More in ‘Tisha B’Av’

I’ve never known much about the religious meaning of Tisha B’Av, which falls today—I’ve never fasted for it, and until Tablet Magazine published its FAQ about the holiday this week, didn’t know that not only the destruction of both Temples but an entire litany of disasters are said to have befallen the Jews on this ...

Today in Tablet Magazine (and everywhere else), it is Tisha B’Av: Here is everything you need to know about the holiday. Books critic Adam Kirsch has a long meditation on the continued relevance of Rabbi Menachem Scheerson. And The Scroll will no longer be so bashful about posting music by the end of today (there ...

Growing up and going to many a Jewish summer camp, I experienced Tisha B’Av in scores of unique ways along with my whole generation of Jewish-Americans, for whom watching video (no DVDs yet!) was both a fun and exciting part of the camp experience. Since campers and staff are fasting for 25 hours and all ...

Today in Tablet Magazine, Lee Smith gives his column to some friends—including Elliott Abrams and Robert Malley—to opine about the Obama administration’s work in the Mideast so far. More tomorrow! Dvora Meyers profiles Benjy Melendez, a descendant of conversos who in the ‘60s founded the violent South Bronx street gang the Ghetto Brothers but now ...

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?
There’s nothing like a good countdown to get ready for Tisha B’Av, the day we grieve the destruction of the Temple. To get in a mournful mood, the three weeks prior to Tisha B’Av—known as Bein Ha’Metzarim, or the period between the straits—are marked by a series of fasts and abstinences designed ...

Israeli society, alas, is a mosaic made of small conflicts. There’s the unease between eastern Jews and western Jews, for example, or the tension between ancient tradition and modern culture. All of these conflicts, however, manifest themselves in one mundane thing—a simple cup of coffee.

In Tablet Magazine today, Elissa Strauss celebrates the rich Yiddish lexicon for describing female genitalia. We present part 3 of Douglas Century’s epic report on the current state of Israeli organized crime (part 1; part 2). Apropos Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s attempts to argue that the Palestinian Grand Mufti’s alliance with Hitler during World ...

We should’ve known this day was no good when, on it, Moses’s spies came from the Promised Land with reports of a terrible place littered with walled fortresses and roamed by angry giants. Moses ordered his doubting emissaries killed, but the curse of Tisha B’av lived on: the First Temple was destroyed on this day in 586 BCE. The Second Temple suffered the same fate exactly 656 years later, in 70 CE. Sixty-five years after that, in 135 CE, the Bar Kokhba revolt failed, its leader was killed, and its flagship city, Betar, was destroyed. Then, one year later, Jerusalem itself was burned, the Temple area plowed, and the fate of the Jews sealed for millennia. As if further insult was needed, in 1492, King Ferdinand of Spain signed the Alhambra Decree, setting Tisha B’Av as the deadline for all of Spain’s Jews to leave for good.

This unnamed war began with the kidnapping of three soldiers. For some reason, the very fact of kidnapping provoked a particularly wide-eyed horror among Israelis. Time stopped. Today we awaken to three dead soldiers, and incomprehensibly the day is utterly normal, even on the eve of Tisha B’Av, even in Jerusalem.
Machaneh Yehuda today seems ...