This Saturday night, the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av (the 9th of Av) begins. Tisha B’Av is the saddest day of the year on the Jewish calendar, commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem and the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish People throughout our history.  

Like other Jewish holidays, the emotions of Tisha B’Av are connected to our historical consciousness of the past. We are meant not just to intellectually remember, but also to feel what it would have been like to be there.   

Right now, with so much pain and fragility in our world, it does not require historical consciousness to feel brokenness, trauma, and grief.  

Our brothers and sisters in Israel continue to live with the trauma of October 7, 2023, notwithstanding the dramatic military victories over Hezbollah and Iran that hopefully create significant possibilities for long-term positive change. Our young people are fighting and dying in this war, our hostages remain captive in Gaza, social and political division and strife are heightened, and there is still no clarity about the path forward. 

Most recently, for many of us both here and in Israel, the images of suffering in Gaza have felt unbearable as food insecurity appears to have reached a dire point.

Earlier this week, the American Jewish Committee articulated what many of us, regardless of our political perspective, are feeling: “(We stand) with Israel in its justified war to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas and secure the release of the remaining hostages. At the same time, we feel immense sorrow for the grave toll this war has taken on Palestinian civilians, and we are deeply concerned about worsening food insecurity in Gaza.”

This moment calls on us to hold tremendous complexity and a wide range of emotions.

As Dani Dayan, Chairman of Yad Vashem (Israel’s Holocaust Museum), put it in a recent Jerusalem Post op-ed: “Hamas bears full responsibility for turning Gaza into a battlefield and embedding itself among civilians . . . (but) Seeing the humanity of others, even in war, is not a sign of weakness but a testament to our strength.”

Holding emotional complexity is one of the most powerful things about Tisha B’Av and Jewish memory. They invite us to process the traumas of our history by recognizing that we can feel many different emotions and that multiple interpretations of history can be true, all at once. Remembering the “churban” (the destruction of the Temples and more) has at least three dimensions to it.

First, it is impossible to recall persecutions, expulsions, and pogroms, including the Holocaust and now, October 7, without recognizing the evil of those who hate us, seek to do us harm, and, tragically, at times succeed. We learn from our past that Jew hate is real; we underestimate the strength and determination of our enemies at our own peril.

As an American Jew, I feel the pain of waking up to the frightening realities of contemporary antisemitism. The exceptionalism of the American Jewish experience has not, as we might have thought, put an end to the precariousness of Jewish exile that we have experienced for thousands of years. It makes me sad and angry to see hatred and vilification of Jews and the Jewish State happening here.

Second, our tradition refuses to see us as victims or passive players in our own history. In the spirit of the prophets before them, the rabbis of the Talmud suggested that the First Temple was destroyed because of our moral depravity, and the Second Temple was destroyed because of our baseless hatred for one another. The response to suffering is not blame, but rather introspection, asking ourselves: What could we have done differently, what can we learn from this, and what might we do differently in the future? Accountability and agency help us heal and repair — ourselves and the world — and turn our trauma into moral and spiritual growth.

Lastly, Tisha B’Av invites us to grieve — in all its dimensions — as an essential part of moving forward through trauma and pain. Each of us experiences grief in different ways at different times. We grieve for our tragic past. We grieve for the illusion that the world was safer and more stable than it was. We grieve the horrors of October 7, for our loved ones, our family, some of whom we’ve lost and some of whose lives will never be the same. We grieve for the courageous soldiers of the IDF who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend the Jewish homeland. We grieve for the suffering of Palestinian civilians and for the inescapable reality that Israel and the Jewish People are bound up with that suffering, regardless of whom we hold responsible or how just we believe this war is.

For an opportunity to learn and reflect on some of these questions, I invite you to join me and IsraAID CEO Yotam Polizer in conversation this Thursday morning. We will discuss how to navigate the complexities of the situation in Gaza, including the challenges in providing food and other urgent assistance in an active war zone, how the situation is being framed in the media, and what a path forward might look like.

Holding all these emotions and the complexity — of history, society, politics, war — can feel confusing and overwhelming. Yet I have faith that our values are strong enough, our spirits resilient enough, and our hearts expansive enough to hold it all. We will find a way forward together.

May this Tisha B’Av bring healing and peace.