OPINION:
There’s something new and profound happening this year while Christians support Israel as the Jewish world prepares to observe Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Biblical month of Av; a day that commemorates numerous calamities that have befallen the Jews throughout millennia.
Sadly, this is all the more meaningful this year. In the midst of a war, Israel needs that much more comfort and encouragement. But from an uplifting perspective, the Jewish people are deriving that comfort from the unique, but terribly important, Christian population. Foremost among the tangible ways that this support is expressed is from Ten from the Nations, an inspiring ministry that seeks to connect Christians to Israel and the Jewish people in solidarity, on the saddest day of the year.
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What makes Tisha B’Av is so significant and sad? Over millennia, countless horrible things have happened to the Jewish people on this date. Some of these are intuitive, horrible tragedies that are self evident, and some represent the beginning or conclusion of historical events that were calamitous then and still have lasting impact today.
What are some of these events that we commemorate and mourn?
The destruction of the First and Second Temples, by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the Romans in 70 CE respectively, both took place on Tisha B’Av. That should be “coincidence” enough to have two earth shattering events that still impact the Jewish people.
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But there are more:
- Tisha B’Av is the date on which 10 of the 12 spies returned to Moses and the Jewish people with a bad report about the Land of Israel.
- In 135 CE, the Romans crushed Bar Kokhba’s revolt and destroyed the city of Betar, killing over 500,000 Jewish civilians.
- in 1096, The First Crusade officially began, killing 10,000 Jews in its first month and destroying Jewish communities in France and the Rhineland.
- In 1290, the Jews were expelled from England.
- In 1306, the Jews were expelled from France.
- In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain.
- On Aug. 1 and 2, 1914, Germany entered World War I which caused massive upheaval in European Jewry and whose aftermath led to World War II and the Holocaust.
- In 1941, the Nazi SS commander Heinrich Himmler formally received approval for “The Final Solution,” which marked the beginning of the systematic murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, almost one third of the world’s Jewish population.
- The implementation of the Final Solution began on July 23 1942 with the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka.
- In 1994, the Iranian bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killed 85 and injured 300.
- In 2005, the unilateral Israeli disengagement from Gaza led to Hamas taking control in 2007, which allowed the massacre on Oct. 7, 2023 to take place.
On Tisha B’Av, we read the Book of Lamentations. I always wonder how and why such a sad book became part of our Bible, the Torah. Maybe it’s necessary foreshadowing, even today. The truth is, at the beginning of the current war, on the rare occasion that I would venture out of the house and into Jerusalem, I felt like we were living out pages of Lamentations. Jerusalem was desolate. It was eerie. Things were scary and sad. They still are sad, and there’s lots of grief for all to go around after 10 months of war, more than 1,500 dead, thousands injured physically, and countless people scarred emotionally and psychologically. Adding to the grief are the 115 hostages still being held in captivity by Hamas. In addition to the physical terror and inhuman actions by the terrorists, they are waging fierce psychological warfare as well.
Today, there’s still a war raging, and Israelis are still mourning, suffering the consequences of personal and national trauma. These are traumas that will remain with us, for the rest of our lives and for generations to come.
While Oct. 7 was not on Tisha B’Av when we remember so many other calamities, arguably this year we have not experienced a calamity in Israel of this magnitude since the year 70 when the Second Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem laid to waste. And arguably, we are living in a season that brings us closer to the experiences that Jews in Israel had at that time, than any time since.
As much as there were many factors on our side that allowed the multi-system failure to take place on Oct. 7, and our not projecting, preparing for, preventing, or fighting back sooner and with greater strength, so too are the depths of our grief, mourning, and trauma.
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Make no mistake, the actions committed were done by the Iranian-backed Islamist terror groups Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and the Iranian Islamic regime itself.
Nevertheless, in this season of introspection, and on Tisha B’av specifically, Jews look inward, and follow a tradition of recognizing that we have a responsibility to learn from the evil that’s threatening us and to reflect on our own responsibility in these events taking place.
