What makes us Jews is memory. Nearly everything we do is related to memory. We observe Shabbat each week, not because a day of rest makes sense, but to remind the world that God is Creator of all there is and to remind ourselves that He freed us from the bondage of Egypt.
We wear shawls with fringes, which remind us, as tefillin are meant to remind us, that we once stood before a mountain in the middle of a desert and made a deal with God.
Memory is what we are all about. We are the people of memory.
And yet, when the sun has gone down on Aug. 11, and a new Jewish day has begun, our memory will be garbled and unclear. The day that begins on sundown Aug. 11 is no ordinary day of the year. There is no other day on the Jewish calendar that is so infused with memory.
And yet, for too many of us, it is a day that goes by each year without our even realizing that it came and went.
The history of this day begins approximately 3,500 years ago, with the people of Israel encamped on the east bank of the Jordan.
They had just heard the report of the spies and were convinced that God had lied to them; that He had brought them out of Egypt in order to have them die at the hands of merciless giants. And so, the Torah tells us, “The people wept that night.”
The Torah does not tell us what night that was, but by following the chronology laid out in the Torah, the date is obvious. It was Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of Av.
On this day in that year, God decreed that the generation of the Exodus would all die out in the desert; only their children would live to inherit the Land of Promise.
With the gift of hindsight, the talmudic rabbis concluded that God must have issued another decree that day, as well: “Because you, Israel, cried for no reason on this day, I, God, will see to it that you have reason to cry on this day forever after.”
According to Jeremiah, it was on the ninth of Av in the year 586 BCE that Babylonian forces set fire to the First Temple. By the end of the next day, the Temple was no more.
On the ninth of Av in the year 70 CE, according to a host of religious and historical sources, Roman forces set fire to the Second Temple. By the next day, it too was no more.
In the year 135 CE, on the ninth day of Av, the Judean revolt against Rome came to a crushing end with the fall of Betar. Bar Kochba lay dead and a series of executions was begun that would wipe out nearly an entire generation of religious leaders and scholars, including Rabbi Akiva.
On Aug. 2, 1492, the greatest diaspora community the world had ever known until then came to an end with the departure from Spain of the last of its expelled Jews. Aug. 2, 1492 was Tisha B’Av.
On Aug. 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia. World War I had begun. It would set into motion events that would lead to the creation of the Soviet Union, which would wage a 75-year campaign to destroy everything Jewish within its borders.
The war would end in the creation of a peace so debilitating to Germany that its people became easy prey to the nationalistic ranting of an itinerant house painter named Adolf Hitler. Aug. 1, 1914 was Tisha B’Av.
This is the day we toss aside.
Some people say, “We don’t need Tisha B’Av anymore; it’s not relevant anymore; it belongs to the past.” Chanukah, Purim and Pesach belong to the past, but we celebrate them. Why do we ignore Tisha B’Av?
Some would say: “Chanukah, Purim, Pesach — these are fun days, but Tisha B’Av is the ultimate downer. Here we are in the middle of the summer and everyone is out to have fun. Why ruin it by remembering so many tragedies?”
The answer is that Tisha B’Av is not now nor ever has been about tragedy. Tisha B’Av is about triumph.
No generation of Jews should know this better than this generation. We are here today, 50 years after the destruction of European Jewry, revived and alive.
Fifty years after 6 million Jews died because no state would have them, the reborn Jewish state thrives, ready to rescue entire communities of endangered Jews, such as those from Ethiopia and Syria and the former Soviet Union. Fifty years after the doors of the world shut in our faces, there are few doors left that we cannot open.
Of course, Tisha B’Av reminds us that we have experienced more tragedies as a people than any other in history. That alone should make it a day to be observed because, in truth, it is the only day on the calendar when we are supposed to immerse ourselves fully in grief over the tragedies of the past. It is the substitute for having to mourn every day of every year for the tragedies that befell us on that day.
The point, however, is not that the tragedies happened, but that we are still here to be reminded of them.
No other day better proves that God’s promise to Israel, His covenant with us, is indeed everlasting and irreversible.
That is the real memory of Tisha B’Av.
And the greatest tragedy of Tisha B’Av is that we refuse to remember this day.