By Rabbi David-Yehuda ‘DY’ Stern

Saturday evening begins the saddest day in the Jewish calendar; Tisha B’Av. During this 25 hour period of mourning we reflect on some of the catastrophes that have befallen our people over the past 2,500 years.

Traditionally, first and foremost is the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem; First in 586 BCE and, after being rebuilt, permanently destroyed in 70 CE.

Yet, on Tisha B’Av our collective mourning will likely be focused on more recent events, such as the Holocaust and recent happenings in Israel.

It is easy to understand why. Within living memory alone we will have experienced several calamities whilst the tragic events of the Temple Period were thousands of years ago. Furthermore the end of the Temple gave birth to the rich and vibrant culture of Jewish thought and practice we have today; the ancient sacrificial system feels deeply unfamiliar.

Yet the destruction of The Holy Temple – Beit Ha’Mikdash – epitomises the core calamity present in the subsequent suffering of our people.

Our ancestors would come to The Temple in order to draw close to the Divine. Our God is one of unity as we pray each day,
“Sh’ma yisra’el, Adonai eloheinu Adonai echad”
– “Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal is One”.
To be close to God is to embrace God’s oneness; the oneness of everything!

The destruction of the Temple is much more than the destruction of mere stone and wood, rather it is the unravelling of unity itself.

It is often the case that we experience such violence when we take actions that undermine our connectedness to others or the planet. As the diverse and radical voices of the Talmud remind us, the destruction of the Temple was brought about due to the baseless hatred (sinat chinam) that dominated the period.

Sinat chimam is when we ‘other’ people; when we focus on what sets us apart from one another rather than what connects us. This is powerfully illustrated by the following allegory in Vayikra Rabbah – a collection of short sermons on various biblical passages:

Some people were travelling on a ship.
One of them took out a drill and started drilling a hole in the deck beneath his feet.
The others asked: What are you doing?!
He replied: Why do you care? Is it not underneath my area of the ship that I am drilling?!
The group replied: But the water will rise, flood the entire ship and we will ALL drown!

On Tisha B’Av we mourn the consequences and losses of our frequent inability to realise our interconnectedness with others. We do not cry for a lost building but for the loss of an idealised time when humanity was closer to the Divine and to one another.

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