Today is Tisha b'Av, in Judaism, a fast day and a day of mourning.
Here is the Wikipedia entry, with useful links retained:
According to the Mishnah (Taanit 4:6), five specific events occurred on the ninth of Av that warrant fasting:
- The twelve scouts sent by Moses to observe the land of Canaan returned from their mission. Two of the scouts, Joshua and Caleb, brought a positive report, but the others spoke disparagingly about the land which caused the Children of Israel to cry, panic and despair of ever entering the "Promised Land". For this, they were punished by God that their generation would not enter the land. Because of the Israelites' lack of faith, God decreed that for all generations this date would become one of crying and misfortune for their descendants, the Jewish people. (See Numbers Ch. 13–14)
- The First Temple built by King Solomon and the Kingdom of Judah were destroyed by the Babylonians led by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE and the Judeans were sent into the Babylonian exile.
- The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, scattering the people of Judea and commencing the Jewish exile from the Holy Land.
- Bar Kokhba's revolt against Rome failed in 135 CE. Simon bar Kokhba was killed, and the city of Betar was destroyed.
- Following the Roman siege of Jerusalem, the razing of Jerusalem occurred the next year.
According to the Talmud in tractate Taanit, the destruction of the Second Temple began on the ninth and was finally consumed by the flames the next day on the Tenth of Av.
Over time, Tisha B'Av has come to be a Jewish day of mourning, not only for these pre-Talmudic events, but also for later tragedies. There is a custom of assigning Tisha B'Av as the date on which wars affecting Jews began or expulsions and persecutions of Jews occurred, although this dating is not always historically accurate.[3] Regardless of the exact dates of these events, for many Jews, Tisha B'Av is the designated day of mourning for them, and these themes are reflected in liturgy composed for this day (see below).
Other calamities that fell on Tisha B'Av:
The Spanish Inquisition culminated with the expulsion of Jews from Spain on Tisha B'Av in 1492.
World War One broke out on the eve of Tisha B'Av in 1914 when Germany declared war on Russia. German resentment from the war set the stage for the Holocaust.
On the eve of Tisha B'Av 1942, the mass deportation began of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, en route to Treblinka."
______________________________________
I was told about Tisha b'Av by a Russian friend, whom I had called to discuss the situation in Georgia. Her voice sounded unusually serious; at first I thought she might be under the weather. So I asked what was up, and she explained that Tisha b'Av was what, for her, was up.
This friend has a most unusual history. She is the daughter of a Soviet general. In the Soviet Union, she converted to Judaism-- a practically unheard-of event -- possibly at first out of human sympathy with those who were with her in the movement of dissidents, who are looking more noble, and less representative and lonelier, every day. She became a Jew, with all of the implied consequences (and when she and her husband applied for an exit visa, all the expected terrible things happened), and voluntarily embraced the collective fate of Jews that, if we look around in time, and in space, has not been an easy one.
It was she who told me first everything I then found at Wikipedia in the entry above. But she also told me things not included in that entry. She told me that on Tisha b'Av in1096 the First Crusade (which did not end well for Jews along the route) began. That Tisha b'Av was in 1290 the day that the Jews were expelled from England, and their property -- the real goal of the expulsion -- seized (google Simon de Montfort). And a few other historical events, connected to bad things for inoffensive people, that I did not manage to write down, and I don't want to call her and interrupt her day again. One hopes that nothing else happens today to add to the list. May this day, the tenth of August and the ninth of Av, be as completely uninteresting and utterly unmemorable -- from the point of view of calamities visited upon Jewish people -- a day as possible.
