This is one of the major holidays of the Jewish calendar. Why haven't you heard much about it? Easy answer: most people are on summer vacation--there's no religious school, regular day school, nothing. I think I went to a session about it once when I was maybe 12, forgot it existed, and revisited it during my summer at Kutz.
The short version of the meaning of this holiday: all the bad things that ever happened occured on this day. Specifically, we remember the loss of the First and Second Temples, however other things have since been attributed to this day. Supposedly this was the day of the beginning of the expulsion from England, the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition, and, this one is definitely true, the beginning of World War I. This is considered a major fast due to the loss of the temples. Even when the Second Temple stood, this marked a day of mourning for the loss of the First Temple. I won't get into the various theologies of fasting and wishing to see the new Temple rebuilt.
Tisha B'Av, literally the 9th of the month of Av, is commemorated by reading special parts of the Torah and Haftorah as well as the entire Book of Lamentations or Eicha. A special, mournful trope is used to read Eicha. Also unusual about Tisha B'Av, one does not lay tefillin for the morning service but DOES for the afternoon service. There are also a number of special customs or minhagim associated with the holiday. One does not wear leather as it is a sign of luxury or comfort. Typically one does not sit on chairs but rather lies in ash or sits on the floor.
My Tisha B'Av experience had three major parts: the evening, the morning, and the afternoon. In the evening, we joined other Progressive temples in a concert of dirges of Ladino, Yiddish, and Hebrew origins on the themes of sadness, mourning, and loss. The concert was at Emmaus Nicopolis www.emmaus-nicopolis.org, a Catholic setting about a half hour outside of Jerusalem. The music was led by Orit Perlman whose musicality and sonority was truly powerful and moving. I was amazed by her ability to switch between musical styles: Sephardi, Mizrachi, Yemenite, modern Israeli, Ashkenazi, etc.
For the morning, we attended sessions at the Pardes Institute, a great learning facility in the heart of Talpiyot, Jerusalem. I attended a session led by HUC's own Dean Rabbi Naamah Kelman discussing poetry of Yehuda Amichai. While his beauty poetry was not specifically about Tisha B'Av, we made connections to themes of the day as well as to get an understanding about Jerusalem and post-1967 Jerusalem sentiments. In particular, we focused our attentions on his great masterpiece, Open Close Open or פתוח סגור פתוח. This opus is often called the secular Israeli's siddur with its various odes to Jerusalem and feeling the heart and spirit of the land and people. At the same time, the language is powerful and sometimes painful.
In the afternoon, I went to the Kotel--after all, this holiday is about the destruction of the Temples, so I might as well take a look at what remains. When I went there, the crowd must have just about subsided for the afternoon. There were only a few groups of men praying. What amazed me about this particular day was that all the men were quiet. Usually there is shouting, loud singing, and so forth. It was a very quiet day for the Kotel. I'm sure it would have been otherwise if I were there the night before or later in the day. Still, this helped me to find my way and keep me on the path to finding meaning and purpose to my fast.
"Va pensiero" is perhaps one of the most famous chorus songs of all of opera. This comes from Verdi's opera Nabucco, which depicts the Jews in Babylonia after the destruction of the First Temple. Apparently this song is based on Psalm 137, or "By the waters of Babylon..."
Thank you for writing about Tisha B'Av I had actually been wondering what it was like in Israel and it sounds like a real experience.
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