Home: Mishnah.net

| Cookie and Legal Information |

Tisha B'Av

Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar. It is a day of fasting, prayer, and mourning for the destruction of the First and Second Holy Temples in Jerusalem.

But Tisha B’Av remembers more than the loss of two buildings. The Temple was the sacred center of Jewish life: a place of prayer, pilgrimage, service, and encounter with G‑d. Its destruction meant the loss of Jerusalem, national independence, countless lives, and a way of serving G‑d that cannot be fully practiced without the Beit HaMikdash.

The Mishnah places these losses within an even larger story.

Five Calamities on One Day

According to Mishnah Ta’anit 4:6, five calamities are connected with the ninth of Av:

The Mishnah itself says that the Temple was destroyed “the first and second time.” The identification of the destroyers as the Babylonians and Romans comes from the historical and biblical setting. The Mishnah also says simply that “the city was plowed.” The Gemara and Rambam later connect this act with the Roman official Turnus, or Tineius, Rufus and the Temple site and its surroundings.

These events did not occur in the same century, under the same empire, or for one simple reason. The first happened before a Temple existed. The next two concern different Temples and different conquerors. Beitar represents the defeat of a Jewish revolt. The plowing of Jerusalem suggests an attempt to change the city’s physical and sacred identity.

Why, then, does the Mishnah bring them together?

The Jewish calendar does more than preserve dates. It gives the Jewish people a shared time in which memory becomes a responsibility. Events separated by centuries can be mourned together without pretending that they were historically identical.

For someone beginning to explore Orthodox Judaism, a few terms are helpful. The Mishnah is the foundational written collection of teachings from the Oral Torah, compiled by Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi around the beginning of the third century. Orthodox Judaism understands the Oral Torah as teaching given together with the Written Torah and transmitted through generations of Sages.

The Gemara is the later rabbinic discussion and analysis of the Mishnah. Together, Mishnah and Gemara form the Talmud. Halakha means Jewish law and religious practice. Teshuvah means return: recognizing what is wrong, returning to G‑d, and changing how we live.

These ideas are central to Tisha B’Av. The day asks Jews to mourn honestly, examine themselves without judging the victims of history, and keep alive the hope that Jerusalem and the Beit HaMikdash will be rebuilt.

The First Calamity: A Future Refused

The first calamity appears in the Book of Numbers, chapters 13–14. Moses sent twelve men to explore the Land of Israel. Ten of them brought back a discouraging report about powerful inhabitants and fortified cities. Joshua and Caleb urged the people not to lose faith, but the people became afraid, wept through the night, and spoke of returning to Egypt.

G‑d then decreed that the counted men aged twenty and older would not enter the Land, with Joshua and Caleb explicitly excepted. Their children would enter instead.

The Torah does not state that this night was the ninth of Av. The Gemara in Ta’anit 29a reaches that date through a calculation based on the journey and the forty days the spies spent exploring the Land. The connection to Tisha B’Av is therefore a rabbinic teaching about the calendar.

At this point, no foreign army has destroyed a Jewish city. No Temple has burned. The first crisis begins inside the community.

The dangers described by the spies were not imaginary. Fear itself was not the entire sin. The question was what the people did with their fear. They allowed it to become a refusal of the future that G‑d had placed before them.

Tisha B’Av therefore begins with a lost future before it turns to a destroyed past.

The First Temple: Destruction Over Several Days

The date of the First Temple’s destruction is more complicated than it initially appears.

The Second Book of Kings says that the Babylonian officer Nebuzaradan came to Jerusalem on the seventh day of the fifth Hebrew month, the month of Av. The following verse describes the burning of the Temple, the royal palace, and the houses of Jerusalem.

The Book of Jeremiah places his arrival on the tenth day of the month and then describes the same destruction.

