Fast of Tisha B’Av 29 articles

In retrospect, a lot has been said and written about enhancing the Tisha B’Av experience. For many of us the “loss” of our holy places is very abstract; we know that...

Grief is a fundamentally individual, transformative emotion. What can it mean to speak about “national grief, or national mourning”? Is there any calamity which a nation suffers that so alters its...

The following is a list of the major events leading up to the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. First Temple 3316: Yehoyakim ben Yoshiyahu becomes King of...

Below is part two in a three-part series of excerpts from Dr. Erica Brown’s introduction to In the Narrow Places: Daily Inspiration for the Three Weeks To view the first excerpt,...

Below is part one in a three-part series of excerpts from Dr. Erica Brown’s introduction to In the Narrow Places: Daily Inspiration for the Three Weeks Shabbat Shalom will feature the...

One of the expressions of mourning on Tisha beAv is that we refrain from studying Torah, just as a mourner does (SA OC 554). The gemara bases this rule on the...

The Mishnah (Ta’anit 25b) says that once the month of Av begins, during the Nine Days, we have to reduce our joy. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 551:2) rules according to...

Although the Temple in Yerushalayim has been desolate for almost two thousand years, its memory is very much alive for the Jewish people. We remember the Temple in our daily prayers,...

Tisha B’av and Devarim (the parsha) make appropriate bedfellows. Chazal find in Moshe’s eicha complaint echoes of Yirmiyahu and future lamentations. Thus the prevalent minhag of chanting that verse in the...

NATIONAL MOURNING IN THE JEWISH TRADITION The news of a loved one’s death utterly transforms us and our perception of the world. A young man, returning to his studies after being...