Thousands of people gathered at the Western Wall on Wednesday night to mark Tisha B’Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem and of several other calamities in Jewish history.
Among those who gathered at the Western Wall were National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, former prime minister Naftali Bennett, and Yashar Party leader Gadi Eisenkot.
Tisha B’Av is first and foremost a fast day, during which Jews abstain from all food and water for approximately 25 hours, from sunset until nightfall the next day.
It is also the time when the Jews read the Book of Lamentations (Megillat Eicha), in which the biblical prophet Jeremiah laments the destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent exile from the Land of Israel.
A number of other events are often cited as being calamities befalling the Jewish people that occurred on or near the ninth of Av.
These include the Roman destruction of Betar and crushing of the Bar Kochba revolt; expulsion of the Jews from England, France, and Spain; the beginning of World War I; the formal approval of the Nazi’s Final Solution; the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to concentration camps; the First Crusade; the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) in Argentina by Hezbollah; Israel’s 2005 Disengagement from the Gaza Strip; and most recently, Israel’s passing of the controversial judicial reform legislation, the Law to Cancel the Reasonableness Standard.
In a speech on the eve of this year’s Tisha B’Av, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that over the past three years, Israelis had prevented “the destruction of the Third Temple.”
“We showed the world that the people of Israel are a brave people, a brave army, a generation of heroes,” he said. “We repelled the terror of destruction and achieved great achievements.”
Tobias Holcman contributed to this report.
Source:
www.jpost.com
