Out of the Ashes
Next week we will observe the 9th day of Av. It is a fast day beginning the night of August 8th and continuing until sundown of the 9th. The 9th of Av (in Hebrew Tisha b’Av) was instituted to mark the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE and the Second Temple in 70 CE. Historians tell us that this day also marked many episodes that brought suffering to our people. The rabbis considered it to be the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. This description is very appropriate- by all rules of history the 9th of Av should have been the yahrzeit of the Jewish nation. With the Temple gone as the focus of worship our people could have disappeared. Over night the basis of Israelite religion, the Temple sacrifice, was destroyed. It could have been the end of our history but it was not. Instead, it was the beginning of a new, transformational rethinking of Biblical ideas that would result in Judaism as we practice it to this very day.
This achievement, the transformation of Biblical ideas and values, insured the continued existence of the Jewish people and religion. Given this fact, I find a totally new message for this national day of mourning. We fast to remember what was lost- to the respective generations of the first and second Temples it was as if their spiritual world had ended. We might think of it as if we woke up tomorrow and found that every synagogue and Jewish institution had been destroyed. How would we begin to rebuild?
This was the challenge facing the rabbis of the Second Temple period. We are proof that their “reformulation” worked. I therefore find this new message in an ancient day: Tisha b’Av is a bitter but important reminder about Jewish survival. In an ironic sense this day that marks so much destruction also marks rebirth and renewal. While Tisha b’Av asks us to mourn the past, it also begs the question of future survival. Today social scientists tell us that Judaism and the Jewish people are disappearing. Apathy, intermarriage, and below-zero birthrates are forces that are all too quickly thinning the numbers of American Jewry (and much of world Jewry as well.) These voices say that statistics show the inevitable disappearance of the Jewish community as we know it. That is a frightening reality. We have not lived through four millennia of struggle to, at last, destroy ourselves!
The greatest honor we can give to Tisha b’Av is to take its message seriously. Our reaction to calamity is never desperation but renewal. I believe that even in this age when so many forces are aligned to end our history there are great opportunities to create a Judaism that is stronger than ever. The world needs our message more than ever, our ideas, values, and ideas are still able to make this a better world.
Our sages were right- the future can emerge out of the ashes of the past. Tisha b’Av may be the saddest day in the Jewish calendar but it is the perfect day to contemplate the miracles of the Jewish future.


First Printed in South Florida Jewish Journal and Atlanta Jewish Times