Should a Holocaust survivor who visits a death camp with his daughter and grandchildren weep for all those who died, or should they dance to the music of ‘I Survived ‘? Some say only tears are kosher; others say the joy and satisfaction of survival is also kosher. I say both are not only kosher, they are Mitsvot. On Pesach we remember that our ancestors were slaves in Egypt.

We also celebrate that some of them (only a minority left Egypt according to one midrash) were redeemed. In the same way we should observe Tisha B’Av with both sorrow and joy. Joy, but not self righteous triumphalism. After all, another midrash relates that God told the angels not to sing and dance when the Egyptians were drowning in the Sea of Reeds.

In the centuries after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Holy Temple our sages could have noted with satisfaction that the most important of Rome’s Temples was also destroyed again and again. The most important religious temple in the whole state of Rome was the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (best and biggest) dedicated c. 509 BCE (a few years after the Second Temple was dedicated in Jerusalem). That Temple burned down in 83 BCE, during the civil wars under the dictatorship of Sulla. Rebuilt in 69 BCE, it was burnt down again in December of 69 CE when Vespasian battled to enter the city as Emperor in the Year of the Four Emperors.

The new emperor, Vespasian, rapidly rebuilt the temple on the same foundations but with a lavish superstructure. This third Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus was dedicated in 75 CE and burned down 5 years later, during the reign of Titus, who was in charge when the Jerusalem Temple burned down 10 years before. Domitian began rebuilding the Temple of Jupiter again on the same foundations, but with the most lavish superstructure yet. This Pagan temple lasted more or less intact for four hundred years, until the fifth century. Since that time it has been in ruins.

According to Virgil, writing in the 20’s BCE, the Roman God Jupiter declared, “To Romans I set no boundary in space or time. I have granted them dominion without end.” (Aeneid 2:277) Yet only five centuries later Rome’s dominion in the west was over, and a century and a half after that, Muslims severely restricted the Roman empire’s boundaries in the east. Perhaps the fact that the Romans could rebuild their Temple, and the Jews were not permitted to do so, made all the difference. Yet as rabbis and synagogues replaced priests and The Temple, the Jewish people acquired a boundary-less domain. We are still here and they are gone. Virgil was wrong and Moses was right.

A special day to commemorate the Shoah was opposed by many Orthodox Rabbis who claimed that Jews already had a day for mourning the great tragedies that befell the Jewish people: Tisha B’Av. The majority of Jews however, felt that the Shoah was different, not only in size and scope, but also in its meaning. The orthodox view of Tisha B’Av, expressed in the Musaf Amidah of the holidays, declares that: “because of our sins we were exiled from our homeland”.

This could have applied to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and again in 70 CE, but it should not be applied to what happened to Jewish communities living in Europe during WW 2. The Shoah fit much better into the Zionist analysis of the inherent vulnerability of all Jewish communities living as a minority in countries outside of land of Israel. The Six Day War seemed to confirm Zionist ideology, but the decades long conflict with the Palestinians makes many Jews in Israel today feel more insecure than many Jews in the diaspora, thus reversing Zionist ideology.

When peace comes to the Middle East someday, many things will change, including how we think and feel about Tisha B’Av. There are few, if any, modern Jews, who feel any loss at all because a hereditary, male only, priesthood no longer offers animals on the sacred altar of a Temple in Jerusalem. Many rabbis have struggled to make Tisha B’Av relevant to their congregations by including references to terrible events occurring in our own lifetime like Hiroshima, Cambodia, Rwanda, or even climate change. This reforming of the focus of Tisha B’Av does help make it more relevant, but in the last two decades I have found it useful to use a different approach to Tisha B’Av.

I used to think that Tisha b’Av was a service dedicated to self centered self pity as shown in the following passages from the midrash: “”When punishment occurs Jacob alone experiences it” (Eicha Rabbah II :7); “Don’t the Gentiles sin? But although they sin, no punishment follows. Israel, however, sinned and was punished.” (I:35) and “In Egypt there were more than 70 peoples, and of them all only Israel was subjected to slavery” (Deuteronomy Rabbah IV 9). I now think that correctly........

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