On Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the month of Av (July 22-23, 2026), we mark the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem with a day of communal mourning and fasting to commemorate a catastrophic list of tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people throughout history, culminating in the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.
Other horrible things happened on that day too:
In 313 BCE, the spies returned from the Promised Land with frightening reports, and the Israelites balked at the prospect of entering the land. G‑d decreed that they would therefore wander in the desert for 40 years.
Both Holy Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed on this date. The First Temple was burned by the Babylonians in 423 BCE and the Second Temple fell to the Romans in 69 CE unleashing a period of suffering from which our nation has never fully recovered.
In 133 CE The Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans ended in defeat. The Jews of Betar were butchered on the 9th of Av and the Temple Mount was plowed one year later on the same date.
Later on in our history, many more tragedies happened on this day, including the 1290 expulsion of England’s Jews and the 1492 banishment of all Jews from Spain.
In 1914, Germany officially declared war on Russia, igniting World War I—a conflict many historians link to the geopolitical conditions that led to the Holocaust.
In 1942, During the Holocaust, the Nazis began the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp.
Even as we mourn, there is an element of joy and comfort. Indeed, the reading of Eichah concludes with the verse “Restore us to You, O L‑rd, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old.”
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