One Tisha B'Av night, Napoleon Bonaparte was walking around and saw Jews sitting on mats, mourning and fasting. He was curious about the meaning of the customs and the Jews told him that they were lamenting the destruction of the Temple more than 1,700 years earlier. "A people with a past like that also has a future," the French leader marveled.
Tisha B'Av marks the anniversary of five calamities (including the destruction of both Temples). Many children born during this month are named Menachem, which in Hebrew means "consolation." The Tisha B'Av fast was nixed during the time that Sabbatai Zevi, born on Tisha B'Av in 1626, was widely perceived to be the Messiah, but it was reinstated after Zevi converted to Islam. Jewish tradition still holds that the Messiah will be born on Tisha B'Av.
Until that happens, all events on the Temple Mount will involve redemption. The blowing of the shofar at the Western Wall and the establishment of a partition to define separate men's and women's sections there were a source of conflict with the British authorities and the Arabs during the Mandate era. Some 46 years ago, Israeli paratroopers broke through to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall and the liberation of Jerusalem overshadowed the military victories in the north and south. And Yasser Arafat's effort to erase from the world's consciousness the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel was based on the false claim that the Temple that was destroyed on Tisha B'Av never existed.
On Monday night, the 1,943rd anniversary of the destruction of the Second Temple, one could get a glimpse of the problem of division that plagued the Jewish people during the Great Revolt against the Romans. In Jerusalem, the national religious and haredi segments of the population gathered, praying at the Western Wall and reading from the Book of Lamentations, thought to have been written by the Prophet Jeremiah who witnessed the destruction of the First Temple. In Tel Aviv, there was a very thin atmosphere of historical remembrance. The closure of stores, businesses and restaurants seemed strange to most residents of the city that never sleeps. Jerusalem and Hellenistic Caesarea did not share the same pulse, just as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv don't in 2013.
The Great Revolt of the Jews against the Romans, which began in Caesarea and moved from north to south until the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., gave traumatic meaning to Tisha B'Av for generations. The trauma was greater than that caused by the destruction of the First Temple 656 years earlier or even the failure of the Bar Kokhba Revolt 65 years later.
On Monday, Professor Eyal Regev from Bar-Ilan University wrote on the Maariv website that pluralism was detrimental to Jewish nationalism back then, as it undermined the authority of leaders. Differences and disputes caused civil war, which led to defeat. This gave birth to the sages' phrase that civil wars are worse than all others. To prevent civil wars, self-restraint and the ability to compromise and step away from the razor's edge during internal disagreements are required. That conclusion remains true to this very day.
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו