Tisha B’av is a story of destruction. 

We mourn the literal destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, crumbled and aflame, our centuries of persecution, and now—so recently—October 7th. We spend the day revisiting the history we can’t bear to confront the rest of the year.  

But Tisha B’av has an even more unsettling message to teach us—that too often, our greatest destruction comes from within.  

Long before the destruction of the Temple itself, on the seventeenth day of Tammuz, Moshe descended from Sinai carrying the Luchot, only to shatter them after witnessing the sin of the Golden Calf. The shattered tablets reflected a relationship that had already fractured, highlighting a terrible truth—that sometimes, the story of Jewish destruction is not only about external forces, but our own failings. 

This theme........

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