News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) Less than half of all Israeli citizens consider the Ninth of Av, also known as the fast day of Tisha B’Av, to hold any special significance, according to the results released Monday from a poll conducted by the Mutagim Institute.

Of the 500 Israelis who comprised the random sample, some 40 percent of secular citizens considered the day, which marks the destruction of the First and Second Holy Temples, to be a meaningful day, both for Jewish history and for social reckoning.

Some 24 percent of those polled considered Tisha B’Av to be “just an ordinary day,” nine percent said it was “unnecessary since Israel’s inception” and three percent had “no comment.”