It’s uncomfortable to think, much less to articulate today especially, as we commemorate a day of national mourning of disasters that have taken place over millennia. Jews understand that while the Romans and Babylonians destroyed the Temples, it was our disunity, baseless hatred, that allowed the evil ones to succeed. Some take that responsibility even further.
Before Oct. 7 we were in a state of tremendous disunity. I don’t know if and how that contributed directly or indirectly to the massacre of and while I don’t for a second remove the actual blame from the Islamist terrorists who planned and committed the atrocities, it is legitimate to be introspective at least.
Recently I met a very religious and pious man in one of the Gaza border communities most devastated by the Oct. 7 massacre. Of course he blamed the terrorists for the inhuman rape, sexual mutilation and beheading. The terrorists were the ones who people burned alive and executed children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. And the terrorists kidnapped 250 people from more than 40 nations. For him it wasn’t theoretical. It literally took place in his own back yard.
But he also said that had it not been for our tremendous disunity before Oct. 7, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe. But he articulated the opposite as well, that when we are together, unified, focused, nothing can defeat us. That at least is a positive message that while we cannot change the sins of others, we can and must be accountable to ourselves.
When ministries like Ten from the Nations and Christians around the world take that to a higher level of unity, by addressing the culpability of the church over the centuries, and seeking to repair the harm done.
Taking responsibility is a very hard thing to do, especially now. But maybe this year we feel more like the Jews of 2,500 years and 2,000 years ago respectively when they witnessed the Temples’ destruction, the horrors that took place. Maybe it’s too fresh, too raw, to even consider. But maybe knowing the past, we can have the awareness and realization to build from this, and look to a future where we are indeed unified.
But here we are, on Tisha B’Av, 2024 living in the shadows of the most horrific thing that’s happened to the Jewish people since the Holocaust. A calamity that’s still not behind us. Not by far.
This inescapable reality makes conversations this year, more than any other year in eight decades, focus on something that is real, in our face, not theoretical or in the distant past. Before, it would have been common to mention the things that happened which we remember, but not things that we are in the midst of living. I don’t ever recall something so present in our lives that’s impacted so many of us, Jews and Christians, all over the world. So these are things that have to be discussed.
In the most recent of the things for which we mourn on Tisha B’Av, the disengagement from Gaza, this year we wonder if Israel had not withdrawn from Gaza in 2005, maybe we would not be facing the mourning we are today. My point is not to get political, but to underscore the consequences and impact that each of these have.
So we mourn, nationally, as a people. Not just Jews in Israel, but Jews around the world. It’s a day of mourning, fasting, refraining from adorning one’s self, and not even studying Torah.
In recent years our mourning has been shared by Christians, all around the world as well. But that’s not only today, on the Ninth of Av, but for the past 10 months. Countless Christians across the world have been standing with us, praying for us, grieving with us, and even losing sleep like us.
In Judaism, comforting mourners is a binding obligation. But it’s hard to be in a place of comforting others as a people when you are one of the people mourning yourself. For centuries on Tisha B’Av we’ve mourned alone, with no comfort from outside. Just grief, remembering, and praying that there will be no more national calamities to continue to have to mourn.
This year, the vivid mourning and fear among Jews worldwide has increased and is palpably more real as we are still at war.
That’s what makes Christians observing Tisha B’Av so much more significant this year. Too many Israelis and Jews feel very much alone. Their mourning with us is sincere, heartfelt, and makes an impact. It demonstrates we are not alone. It fills a role of comforting the Jewish people. But it happens as part of the extended family, from within. Not as strangers or distant neighbors. It’s as if Ruth were to have said, “When you mourn, I will mourn.”
By doing so Christians today are turning the tide of history from the Jewish people being alone, to Jews and Christians coming together. I call “applied repentance,” not just words or prayers, but by meaningful, visible actions.
