Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the month of Av, is undoubtedly the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. It is a big secret of Jewish history that every major tragic event that ever happened to the Jewish people either happened on Tisha B’Av, or had its roots with something that happened on Tisha B’Av. It is amazing! Let me cite a few examples:
1. It was decreed on Tisha B’Av, after the incident of the 12 spies, that the children of Israel who came out from Egypt should not enter the Promised Land, but should wander for 40 years in the desert.
2. The 1st Temple was destroyed on the 9th of Av by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C.E.
3. The 2nd Temple was also destroyed on the 9th of Av, but this time, it was the Romans in the year 70.
4. On Tisha B’Av, 1096 CE, the First Crusade exploded across Europe and the Holy Land, with 10,000 Jews murdered in the first month and over 1.2 million Jews massacred in total.
5. On Tisha B’Av, 1290 CE, the Jews of England were expelled.
6. On Tisha B’Av, 1306 CE, the Jews of France were expelled.
7. On Tisha B'Av, 1492 CE, the Jews of Spain were expelled as the Order of Inquisition was signed.
8. Moving up about 150 years, we come to the Chmelnicki massacres by the Cossacks. The Cossacks overran the community of Constantine, and killed 300,000 Jewish men, women and children. The date was the 9th of Av, 1648.
9. In modern times, World War I broke out on August 1, 1914. That was to be “the war to end all wars.” The suffering of the Jews in World War I was unparalleled in history, superseded only by the Holocaust. Coincidentally, August 1, 1914 was—you guessed it—Tisha B’Av.
10. Of course when we come to the Second World War, we cannot single out any day as being a day in which the Jews were slaughtered, for the gas chambers worked 365 days a year, each day devouring thousands of our brothers. We can, however, see that crucial events in the holocaust were also somehow linked to Tisha B’Av:
(a) The decree to establish the Warsaw ghetto, for instance, was adopted on the 9th day of Av in 1941.
(b) And exactly one year later, on the 9th of Av, 1942, the deportation to the concentration camps was begun.
The weight of all these tragedies concentrated on one day is perhaps more than we can bear. No wonder Tisha B’Av has been declared a day of fasting and mourning for the Jewish people.
May there be no tragedy this year on Tisha B'Av from Iran, Houthis, Syria, Hezbollah or Hamas.