ONE DAY OF SADNESS
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Tisha b’ Av is more than a date on the calendar. It is a wound, reopened year after year, not to harm— but to teach, a baring mirror demanding we pause long enough to see the cracks within our collective soul that have accumulated over time.
We fast. We sit low. We do not greet one another. We refrain from Torah because that would bring joy. We don’ t wash or eat or embrace. We don’ t rush to explain. And we don’ t try to move on too fast.
This is the day we remember what we have lost.
We remember the walls of Jerusalem breaking— not all at once, but gradually, painfully. Interpretive teachings remind us that before the stones fell, we lost something even more vital: the ability to see each other, to hear each other. Before the Temple fell, before exile from our homeland, we exiled each other from our hearts. Tisha b’ Av, in its unbearable honesty, brings us back to those first cracks, far deeper than the pain any external foe could cause. Spiritually speaking, the destruction didn’ t start with fire; it started with forgetting each other’ s worth. And isn’ t that how so much heartbreak begins?
On a ritual level, the day is overwhelming not just because of the Temple’ s fall, but because tradition has mythically folded so many losses— so much devastation— into this one date. The spies returned from the Promised Land with frightening reports on that day. The Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans ended in defeat on this day. The Crusades are remembered on this day. The edicts enacting the expulsion of England’ s Jews and the banishment of Jews from Spain were
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