Daled Amos: Tisha B'Av

Showing posts with label Tisha B'Av. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Arlene Kushner on Tisha B'Av and Sinat Chinam In Israel

From Arlene Kushner:
July 16, 2013

Tisha B'Av

The 9th of Av

Today is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. A day of mourning and fasting. It is the day on which the Temples were destroyed, and, traditionally, is seen as the time at which a number of other calamities have fallen the Jewish people.

We are taught that the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE because of sinat hinam -- causeless hatred between Jews.

Credit: bleon

And it is this that I want to address here before going on to other matters.

Video: Latma on What's Really Behind The New Egyptian Spring and The Lesson of Tisha B'Av

This week's Latma examines what is really behind recent events in Egypt, and a look at the difficulty of learning the lesson of Tisha B'Av.

Here is the video:

Video: Jews and Palestinians Break Fasts Of Tisha B'Av and Ramadan Together

When breaking the fasts of Tisha B'Av and Ramadan coincide, what could be more natural than for Jews and Arabs to get together and break their fasts together?

Well, in Tekoa, Israel, Rabbi Menachem Fruman decided that it made perfect sense and arranged for a small group of Arabs and Jews to break their fasts together.

Here is the news coverage on Israeli TV:

Egypt Insulted By Israeli Children Building Temple Out Of Sand

Perhaps you remember the video of Safwat Higazi, supporter of president Mohamed Morsi, campaigning for his friend during the weeks leading up to the election. Higazi's medieval ranting about creating the capital of a united Arab state in Jerusalem found a welcome audience in the equally crazed Egyptian crowd:

Monday, July 23, 2007

IS JEWISH SELF-HATRED UNDERRATED? What self-hating Jews can teach Muslims
Of course, if Jewish self-hatred was all it's cracked up to be, would we be able to say

We are plagued with leaders who think too highly of themselves, untroubled by an unjustified sense of entitlement, an exaggerated sense which too many of us in the Jewish public share.

Or is Jewish self-hatred just another manifestation of the Sinas Chinam that we recall on Tisha B'AV?

(Come to think of it, one of the things self-hating Jews can learn from Muslims is unapologetic pride is being a Jew)

Technorati Tag: Israel and Self-Hating Jews and Tisha B'Av.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

SPECIAL KINNA COMMEMORATING GUSH KATIF: Esser Aggaroth has a post about a special Tisha B'Av Kinna commemorating the destroyed communities of Gush Katif and the Northern Shomron--with a link for downloading the text.

Technorati Tag: Tisha B'Av and Gush Katif.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

LIVE WEBCAST ON TISHA B'AV

See also: YU Shiurim for the Three Weeks and Tisha B'Av

Technorati Tag: Tisha B'Av.

DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE: TODAY. Cosmic X links to pictures.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Tisha B'Av.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

WE ARE APPROACHING TISHA B'AV AND FATAH IS LAUGHING. We are approaching the day that commemorates the destruction of both the First and Second Temple--among other national tragedies--while we are in the midst of another one approaching.

'It's all a joke. It's just a joke." That's how the Palestinian terror commanders in Judea and Samaria explained the show they made of handing in their weapons to Fatah commander Mahmoud Abbas's official militias over the weekend.

"This is all a big joke," they told reporters while posing for pictures. "Abbas asked us to sign a declaration saying we won't attack Israel and so we are."

Technorati Tag: Israel.

[Hat tip: Powerline]

Friday, July 13, 2007

TISHA B'AV AND YOM HASHOAH: A piece written by Rabbi Avi Shafran recounting a conversation on a Kibbutz.

KIBBUTZ CONVERSATION

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Tisha B’Av – which falls this year on July 24 – always brings back the personal memory of a conversation between two teen-aged cousins more than thirty years ago. It took place on the outskirts of a non-religious kibbutz in the Galilee, on a hill overlooking a lush valley.

The two boys, one born and bred on the kibbutz, the other an American newcomer to the Holy Land visiting before the start of his Jerusalem yeshiva's academic term, had first met only days earlier.

They had been speaking about family, personal experiences, and sundry things their very different lives nevertheless had in common. And then, the observant boy mentioned, entirely in passing, the imminence of the Jewish fast day.

“We don't observe Tisha B’Av on the kibbutz,” his cousin interjected. “The Temple's destruction isn't really relevant to our lives here.”

The American boy hesitated a long moment before asking, “Do you observe any Jewish day of mourning?”

“Yes,” came the reply. “Yom HaShoah.”

Another pause, this one even longer. The yeshiva student knew that Tisha B’Av is the national day of Jewish mourning – that it encompasses many a tragedy – in a sense, every tragedy – in Jewish history. Not only was the first Jewish Holy Temple destroyed on that day (2429 years ago), and the second one, (1939 years ago), on the very same day, but the rebel Jewish forces at Betar were annihilated by the Romans, several decades later, on Tisha B’Av as well.

He knew, too, that the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 C.E., and from France in 1306 C.E. and from Spain in 1492 C.E. all took place on Tisha B’Av as well. He also knew that on Tisha B’Av 1914 Germany declared war on Russia, turning a regional European conflict into what came to be known as World War I, arguably the genesis of what would culminate, two and a half decades later, in Germany’s “Final Solution.” But somehow it didn’t seem the right time for history lessons.

So, instead, he asked his cousin, “Is your commemoration of the Holocaust important to you?”

“Absolutely,” came the reply. “The Holocaust underlies our very identity as Israelis and as Jews.”

The American weighed the wisdom of saying what he wanted to, and then decided the blood-bond was strong enough to handle it.

“Will you expect your children to pay its memory the same respect that you do?”

“Of course.”

“To feel the same sorrow, to have the same determination to remember that you feel?”

“Of course,” the Israeli replied. “My generation will see to it that our children recognize the importance of the Holocaust, how it defines their identity, how important it must continue to be to all Jews.”

“And will you expect them, in turn, to transmit the same conviction to their own children – and theirs to theirs?”

“Absolutely. Forever. It is that important.”

The American swallowed hard, then spoke.

“Just like the earlier attempts to destroy our people and its faith were to our own ancestors – those we commemorate and mourn on Tisha B’Av.”

Nothing else was said for the moment. The two young men walked back to the kibbutz in silence.

It could well be argued that a large part of what characterizes Jewish “Orthodoxy” is a heightened sense of history. Not only of its vicissitudes and tragedies for our people, but, most importantly, of the seminal Jewish moment, the singular event that bequeathed us our mandate to cherish, study and observe the Torah – the revelation of G-d to His people at Sinai.

That mass-experienced and painstakingly transmitted event, the meeting of G-d and man in the Sinai desert, lies at the very foundation of the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. It is the ultimate Jewish historical memory.

All Jews who aspire to the appellation “observant” are, in essence, the keepers of Jewish history, recent and ancient, and are entrusted with the mission of sharing the memory of the Jewish past – both its nadirs and its apogee – with all their fellow Jews.

Should the Messiah continue to tarry, G-d forbid, a day may well come when all testimony of the events of the 1930s and early 1940s will be indirect, arriving only through books and films, or third-hand accounts.

The facts, though, of what happened during those years, the horrible details of Jewish Europe’s destruction, will endure, because there will always be Jews determined to hold fast to our history – its entirety. Jews determined to maintain the memory of what happened sixty-odd years ago.

And 1939 years ago.

And 2429 years ago.

And 3319 years ago, in the Sinai desert.