On Tisha B’Av our long history brings despair, but also comfort

Tisha B’Av – the ninth of the month of Av – is the day which is traditionally set aside to mourn some of the biggest tragedies to have befallen the Jewish people. Not the Holocaust – more recent days are set aside for that commemoration. Not the approximately 100,000 Jews killed in pogroms that swept the Pale of Settlement during the Russian Civil War, or the thousands killed in the rolling wave of pogroms that marked life in 19^th century Eastern Europe. Not the tens or even hundreds of thousands of Jews killed in the Khmelnytsky Uprising of the 17^th century, or during the Crusades. Not the oppression of Jews in Arab lands, dating from the 7^th century right up until the mass persecution and expulsions of the mid 20^th century. No, other tragedies.

It is notable that despite the above list (which is far from complete), it is the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem – the first by the Babylonians, the second by the Romans – which still strike such an emotional chord within Judaism. The tragedy was three-fold – the capture of Jerusalem and the inevitable slaughter that followed, the destruction of the Temple which at that time was Judaism’s focal point, and the resultant enslavement and attempted excising of the Jewish people from their land.

1,944 years after the Roman legions sacked Jerusalem and burned down its crowning glory, we still mourn, as we should. Not just for what has gone before, but for what could be to come.

The history of the Jewish people is filled with horrors beyond comprehension, but also with an unquenchable perseverance

In the space of three years, the Western world has gone from an attitude of broad acceptance of Israel to one of censure. There are marches through the streets of every major city calling for Israel’s destruction. Most Jews are smart enough to understand, particularly given the events of 7 October 2023, exactly what such a destruction would entail for the seven million Jews living between “the river” and “the sea”.

The story of the modern state of Israel – an incredible, remarkable return of a people from an ancient exile – has been patiently chiselled away from the West’s wider consciousness. It was achieved by academics and activists parroting a narrative created 60 years ago in the depths of the Lubyanka, rebranding Return as “Colonialism” and repositioning Fulfilment as “Occupation”. Grotesque claims regarding Zionism’s supposedly innate genocidal qualities are treated as unequivocal fact by a growing percentage of the planet. The decades’ long attempt to turn Israel into a pariah has been strengthened immeasurably in the space of three years, as the horrors of war – a war triggered by the largest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust – are presented by a revolving cast of ‘human rights’ organisations, cranks masquerading as serious thinkers, and utterly compromised UN ‘special committees’ as a “genocide”. Formerly positive politicians have sensed the change in the civilisational wind and have shifted their own attitudes accordingly. Within the next decade, for example, it is all but guaranteed that America will have a President who is both politically and personally hostile to Israel.

If everything written here up until this point has made you feel despair – good. If ever there was a day for despair, it is Tisha B’Av. The book of Lamentations, written in the wake of the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE, is full of despair.

“The Lord has become like an enemy; He has destroyed Israel; He has destroyed all its palaces, laid in ruins its strongholds, and He increased in the daughter of Judah, pain and wailing”, reads one verse.

“The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence, they laid dust on their heads and put on sackcloth; the maidens of Jerusalem bowed their heads to the ground.

“My eyes are spent with tears, my innards burn; my heart is poured out in grief”.

But it is the very nature and scope of our history that should give us hope. The author of Lamentations could not have known that the Temple would be restored decades later and last for centuries more, nor that it would be followed by an exile which would dwarf that of Babylon’s, yet somehow, remarkably, lead to our return once again to the Holy Land. Because the history of the Jewish people is filled with horrors beyond comprehension, but also with an unquenchable perseverance – and the frank admission that no-one can possibly know what is coming.

One thousand years ago, to express the notion that the Jewish people would again possess the Holy Land would have been quite literally unimaginable to most. Two centuries ago it would have been laughed off as ludicrous. A century ago it would still, despite the Balfour Declaration, have been regarded as vanishingly unlikely. And yet now I can log online, book a flight and by tomorrow I could be sitting on the cold stones of the Kotel plaza, reciting Lamentations with tens of thousands of others.

As we mourn the events of the past, we cannot know what will happen in the future, no matter how bleak the outlook might seem at present. And far from adding to our despair, that thought should be a salve and a comfort.