Tisha B'Av 5784: The Root and Message of Jewish Suffering

By BJLife/Rabbi Reuven Taragin
Posted on 08/04/24

Tisha B’Av 5784

This year’s Tisha B’Av will be different from past years. Our mourning usually begins slowly with the Three Weeks and culminates with Tisha B’Av. This year, it began with full intensity ten months ago and has continued unabated.

Our mourning is also of a different type. We generally associate the mourning of Tisha B’Av with the Churban (destruction) of the Beit HaMikdash. This year, we have been mourning the terrible loss of life and crying for Jews suffering both in Israel and around the world.

We have been mourning for the over 1000 victims of the brutal and dehumanizing massacre of October 7 and the hundreds of soldiers killed since then. We have been crying for the over 100 still held hostage, for the hundreds wounded, for the families torn apart in so many ways by the war, and for the Jews attacked, harassed, and demonized around the world.

How should we transition from the mourning of the past ten months to the mourning of Tisha B’Av? What relationship, if any, exists between our suffering and the Churban HaMikdash?

The Duality of Tisha B’Av

The answer lies in appreciating the full breadth of our Tisha B’Av mourning and reflection. Though Tisha B’Av commemorates the Churban, our mourning extends beyond it. Most of Tisha B’Av’s kinot are not about the Beit Hamikdash. They are about Jewish suffering — at the time of the Churban and throughout the centuries since.

For example, the kinot relate to the ten martyrs who were killed almost a century after the Churban, as well as the victims of the Crusades and the Holocaust millennia later. This year, many of us will add a kinah for those killed on and since October 7. (One such kinah was written by Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon at the behest of World Mizrachi.)

The kinot express anguish not only over death but for other types of suffering as well. For example, we cry for the son and daughter of Rebbi Yishmael, who were sold as slaves, as well as the sefarim burned in France.

Eichah Sets the Tone

The perakim of Megillat Eichah, the first kinot written after the Churban, provide the answer. Though Yirmiyahu HaNavi wrote Eichah in response to the Churban HaMikdash, the theme of his lamentations is Jewish suffering. Eichah seeks to understand Yerushalayim’s suffering and isolation. It begins by asking how a city once full of people became so empty and lonely. How was a people once respected among the nations abandoned by her friends to the point that no one consoled her or even cared about her suffering?

Though inspired by the Churban Hamikdash, Megillat Eichah focuses on the terrible suffering and abandonment that accompanied it. The continued historical development of the Tisha B’Av kinot builds off this model, reflecting not just upon the Churban but on all types of Jewish suffering. Eichah describes Jewish suffering at the time of the Churban; later kinot detail similar suffering throughout the ages.

With this new understanding of the focus of Tisha B’Av mourning, we must ask: Why was the date of the Churban HaMikdash chosen as the time to mourn and cry for all types of suffering?

The Connection Between Suffering and the Churban

All of our nation’s suffering is rooted in the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. More precisely, our suffering is rooted in what the destruction reflects — distance between us and Hashem. Our sins distance us from Hashem, and Hashem from us. Because the Beit HaMikdash symbolizes our relationship with Hashem when our sins fracture this relationship, the Beit HaMikdash becomes a meaningless shell that no longer represents a meaningful relationship and is destroyed.^[1] The Churban HaMikdash reflects the distance between us and Hashem.^[2]

This distance is also why we suffer. Not only does Hashem not intervene to protect us, but He also causes us to suffer. Our suffering at the hands of other nations is punishment for our sins and, on a deeper level, reflective of the problems between us and Hashem. Hashem causes others to reject us in order to keep us from “moving on” through assimilation. We have no choice but to return to and improve our relationship with Him.

Peace Depends on Peace

The connection between our suffering and the Churban is made by Rashi and other commentaries on the gemara in Rosh Hashanah.^[3] The gemara, based on the pesukim in Zecharyah,^[4] explains that our fast days will turn into days of celebration when there will be “shalom.” The mefarshim debate whether shalom refers to peace with other nations^[5] or peace with Hashem (represented by the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash).^[6]

Rashi^[7] and the Ritva^[8] mention both factors as significant. This is because they saw both types of peace as linked. We will enjoy peace with other nations only once we achieve peace with Hashem, as symbolized by the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash.

Until the Beit HaMikdash is rebuilt, Hashem ensures that we continue suffering and are continuously attacked, vilified, and hated.^[9] If we were not, we would not appreciate how problematic our distance from Hashem is. This is why even our best efforts have not solved the problem of antisemitism.

When Jews lived in ghettos, many assumed that we were hated because we lived separately. When Western European countries allowed us entry into general society at the end of the eighteenth century, many Jews hoped that assimilation would gain them acceptance. Sadly, the scourge of antisemitism continued and reared its ugly head in the form of the Dreyfus Affair in Western Europe and riots in Odessa and Kishinev (and over 100 cities) in Eastern Europe.^[10]

Theodore Hertzl and others realized that assimilation into secular society was not the solution. They hoped that removing the Jewish people from other countries and founding a Jewish state in desolate Palestine would solve the problem. Though they successfully established a state, the state did not solve the problem.

Since founding the State of Israel, we have tried to gain acceptance by showing that we are strong enough to defend ourselves and our land and that we will not be driven out. We hoped others would eventually recognize and accept our presence in the Middle East. Five bloody wars showed us that this approach would not work, and we turned to a peace process that included giving away precious land and allowing our enemies to return and occupy it. Sadly, this attempt was also unsuccessful, as the peace process was met with continued hostility and violence.

The fast of Tisha B’Av reminds us why this is so. We choose the date of the Churban Beit HaMikdash as the day to mourn for all our people’s suffering throughout the ages because our suffering is rooted in that Churban. Until we repair our relationship with Hashem, we will continue to find peace elusive. We should continue seeking it, but we must remember that ultimate peace hinges on earning peace between us and Hashem.

Transitioning to Tisha B’Av 5784

Sadly, we come to Tisha B’av 5784 feeling the acute pain of renewed Jewish suffering. Like other difficult periods since the Churban, the past year has reminded us of the dysfunctionality of Jewish life in a world without a Beit HaMikdash.

Tisha B’Av is the day we are meant to remind ourselves of the real reason for our suffering. The October 7 attack and subsequent struggles are about more than just Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and antisemitism. They are rooted in the Churban HaMikdash.

May realizing this inspire us to work on repairing our relationship with Hashem in a way that merits the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash and, through that, peace for the Jewish people and the world.

Rav Reuven Taragin is the Dean of Overseas Students at Yeshivat Hakotel and the Educational Director of World Mizrachi and the RZA.

His new book, Essentials of Judaism, can be purchased at rabbireuventaragin.com.