The Bible preserves both dates. The Gemara does not conceal the difference. Ta’anit 29a explains that the catastrophe unfolded over several days. The Babylonians entered the Temple on the seventh and remained there through the seventh and eighth. Near the end of the ninth, they set it on fire. Most of the Temple continued burning on the tenth.

Rabbi Yohanan said that, had he lived in the generation when the fast was established, he would have chosen the tenth because most of the Temple burned on that day. The Sages maintained the ninth because the beginning of the destruction carried particular significance.

A catastrophe is rarely confined to a single moment. It begins, grows, and leaves consequences that continue long afterward. Yet a community needs a shared day on which to mourn. The ninth of Av became that day. It does not erase the seventh or the tenth. It gathers the entire process into one place in the Jewish calendar.

The destruction was a political and military catastrophe carried out by the Babylonian Empire. Jerusalem was burned, sacred vessels were taken, people were killed, and much of the population was driven into exile. Jewish religious reflection does not make the Babylonian armies less responsible for their actions.

At the same time, the prophets asked the Jewish people to examine their own society. In Jeremiah 7, the prophet warned against believing that the Temple would automatically protect Jerusalem while injustice continued. He condemned idolatry, bloodshed, and the oppression of the stranger, orphan, and widow.

The Gemara in Yoma 9b later associated the destruction of the First Temple with three grave sins: idolatry, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed.

This is a religious interpretation addressed to Jews living within the covenant. It is not a military explanation of Babylonian power, nor is it permission to declare that individual victims deserved what happened to them. Its question is directed toward the living: What must we learn, and what must we change?

Eikhah: Giving Grief a Voice

The destruction of Jerusalem is mourned through the Book of Lamentations, known in Hebrew as Eikhah. Jewish tradition attributes the book to the prophet Jeremiah, and it is read publicly on the night of Tisha B’Av.

Eikhah contains five chapters and several voices. At times, a narrator describes the ruined city. At times, Jerusalem speaks like a grieving woman. The third chapter begins with the voice of one suffering person. The fifth becomes a prayer spoken by the community.

The book confesses sin, describes cruelty, protests suffering, remembers mercy, and asks G‑d for restoration. It does not force all this pain into one easy explanation.

Near the end, the community pleads:

“Return us to You, G‑d, and we will return; renew our days as of old.”

The final biblical verse then raises the frightening possibility that rejection and anger may continue. In the public reading, the preceding plea for renewal is repeated after that final verse. The difficult ending remains in the biblical text, but rejection is not allowed to be the final message heard aloud in the synagogue.

This is hope without pretending that grief has been solved.

Around Eikhah grew the kinnot, the poems and elegies recited on Tisha B’Av. Different Jewish communities have different collections, orders, and melodies. Together, they transform private sorrow into communal prayer and connect later tragedies with the destruction of Jerusalem.

The Second Temple and Sinat Chinam

The Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE. The siege of Jerusalem brought hunger, violence, death, enslavement, and widespread destruction.

The Gemara in Yoma asks why the Second Temple was destroyed. Its answer is deliberately unsettling. The people of that period studied Torah, observed the mitzvot, and performed acts of kindness. Yet sinat chinam was present among them.

Sinat chinam is commonly translated as baseless hatred or gratuitous hatred. Neither phrase captures it perfectly. It refers to hatred that becomes destructive—hatred that poisons relationships, humiliates other people, and damages the community.

This does not mean that disagreement is forbidden. Rabbinic Judaism is filled with machloket, principled disagreement. People can argue seriously about law, truth, leadership, and justice without treating one another as enemies.

The warning concerns something different: humiliation, exclusion, personal hostility, and the willingness to regard another person’s suffering as unimportant.

The story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza in Gittin 55b–56a gives this danger a human form. A servant mistakenly invites Bar Kamtza to a banquet held by someone who hates him. The host publicly humiliates Bar Kamtza and forces him to leave. The respected people present, including rabbis, do not stop the humiliation. Bar Kamtza’s anger then sets in motion a chain of events that reaches the Roman authorities.

