Mourning for a day following a year of mourning: Tisha Ba’av in 2024

Tisha Ba’av, which we observe annually in the summer, is described as the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. Yet, this year’s day of mourning feels much different and difficult in the aftermath of October 7th and the challenging year that has followed. As I prepare to fast and mourn for a full 25 hours, I find myself asking the question:  Have we not mourned enough this year?

The mid-late summer solemn period which begins with the fast of the 17th of Tamuz and the 3 weeks that culminate with Tisha Ba’av, has always been something I have struggled with. There are several reasons for my struggles with this period, including where it falls out on the calendar and the concept of the temple that we are mourning for. 

Summer epitomizes feelings of happiness, with the association of people relaxing by the pool or beach or running around playing and laughing, yet it is obligatory practices of mourning that take up significant parts of the summer on our calendar. The solemn period leading up to Shavuot, Sefirat Haomer, greets us at the beginning of the summer and the three weeks counting down towards the saddest Jewish day of Tisha Ba’av consumes nearly a month towards the end of our summer. 

Last year I wrote a piece touching on some of the aforementioned reasons for my struggle with this time on the calendar, specifically with the feeling of being forced to mourn during a time I would otherwise be happy for something that is in a way distant to me. 

I wrote that the Beit Hamikdash’s (Temple) “loss may be very sad from a historic and religious perspective and many Jews may yearn for a third Temple, but that sorrow is a distant feeling that we need to stretch to grab.  If I don’t feel sad, then the practices of mourning are, to a great extent, empty of meaning.” In addition, to the issues of mourning for a temple I had never experienced, I also struggled with the period due to it otherwise being a happy time. “Life is meant to be a mostly joyful experience which certainly has setbacks and tragedies, but the focus should be on the positive and optimism” 

People at the western wall on the 9th of Av- JTA

Last year my thoughts were directed towards a feeling of forced mourning amidst a season associated with joy, and rest. However, throughout this period this year, my thoughts have been focused on a struggle from the opposite junction. 

The past year has certainly been one of the most challenging years if not the most difficult year in recent memory for the Jewish people.  Over 10 long months have passed since the horrific events of October 7th. Yet the mourning of the lives on that devastating day has continued in the ensuing months since. I feel as though I have been in a state of constant mourning without relief for the last year. We have mourned the people we know who were lost on October 7th and the war. We have mourned alongside our fellow Jews who have lost loved ones. Each week we hope to not hear of any further deaths, yet unfortunately, the news has shown no desire to fulfill our hopes. 

As much as the mourning for the physical loss of life of far too many consumes much of our time, it has not stopped there. Our world has been turned upside down in the last 10 months with hostages still being held and people living in fear of being attacked in Israel and around the world. More than anything we mourn the ability to live without worry of what tragic news we might find in our inboxes or elsewhere.

This year we need not be reminded of the temple’s destruction to feel a sense of sorrow, nor the much less distant holocaust as is the custom for many. That dreadful sadness, which we are instructed if not commanded to feel during this period, is a feeling many of us have as a result of the multitudes of loss we have experienced this year. 

Mourning after October 7th – TOI

Is there a limit to how much more we can mourn? How can we approach the challenge of Tisha Ba’av in 2024 given the year that preceded it?

In his book Covenant and Conversation, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z”l writes about the Limits of Grief in a piece on Parshat Re’eh.  He focuses on a verse in the portion that instructs us to “ not cut yourselves or shave the front of your heads for the dead, for you are a people holy to the Lord your God”(14, 1). Sacks comments “We are commanded not to engage in excessive rituals of grief. To lose a close member of one’s family is a shattering experience. It is as if something of us has died, too. Not to grieve is wrong, inhuman: Judaism does not command stoic indifference in the face of death. But to give way to wild expressions of sorrow — lacerating one’s flesh, tearing out one’s hair — is also wrong.”

This would suggest a limit to the extent that we should be grieving. But in his piece, Sacks points toward the established practices for mourning in Jewish law to set a decent balance between the right amount of grief and mourning. 

“Hence the various stages of bereavement: aninut (the period between the death and burial), shiva (the week of mourning), sheloshim (thirty days in the case of other relatives), and shanah (a year, in the case of parents). Judaism ordains a precisely calibrated sequence of grief, from the initial, numbing moment of loss itself, to the funeral and the return home, to the period of being comforted by friends and members of the community, to a more extended time during which one does not engage in activities associated with joy.”

This year’s events have caused us many unplanned and unstructured periods of mourning. Many times this year I have felt like I was in a state of perpetual sadness, which I had no control over or idea when anything would change. There was no opportunity for a shiva or shloshim for those lost on October 7th because the loss has not ceased in the 10 months since. And while we still yearn for a joyful period, a future brighter than the darkness of today, Tisha Ba’av provides us with a chance for organized mourning. 

The Tisha Ba’av of 2024 will certainly feel significantly different due to the merging of the present sadness and the sorrow of the painful events in our past. But we also can remember the challenges of the past while reflecting on this year’s difficulties. Rather than forcing ourselves to pick which of our unfortunately far too many calamities to focus on, we can allow ourselves to mourn all at once on a day when all other Jews are mourning We can feel the unified hope and prayer for a future that we so greatly desire where happiness triumphs sadness and baseless hatred of our peers ceases to exist.