(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Showing posts with label Tisha B'Av. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tisha B'Av. Show all posts
July 27, 2023
August 7, 2022
Tisha B'Av - Destruction of The Temple
The Irreligious Religious
Please see my new article in The Times of Israel called "The Irreligious Religious."
If some “religious” people do the wrong thing, disrespect their fellow Jews, hate on them, curse them, defile their prayers, that doesn’t mean they are really religious. Rather to the contrary — they are the irreligious religious!
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
July 30, 2020
Peace To All Mankind!
It's a solemn day on the Jewish calendar when we commemorate so many terrible events that happened in our history.
We have to remember the lows, but also pray for G-d to bring us ever back to the highs.
Peace, health, prosperity, and happiness.
It all comes from the One Above!
May G-d have mercy on us and bestow only blessings for good times to come. ;-)
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
July 19, 2020
PTSD Gets Around
The Jewish people are a nation recovering from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), where memories of trauma flood our national psyche and can trigger emotional (and even physical) symptoms. Whether fear of the next “evil decree” against the Jews, to another pogrom of crazed rapists and killers rampaging through a Jewish town, or even of genocide itself, the Jewish people have known plenty of deep-seated persecution and have to deal with the accompanying fear and anxiety of being the quintessential “strangers in a strange land,” almost everywhere in the world and over a very long period of history.
PTSD is very real not only for our suffering veterans, and for individual people that have been sexually abused or experienced physical violence, but it can also be a national psychiatric disorder based on collective trauma that affects our mood, anxiety levels, and behavioral reactions to events. Suffering from exile, persecution, and helplessness from thousands of years does not go away in a generation or even a century. It is a long road for our national recovery where we can learn to once again live healthy and productive lives absent from the fear and anxiety of another bad Tisha B’Av.
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
August 9, 2019
Speedily Rebuild The Temple
Tisha B’Av (the 9th day of the month of Av) is on Shabbat this year, so we conduct the day of mourning and fast on Sunday. The destruction of the Temple and our subsequents exiles from the Holy Land are deeply traumatic periods of Jewish history. Needless to say, this is a very sad and scary time of year. However, we are living in the time of redemption, when after 2,000 years, the Jewish people have been blessed to be returned to their biblical homeland, Israel. Next up is the rebuilding of the Temple VERY SOON, please G-d.
Let us hope and pray that we are deserving of Hashem’s blessings and mercy, and that sadness will be completely turned into joy, the world will be healed, and peace will prevail.
July 22, 2018
Monopoly Yerushalmi
The properties of obviously from famous places in the Holy City of Jerusalem, such as The Kenneset, Mount Olives, Mount Herzl, Hebrew University, Montefiore Windmill, Mahane Yehuda Market, The Biblical Zoo, The Israel Museum, Tower of David, and of course, The Western Wall, and more.
The cards are in both Hebrew and English so I can continue to improve my Hebrew language skills.
I think this is a perfect topic to be thinking about today, which is Tisha B'Av (the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av).
This is a perfect Shabbat game for after Shul and Kiddish, and I am looking forward to the family sitting down to play Monopoly Jerusalem style.
I want to also note that Jerusalem along with the Holy Temple (may it be rebuilt speedily in our day) is a perfect topic to be thinking about today, because this is the day on the Hebrew calendar when the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in both 586 BCE by the Babylonians as well as in 70 CE by the Romans after they had laid siege to the city--the exact same day of the calendar year over 650 years apart--and so this is a day of commemoration, mourning, and introspection for the Jewish people. ;-)
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
July 29, 2017
We Remember and Cry
It is the day that Jews remember and cry about the destruction of both temples in Jerusalem--on the exact same day in history almost 700 years apart--in 586 BCE and and 70 AD.
Tisha B'Av is also the date when Germany entered World War I which as we know started a series of events that led to the catastrophe of the Holocaust.
We remember and cry on Tisha B'Av as we went from freedom to worship and live in Jerusalem to the exile and servitude to the Babylonians and the Romans.
It the polar opposite of the holiday of Passover, where we celebrate and commemorate going from servitude under the Egyptians to freedom and redemption to get the Torah and enter and settle the Holy Land.
By the rivers of Babylon
There we sat (and) also wept
When we remembered Zion
On willows in its midst
We hanged up our harps
For there our captors asked of us
(For) words of songs and tormented us (with) mirth:
'Sing to us from the song of Zion'
How will we sing the song of God
On a foreign land?
If I will forget you JerusalemWe as a people have been through so much...servitude, expulsions, crusades, inquisitions, pogroms, genocide...thousands of years of discrimination, torture, rape, and murder--yet, Israel Doth Live!
My right hand will forget (its skill)
My tongue will stick to the roof of my mouth
If I will not remember you
If I will not raise Jerusalem
Above my happiness
As the L-rd promised the Jews--after exile would come redemption, and so it is!
For thousands of years, the Jewish people yearned for a homeland where we could live in peace and security and for the rebuilding of the Holy temple--please G-d in our days soon.
From the rivers of Babylon to the Nile in Egypt and the Rhine in Germany--we have paid the ultimate price and sacrifice to G-d and we pray that the Jewish people can once again be free to live and worship as foretold "from the River in Egypt to the Euphrates River." (Exodus 23:31) ;-)
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
August 13, 2016
Shut Up In Shul
I sat by one of my friends and in between some prayers was catching up with him from the week.
Okay, I know that I shouldn't be talking (so much) in shule, but it is an important way for me to connect with other Jewish people and community.
Then all of a sudden, another person says to me without any warning, "Shut up!"
At first, I thought it was a joke, then he says it again with a serious face, and I was so embarrassed.
And only partially for me, but maybe even more for him.
What type of person uses that type of language to someone and in synagogue.
He didn't say, can you keep it down or let's focus on our prayers or something human and kind.
Instead, he talked to me like an animal and I couldn't believe it and tonight is Tisha B'Av, when Hashem twice destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem (in part it is said because of hatred of Jew against Jew).
It reminded me of how I saw some horrible videos on Facebook this week of Chasidim from Neturei Karta and Satmar protesting against Israel and their fellow Jewish people...what a complete sickness to wish evil and destruction against your own brothers and sisters, rather than helping them to build and grow a beautiful state in service to G-d and a light unto nations.
In synagogue today, while I was silent before this person's horrible words of rebuke, my friend said to him, "This is how you talk? You say shut up [and in shul]!"
I appreciated that he said something, and the other guy actually apologized then.
I hope Hashem can forgive me for talking in shule and the people who treat each other badly.
I am sad at how twisted religion has gotten to some, and know this is not the way it is supposed to be. ;-)
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
