Hundreds of national-religious teenagers met with the family of Gilad Shalit at the Shalit protest tent outside the Prime Minister’s residence Monday evenng. The event included the traditional mournful Tisha B’Av recitation of the Book of Lamentations (Eichah), commemorating the fall of both Holy Temples on this date roughly 2,000 and 2,500 years ago, respectively.
The event was organized by members of the Jewish Home party, and the party’s MKs were there as well.
“Our message will be clear,” one organizer told Israel National News before the event. “We are not here to demand that Netanyahu release more terrorists. We are here to show our empathy and concern for the Shalit family, and to discuss amongst ourselves and with whomever will listen what is the correct, Jewish approach to this tragic problem.”
The Jewish Home group was to pay a visit to the Western Wall in the Old City afterwards. Well over 100,000 people visited the Wall on Monday night and Tuesday all day to commemorate the destructions and pray for the rebuilding of the Temple.
For the 16th consecutive year, Women for Israel’s Tomorrow (Women in Green) held their annual Tisha B’Av walk around the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City: The event begins with the reading of Eichah (Lamentations) opposite the American Consulate on Agron St.. Led by Rabbi Shalom Gold, MK Prof. Aryeh Eldad, and Yoram Ettinger this year, it passes the New Gate, Damascus Gate, and Herod's Gate. An assembly is held at Lion's Gate, and the march concludes at Dung Gate, near the Western Wall.
In addition to being the date of the destruction of both Holy Temples, the Mishna states that the NInth of Av was also the day on which the Children of Israel accepted the slanderous reports of the Twelve Scouts sent by Moses regarding the Land of Israel, and on which Jerusalem was razed following Bar Kokhba's revolt against the Roman Empire.
Other calamities occurred on this day, as well, including the expulsion of English Jewry in 1290, the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492, the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the first deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp in 1942, and the end of legal Jewish residence in Gush Katif in 2005.
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