On Monday night August 4th until dark on Tuesday August 5th, observant Jews will endure the 25 hour fast of Tisha B'Av. Tisha B'Av means, simply, the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av. But why is there a fast? The Mishnah explains:
On the ninth of Av it was decreed that our ancestors should not enter the Holy Land, the first and the second Temples were destroyed, Betar was taken, and the City of Jerusalem was plowed over.
Ta'anit 4:6 (26b). Since the completion of the Talmud in the 5th and 6th centuries CE, calamitous events have continued to befall the Jewish people on the 9th of Av. On the 9th of Av in 1290,
King Edward I issued his decree expelling the Jews from England - a decree that would remain in effect until 1656 - and on the 9th of Av in 1492, the decree of
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelling the Jews from Spain, issued back in March, took effect.
In 1914 the 9th of Av was on Shabbat August 1st, so the fast was observed on Saturday night and Sunday August 2nd. On that Shabbat, Germany declared war on Russia and France mobilized. On August 2nd, while Jews were observing the sad events of 586 BCE and 70 CE, Germany issued its ultimatum to Belgium demanding that it allow German troops to pass through on their way to France, the German army actually occupied Luxembourg, and, in response, Great Britain mobilized. World War I was a human tragedy, not a Jewish tragedy, but it laid the foundations for the Shoah. In fact, the Nazis, well aware of the importance of this day, deliberately made their own additions to this list of calamities.
But why was the Second Temple destroyed? Answers below the flip.
First the legend spawned in the Talmud. In the midrash Lamentations Rabbah, repeated in the Babylonian Talmud Gittin 55b to 56a, the rabbis told how a wealthy man had instructed his servant to invite Kamza to a party, but the servant mistakenly invited Bar Kamza, whom the host hated. Bar Kamza shows up at the party, and the host demands that he leave. Bar Kamza begs the man not to humiliate him in front of all the guests; he offers to pay for his food and drink, he even offers to pay for the entire party, but the host drives him away. Many of Jerusalem's greatest rabbis were in attendance, but they said nothing.
Bar Kamza is so upset with the rabbis for not intervening that he travels to Rome, and visits the Emperor. He tells the Emperor that the rabbis are plotting to rebel. As proof, Bar Kamza asks the Emperor to send a kosher animal to be sacrificed at the Temple. If the Jews accept the sacrifice, the Emperor will know he is lying, but if they refuse, the Emperor will know he is telling the truth. The Emperor agrees and gives Bar Kamza a calf to take to Jerusalem, but on the way Bar Kamza wounds the animal creating a scar and thus a blemish. The Temple priests and rabbis know they have been set up - some of the rabbis beg the priests to sacrifice the animal anyway, but the priests refuse - the Torah states a blemished animal shall not be offered as a sacrifice, no exceptions. Some of the priests propose to kill Bar Kamza so he will not bring his evil report back to the Emperor, but the rabbis said no - the Torah does not permit us to kill a human being merely for bringing a blemished animal to the Temple. So Bar Kamza returned to Rome to report that the Jews had refused to accept the Emperor's sacrifice, and the Emperor sent in his army to punish and destroy the Jewish people of Israel.
Two side notes: First, "bar" in rabbinical Hebrew meant "son of" - which portrays a more vivid picture of the causeless hatred that existed in Israel in those ancient days. Bar Kamza's dad, the intended guest - would not even intervene with his son. Second, Josephus wrote that the war began after the Zealots seized control of the Temple and refused to accept the Emperor's sacrifice which the Temple priests had heretofore always accepted, so this midrash may have some historical validity.
Which leads us to some actual history. According to Josephus, who is partially confirmed by other Roman sources and by the Talmud, there arose in the First Century a political party in the Roman province of Palestine called the the Zealots, who demanded, provoked, and got a war against the Roman Empire.
The rabbis did not want this war - they knew that the Jews could not take on the mighty Roman Empire and that such a war could lead to the destruction of the Jewish people. But the zealots, whom the rabbis called biryonim, boorish criminal men, would not listen. From Gittin 56a:
The biryonim were then in the city [of Jerusalem]. The Rabbis said to them: Let us go out and make peace with them [the Romans]. They would not let them, but on the contrary said, "Let us go out and fight them." The Rabbis said: "You will not succeed." They [the biryonim] then rose up and burned the stores of wheat and barley so that a famine ensued.
Josephus reports that the Zealots even murdered Jews who advocated making peace with the Romans, but the Talmud does not mention this. After a long period of hunger and disease, the city fell to the Romans on the Ninth of Av in the year 70, and the Romans burned down the Temple. But some of the Zealots fled to
Masada where they held out until the year 73, when, rather than surrender or be captured by the Romans, they committed mass suicide.
According to Josephus, over a million people died in this war, most of them Jews, and nearly 100,000 Jews were sold into slavery and taken to other parts of the Empire. The Temple, the only spot in the world where God had authorized the Jewish people to worship according to Torah law, laid in ruins. How did the Jewish people, and Judaism, survive? According to the Talmud - same sources in Lamentations Rabbah and Gittin 56a to 56b - one man of peace, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai, saved the Jewish people and the Jewish faith.
It was during the last days of the siege of Jerusalem. Hunger was rampant and the Zealots would not allow anyone to leave. They only allowed burial parties to go out, bury the dead, and return to the city. So Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai put himself inside a coffin and arranged to be carried out by his disciples. But instead of walking to the cemetery, they walked into the Roman encampment, to the tent of Titus, the commander of the Roman army. Rabbi Yohanan climbed out of his coffin, approached the general, and prophesized to the general that he would become the Emperor. He asked the general for a single favor. Titus, enchanted at the thought of becoming emperor, asked the rabbi to proceed. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai asked that he and his disciples be allowed to travel to Yavneh to establish the first rabbinical academy, which met under Roman protection until the Second Jewish Revolt of 132-136 CE. Titus did become Emperor as Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai had prophesized, and it was at Yavneh that the rabbis who had survived the First Revolt discussed and argued Jewish law and laid the foundations for what would become the Talmud. Other academies were founded in Israel and later in Babylon, but all sprang from the first academy in Yavneh. There the rabbis instituted daily prayer to replace the daily animal sacrifice, and the concept that deeds of loving kindness replace sin and guilt offerings.
I end with four questions:
First, are Bibi Natanyahu and his fellow hard liners, and the settlers who displace Palestinians from their homes, the modern day Zealots?
Second, if so, will they too lead Israel and the Jewish people to destruction - by hardening the hearts of both Palestinians and Israelis, and by making Israel an international pariah to be boycotted and sanctioned?
Third, will a man or woman of peace, a modern day Yohanan ben Zakkai, appear to save Israel from itself? And,
Fourth, are we American Jews to emulate the rabbis who attended that rich man's banquet and watched in silence while that rich man humiliated Bar Kamza, by reflexively supporting Israel's government, or by remaining silent, no matter what modern day Zealots may do to the detriment of the Jewish state?
For those keeping this fast, may our fast be easy, and may our fast be meaningful.