This story is aggadah, a rabbinic moral narrative. It is not a complete history of the war with Rome. Its lesson is more intimate: cruelty in a private room can acquire public consequences when everyone else remains silent.

Other rabbinic passages offer additional reasons for Jerusalem’s fall. Shabbat 119b discusses the desecration of Shabbat, the interruption of children’s Torah education, the failure to offer correction, the disappearance of trustworthy people, and disrespect for Torah scholars.

Bava Metzia 30b says that Jerusalem was destroyed because people insisted upon the strict letter of the law and were unwilling to act beyond what the law could force them to do.

The Sages do not offer one closed formula. They direct attention toward many parts of communal life.

Rambam explains the purpose of the fast days in Mishneh Torah, Laws of Fasts 5:1. Remembering earlier wrongdoing should awaken our hearts and open the way toward teshuvah.

The direction is first-person and present: What must we change? Tisha B’Av should produce responsibility among the living, not judgment against the dead.

Beitar and the Plowing of Jerusalem

Beitar was a fortified Jewish center during the Bar Kokhba revolt against Rome in the second century. Its capture marked the collapse of a renewed attempt at Jewish independence.

Beitar expands the meaning of Tisha B’Av. The day does not mourn only the two Temples. It also mourns a national hope that ended in terrible defeat.

The Mishnah concludes its list by saying that “the city was plowed.” Jewish tradition understands the city to be Jerusalem. The Gemara connects the act with Turnus Rufus and speaks of the Temple area being plowed. Rambam similarly describes Tineius Rufus plowing the Temple site and its surroundings.

Burning destroys a building. Plowing changes the ground on which a building once stood. Streets, boundaries, names, and sacred places can be covered or replaced. The last calamity therefore becomes an image of attempted erasure.

The Mishnah itself answers that erasure in a remarkable way. Large parts of the Mishnah discuss Temple life even though the Temple was no longer standing when Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi compiled the work.

Tractate Middot preserves the arrangement and measurements of the Temple. Yoma describes the service of the High Priest on Yom Kippur. Tamid records the daily Temple service. Shekalim discusses sacred funds. The order of Kodashim examines offerings and sacred law in extraordinary detail.

It is sometimes said that rabbinic Judaism replaced the Temple with study. From an Orthodox perspective, that wording is misleading. The Mishnah does not declare the Temple unnecessary. It preserves Temple Torah as living Torah while Jews continue to pray for the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash.

Rome could alter the physical landscape. The Mishnah kept its sacred order alive in words, learning, law, and memory. That preservation is a form of rebuilding, but it is not presented as a substitute for the actual rebuilt Beit HaMikdash.

When the Body Remembers

Tisha B’Av is not learned only through books. It is observed through the body.

The Mishnah teaches that when the month of Av begins, joy is reduced. During the week in which Tisha B’Av occurs, haircutting and laundering are restricted. The meal immediately before the fast is simplified, with restrictions involving cooked dishes, meat, and wine under the conditions described in Mishnah Ta’anit 4:7.

The Gemara and later halakhic authorities develop the observance further. On Tisha B’Av, healthy Jewish adults normally refrain from eating and drinking, washing for pleasure, anointing the body for pleasure, wearing leather footwear, and marital relations.

Ordinary Torah study is also restricted because learning Torah ordinarily brings joy. Study turns instead toward Eikhah, parts of Jeremiah, the Book of Job, the laws of mourning, and rabbinic passages connected with destruction.

Restrictions involving work are based significantly on communal custom and are not one of the five central prohibitions. Customs also differ among Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and other Jewish communities.

The halakhic details contain important exceptions, especially concerning illness, pregnancy, childbirth, age, medication, and other personal circumstances. Anyone with a health concern should seek appropriate guidance from a qualified rabbi and medical professional. A general essay cannot determine what is safe or halakhically required for a particular person.

