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ShareThe mishna discusses the five major communal fast days. Five calamitous matters occurred to our forefathers on the seventeenth of Tammuz, and five other disasters happened on the Ninth of Av.
On the seventeenth of Tammuz the tablets were broken by Moses when he saw that the Jews had made the golden calf; the daily offering was nullified by the Roman authorities and was never sacrificed again; the city walls of Jerusalem were breached; the general Apostemos publicly burned a Torah scroll; and Manasseh placed an idol in the Sanctuary.
On the Ninth of Av it was decreed upon our ancestors that they would all die in the wilderness and not enter Eretz Yisrael; and the Temple was destroyed the first time, in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, and the second time, by the Romans; and Beitar was captured; and the city of Jerusalem was plowed, as a sign that it would never be rebuilt.
Vespasian then said to Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai: I will be going to Rome to accept my new position, and I will send someone else in my place to continue besieging the city and waging war against it. But before I leave, ask something of me that I can give you. Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai said to him: Give me Yavne and its Sages and do not destroy it, and spare the dynasty of Rabban Gamliel and do not kill them as if they were rebels, and lastly give me doctors to heal Rabbi Tzadok.
Rav Yosef read the following verse about him, and some say that it was Rabbi Akiva who applied the verse to Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai: “I am the Lord…Who turns wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolish” (Isaiah 44:25), as he should have said to him to leave the Jews alone this time. And why didn’t Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai make this request? He maintained that Vespasian might not do that much for him, and there would not be even a small amount of salvation. Therefore, he made only a modest request, in the hope that he would receive at least that much.
נוהגים שלא להניח תפילין בתשעה באב שחרית ולא טלית אלא לובשים טלית קטן תחת בגדים בלא ברכה ובמנח' מניחים ציצית ותפילין ומברכים עליהם:
We are accustomed not to put on tefillin or a tallit on Tisha b'Av in the morning, but rather to put on a small tallit under clothes, and not make a blessing. And during mincha we put on tzitzit and tefillin and bless them.
Many of the priests and Levites and the chiefs of the clans, the old men who had seen the first Temple, wept loudly at the sight of the founding of this [second] Temple. Many others shouted joyously at the top of their voices.
this Temple: When they would see the building of this Temple, they would weep because they remembered the grandeur of the First Temple.
and many who had not seen the building of the First Temple, were rejoicing and shouting for joy with a loud voice, out of their great joy that they had emerged from their exile.
Rabbi Eliyahu Touger
Sound the Great Shofar, p.74 (1998)
Our Sages teach (Jerusalem Talmud, Berachos 2:4; Eichah Rabbah 1:51) that Mashiach was born on Tisha b’Av. This is not merely a description of past history. On the contrary, the intent is that every year, Tisha b’Av generates a new impetus for the coming of the Redemption.
Adam Zagoria-Moffet (August 5, 2014)
Rabbi Yehuda Loew of Prague (the Maharal) tells us that, “the essential function of mashiach will consist in the fact that it is a perfect being who will unite all and perfect all so that this will truly be one world.” If that is the case, if the Messiah is one who will unite and perfect the world – how could they possibly be born from this world plagued in darkness, war, violence, and suffering?
According to Rabbi Loew, it is precisely because of the darkness that the Messiah is born into. He writes elsewhere: “…only in the breadth of nothingness can new things come into being. The Torah tells us this about the creation of the world. Before the creation, it says that the world was chaos and void…there was darkness, which is non-being. Thus we can see that it is impossible for any being to come into existence except after non-existence.” Strange language aside, Rabbi Loew is explaining for us part of why it is that we anticipate the Messiah’s birth to be on Tisha b’Av.
If mashiach is a manifestation of oneness, peace, and perfection – then it must come from division, war, and imperfection. Long before Hegel, Rabbi Loew believed that things were born from their opposites. This means that within our darkest days are embedded the brightest lights, and within our happiest moments there is a minute flash of deep sadness. One must pass away, but in doing so, it gives birth to the other. As Rabbi Loew writes, “Before the Messiah can become manifest, the weeding-out of being in the world must occur, for every new being is the ruin of the being which preceded it and only then – with the end of the old – can the new begin.”
The great Jewish secret is: you come back again, you don’t give in. The response to the destruction of the Temple was not to give up. Jewish leaders of the time know that they could not recreate the Temple or restore Israel’s independence, so instead they created something new out of the ruins of this destruction. They created a new form of Judaism - rabbinic Judaism - where God is self-limited and people have more responsibility. This happens over and over again in Jewish history - not just the destruction of the Temples, but also the Holocaust, etc.
Parables and Paradoxes (1946)
“The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last day.”
