Personal reflection of loss on the eve of the 9th of Av.

A picture showing the Romans destroying the Temple of Jehovah in Jerusalem in 70CE, just one of the many calamities of the 9th of Av throughout the ages.

Tisha B’Av or the 9th of Av in the Hebrew calendar is an awful date. It is the date when so many terrible things happened to the Jewish people. This year it begins at sundown today, until sundown tomorrow (July 26th-27th in the Georgian Calender.)

During this time, observant Jews will sit on the floor, read Lamentations and other sorrowful passages, and mourn not only the destruction of the Temple of Jehovah built by Solomon at the hands of the Babylonians but also the rebuilt temple which was made into one of the splendours of the ancient world and destroyed completely by the Romans. They mourn the failure of Jewish attempts to free their homeland from Roman occupation, both of which ended with fatal battles on this date. This led to their being driven from their national homeland, which was rebranded Palestine by the Romans in a typical colonial tactic of renaming the lands as a means to destroy the native links to that place.

Dispersed around the Byzantine Empire, they were despised by the people they lived among. First the people of Christendom, and then the Muslim Arabs who were planted by the Ottoman Turks in the territories they colonized across North Africa and the Middle East (Palestine included).