Tisha B’Av is the culmination of the Three Weeks, the mourning period that begins with the fast of the seventeenth of Tammuz. The customs become more intense as Tisha B’Av approaches.

Why involve food, clothing, washing, shoes, work, and study?

Because information can remain distant. A person can know that Jerusalem was destroyed and continue through the day unchanged. Fasting interrupts ordinary life. The body tells the mind: this memory concerns you.

The purpose is not to punish the body. It is to make the past present long enough for mourning and teshuvah to become real.

Zechariah: From Mourning Toward Rebuilding

After the Babylonian exile, people asked whether the fasts associated with Jerusalem’s destruction should continue. In Zechariah 7, the prophet responds by questioning the purpose of their fasting. Was the fast truly directed toward G‑d?

Zechariah then describes the society G‑d demands: practice true justice, show kindness and compassion, and do not oppress the widow, orphan, stranger, or poor. Elsewhere in the same prophecy, the people are told to speak truth, reject harmful plans against one another, and love truth and peace.

Zechariah also promises that the fasts of mourning will become occasions of joy and gladness. Zechariah 8:19 refers to the fast of the fifth month, which the Gemara identifies with Tisha B’Av.

The connection must be treated carefully. The prophecy does not present a mechanical transaction in which a certain amount of good behavior purchases redemption. Redemption is not a wage earned by human virtue.

Yet the promise of restoration and the moral commands stand beside one another. Jewish hope for a rebuilt Jerusalem cannot be separated from truth, justice, kindness, and peace.

Rambam writes that in the time of the Messiah, these fasts will be ended and transformed into days of celebration. Tisha B’Av is therefore temporary in its deepest religious meaning. The fast exists because the world is not yet repaired.

Rabbi Akiva and the Fox

The Talmud offers one of its most powerful images of hope in Makkot 24b.

Rabbi Akiva and several other Sages ascend toward Jerusalem after the Temple’s destruction. When they see the Temple site from Mount Scopus, they tear their clothing in mourning. At the Temple Mount, they see a fox emerge from the place of the Holy of Holies.

The other Sages begin to cry. Rabbi Akiva laughs.

He is not laughing at the destruction. He explains that the fulfillment of the prophecy of ruin strengthens his trust in the prophecy of restoration. If the prophecy that Zion would be plowed like a field came true, then the promise that elderly people and children would once again fill the streets of Jerusalem would also come true.

The story needs both reactions. Without tears, laughter would be cruel. Without hope, tears would have no horizon.

What Tisha B’Av Asks of Us

Tisha B’Av holds two duties together.

The first is the literal Jewish hope that Jerusalem and the Beit HaMikdash will be rebuilt. Orthodox Judaism does not treat the Temple only as a symbol for a kinder or more just society. Jews pray for its restoration as a real part of redemption.

The second duty is the work demanded by the prophets and Sages: teshuvah, truthful speech, compassion, responsible leadership, protection of vulnerable people, and peace.

These duties belong together. Ethical improvement does not replace the Temple. Longing for the Temple does not release anyone from ethical responsibility.

The five calamities now form one movement. The wilderness generation turns away from the future. The First and Second Temples are destroyed. Beitar’s political hope collapses. Jerusalem’s physical and sacred identity is attacked.

The practices of Tisha B’Av bring these losses into the body. Eikhah gives sorrow a language. The kinnot turn private grief into communal prayer. Rabbinic teachings direct memory toward self-examination. Zechariah and Rabbi Akiva prevent destruction from becoming the final Jewish answer.

This is what the Mishnah gathers.

It brings different events into one day without pretending that they are historically identical. It teaches Jews to remember together and to ask what faithful rebuilding requires.

Tisha B’Av is more than an anniversary of destruction. It is a disciplined refusal to forget Jerusalem—and a refusal to abandon hope.

The fast remembers what was lost. The prayers keep alive what is still hoped for.