Jewish national mourning: Tisha BeAv and historical commemorations

Tisha BeAv (the ninth day of the month of Av) is the great day of collective mourning in Judaism, closing a three-week period of semi-mourning opened by the fast of the 17th of Tammuz. Tradition associates it with the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians (586 BCE) and of the Second Temple by the Romans (70 CE), as well as other national catastrophes linked to this date, such as the crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt at Betar (135) and, according to tradition, the expulsion from Spain (1492). The fast, lasting approximately twenty-five hours, is accompanied by mourning prohibitions — abstention from washing, wearing leather shoes, and rejoicing — and by the cantillated reading of the book of Lamentations (Eikha) and elegiac poems (kinot). The ritual inverts the customary markers of Shabbat and the festivals, immersing the community in a shared experience of loss. Over the centuries, this commemoration has incorporated the Memory of medieval persecutions, expulsions, and, in the contemporary era, the Shoah.

Sources & resources

• Sefaria ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan