Religion: Tisha b’Av

For the first time in history, Christian ministers participated last week in observing the solemn Jewish day of mourning, Tisha b’Av. Their action was expressive of the growing understanding among religious groups throughout the civilized world. Bishop Edwin V. O’Hara of Kansas City urged “all who profess the Christian faith [to] understand the declaration of Pope Pius XI that ‘all Christians are spiritually Semites.’ “

Tisha b’Av, the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av (July 23 in 1942), is the saddest day in the Jewish year. Dating from the destruction of the First Temple at Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, it also commemorates the destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman Emperor Titus, the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.

Tisha b’Av is really the culmination of three weeks of mourning during which yeray shamayim (a pious Jew) does not marry, eat meat, bathe in streams, lakes, seas, cut his hair. On the eve of Tisha b’Av, he goes supperless to schul (synagogue), takes off his shoes, puts on his tefillin (phylacteries—leather arm bands used in prayer) and tkalis (prayer shawl). Then he squats on the floor and in the candlelit synagogue chants the Lamentations of Jeremiah (“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, how is she become tributary!”).

Tisha b’Av is also the day when the Jews of Jerusalem gather at the Wailing Wall, all that remains of the Second Temple, to weep and pray for Zion. This year Tisha b’Av in Jerusalem was more solemn than ever, for there was scarcely a Jew who could not hear in imagination, above the ritual wails, the clank of Rommel’s tanks.