Tisha B’Av a day to mourn, but also to remember glory

"If it weren't for summer camp, no one in modern America would be observing Tisha B'Av," says Morley Feinstein, senior rabbi of Los Angeles' University Synagogue.

Yes, timing is everything. Or not.

For while Tisha B'Av, which begins Wednesday evening this year, is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar as well as my son Zack, 19, insists, "a critical holiday," it is also controversial.

For some Jews, Tisha B'Av is a day to mourn the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and 70 C.E., which led to the Jews' exile from the land of Israel. They observe a 25-hour fast, from sundown to nightfall, and, during the evening service, sit on the floor in dim light, chanting lamentations and other somber prayers. For them, Tisha B'Av is "an eternal day of mourning," according to one midrash.

For other Jews, Tisha B'Av is less doleful and, in some instances, even disregarded because the Temple, with its animal sacrifices and non-egalitarian priestly roles, has never been of paramount importance. Additionally, many Jews view the Temple's destruction as even less noteworthy since the re-establishment of the state of Israel and the reunification of Jerusalem ended our exile.

Still, various groups are drawing up blueprints for a third Temple, as well as training members of the priestly caste to serve as future priests; recreating vessels and musical instruments once used in Temple worship; breeding red heifers, whose ashes are needed to purify the high priest; and practicing animal sacrifice.

Yet others are convinced, as 19th-century Rabbi David Einhorn proclaimed, that "the day of sorrow and fasting has become a day of gladness." They believe, as Einhorn did, that the destruction of the Temple and subsequent exile to all parts of the globe has enabled the Jews to become a "light unto the nations," as Isaiah prophesied (42:6, 49:6).

To complicate matters, many Jews believe that Tisha B'Av is also the time to mourn other tragedies that fell on this date. These include, among others, the fall of Betar, the last stronghold of the Bar-Kochba Revolt, in 135 C.E.; the Jews' expulsion from Spain in 1492; the forced move into the Rome Ghetto in 1555; and the beginning of the deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka in 1942. Many want to use Tisha B'Av to mourn the Holocaust. Some want to commemorate the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which occurred on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9 1945, respectively.

Others are adamantly opposed to making Tisha B'Av a

repository for all tragedies, especially the Holocaust.

The Talmud states, "Why was the first Temple destroyed? Because of idolatry, incest and spilling of blood within it. And why the second? Because of groundless hatred."

Some Jews believe we need to mend our sinful ways, to better incorporate Jewish values into our lives, to make ourselves more pleasing to God.

Others disagree, including Feinstein, who says, "Blaming the victim for the crime is bad theology. And it's a theology that doesn't work in the 21st century."

But the truth is, whatever beliefs we hold concerning the Temple's past and future, its destruction and the devastation that followed are part of our history. As Isaac Leib Peretz, a late 19th-century writer, said, "A people's memory is history; and as a man without a memory, so a people without a history cannot grow wiser, better."

In our early history, three times a year, at Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, we made pilgrimages to Jerusalem to sacrifice animals on the Temple altar. The sacrifices were our means of praising, thanking and relating to God.

But the demise of the Temple abruptly ended that simpler, more contained world, severing our connection with God, dispersing us in many directions and forcing us to learn to communicate with God through prayer and good deeds.

"The physical dislocation was difficult, but the spiritual dislocation was much worse. It's as pertinent a problem as ever," Zack says.

And so, on Erev Tisha B'Av, Zack will commemorate the holiday at Camp Alonim in Simi Valley, north of Los Angeles, where he's spent most every summer since he was 7. There, with the entire camp, he will go out into a large pasture with three bonfires burning, looking up at the same moon the Jews stared at almost 3,000 years ago and reflect on what historian Flavius Josephus called a "pestilential destruction.''

The rest of our family will attend a candlelight service at University Synagogue where Feinstein will remind us that we have to mark the sad events in our history, but we also have to remember the many more glorious and wondrous things.

Yes, out of tragedy comes hope and renewal.

And controversy. And this, perhaps most of all, has kept our history alive and sustained us all these centuries.