How Could So Many Events Happen On The Same Day?

Those who are not familiar with the Jewish commemoration of Tisha b'Av will find the following short history lesson interesting.

Obviously, the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem are very important and the reason for the commemoration.  Not only does this event establish that Jews have been in and around Jerusalem for 3000 years but it also is a reminder that It was the Babylonians and the Romans who destroyed the Temples and not the Palestinians (who never existed as a people until the last century.)

In the light of history, other events, all tragic, have occurred on the same day. Ironic or planned? You decide as scholars do not know.

Jews remember the Temple and the forced diaspora after the Second Temple was destroyed. Since that time they have longed to return and rebuild the Temple.  We think it is high time for this to occur.

Tomorrow is a big day on the Jewish calendar, let's hope it is not memorable.

Conservative Tom

Why Jews commemorate the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av (Tisha b’Av)?

This year falling on July 16, 2013

On that date the following awful events occurred:

586 BCE – The First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians

70 AD – The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans and the Jews fled into the Diaspora – mostly areas surrounding the Mediterranean including Spain.

133 CE – Simon bar Kochba Revolt with remaining Jews warring against the Romans brutally butchered in the final battle at Betar.
1290 – July 18 King Edward I expelled the Jews of England

1492 – August 2 – Expulsion of Jews from Spain as a result of the Inquisition. Among them a likely Jew, Christopher Columbus, who, with his Jewish navigators, took his 3 ships to look for riches in the New World.

1941 – August 2 – The German Nazi SS murdered 600 Jews in Targivica, Ukraine with the Ukrainians participating joyously as “Willing Executioners.” (Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhaggen 1996 No. 1 bestseller)