamities – here.

Rather than mourning, rather than wallowing in our fate, burdened by the cruel caprice of an arbitrary date, perhaps we could spend one more day celebrating the divinity that has managed to keep us here.

One that exists every day of the year.