Applied repentance necessarily make Jews consider our history vis a vis the church, under which so many crimes against the Jewish people were carried out. If we’re mourning events of 2,000 and 2,500 years ago, of course we remember the crimes committed against us by people professing to be Christians in Christian Europe. Jews carry lots of baggage from millennia of persecution, much of which by Christians. Through this applied repentance of visible actions, it changes how Jews look at Christians. That’s huge.
It also changes how other Christians look at their faith, and the Jewish people, setting an example for other Christians. It’s a very rude and uncomfortable awakening for true Christians today to realize that the church carried out many crimes against the Jewish people in the name of Jesus, undermining His own words that “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” It must pain Him immeasurably to see people over the centuries professing their faith in Him committing atrocities against His people.
Through our individual actions we can hasten the redemption for which we all pray. How much more powerful when we do that together. As my friend who I met on the Gaza border said, when we’re unified we’re unstoppable. He meant Jews. I don’t mean just Jews. I mean Jews and Christians. Together. Now that’s powerful. And I believe that can hasten the redemption that we pray for.
If we look at the list of all the calamities that happened to the Jewish people on Tisha B’Av, two major themes are the destruction of both Temples and the Holocaust.
As much as the destruction of the First Temple was horrible, it was rebuilt 70 years later. That did not diminish the suffering of those who experienced the loss, and exile, but it served to repair a vast breach in our reality, and the ability for Jews to return to and restore worship in Jerusalem. While the destruction lived in our memory then, the Jews of Jerusalem were less sensitive to the loss 140 years later. That’s the nature of loss and grief. It never goes away, but does diminish.
In recent history, the Holocaust was either the worst or second worse thing that happened to the Jewish people. After the destruction of the Temple. Other than the dehumanization of the Jewish people and mass murder of one third of us, one of the most glaring realities that led to the Holocaust, and which we have internalized since, is that we were basically alone.
Few Jews in Europe had any positive association with Christians, or the church in general. Yes, there were righteous gentiles who saved Jews, and most of them were Christian. But that was a drop in the bucket, numerically and theologically.
More often than not, individual churches and the church in general bred antisemitism. Antisemitism was “natural” and the Holocaust did not happen in a vacuum. So there was good reason to feel alone. That distrust among Jews for Christians has lingered for past generations.
What’s changed is that as the nation of Israel turned 70 and as Jerusalem was reunited, we have begun to see a growing shift in expression and display of actual support for Israel and the Jewish people, especially from Christians. It’s something that is unprecedented in history, and even though many Jews still might not trust Christians, those of us who exist in this space of building bridges and understanding that Christians and the church today are not synonymous with antisemitism, discrimination, and worse.
Consequently, more and more Jews are seeing and understanding that true Christians express their faith through support of, and solidarity with, Israel and the Jewish people.
And now, almost the same amount of time after the Holocaust has ended as the amount of time it took to rebuild the Temple, that budding relationship repairs the vast breach culminating in the Holocaust of our feeling alone in the world.
Today, when we mourn collectively for so many things, and Christians mourn with us and comfort us, know that it’s not just something empirically good and theologically sound as a rejection of antisemitism and replacement theology, but something that brings us progressively closer to redemption. In comforting the Jewish people, Christians affirm what true Christianity ought to be about, helping repair the breach that’s almost as old as the mourning for the Second Temple, and bring us ever closer to Tisha B’Av being observed from a day of fasting as we do today, to feasting.
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Jonathan Feldstein was born and educated in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel in 2004. He is married and the father of six. Throughout his life and career, he has become a respected bridge between Jews and Christians and serves as president of the Genesis 123 Foundation (www.Genesis123.co). He writes regularly about Israel and shares experiences of living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel. He is host of the popular Inspiration from Zion podcast and publisher of www.IsraeltheMiracle.com. He can be reached at firstpersonisrael@gmail.com.
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