Tisha b'Av: The Bottom of the Calendar - with Rachel Goldberg-Polin

**Dan Senor** (0:02)
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**Rachel Goldberg-Polin** (0:50)
You are listening to an Ark Media podcast.
Back in the early aughts, when I was a younger teacher, and there was this real challenge of, how do you create a feeling in people who maybe don't know about this date, don't care about this date, don't have an emotional bond in any such way to this date? How do you make it feel impactful in any way? And so I would say to my class, who can share where they were on September 11th, 2001? And every hand would go up in the air, even the people who never participated. And that's when the somberness of how a date can define time became very real. And of course now tragically, I don't have this challenge at all right now. I can say six words to you.
Where were you on October 7th? That's it. That is the defining Tisha b'Av moment in this generation.

**Dan Senor** (2:09)
It's 8 a.m. on Sunday, July 19th in New York City. It's 3 p.m. on Sunday, July 19th in Israel. Before we get to today's episode, an update on the war with Iran. The American death toll in the Iran War has now reached 16
Two soldiers were killed Friday when Iran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at a base in Jordan. US and Jordanian defenses knocked down most of them, but at least one got through.
A third service member is still unaccounted for. These are the first Americans killed by enemy fire since the ceasefire was announced last month and they are the first US casualties in the conflict since April. Manned and unmanned aircraft on the ground were also hit. Overnight US. Central Command said it had responded. The State Department issued a rare global travel advisory warning Americans abroad of the potential for unforeseen escalation and the US. Defense Secretary's message after the Jordan attack was that it only stiffens our resolve. That's where things stand this morning. In the days ahead, across Ark Media's podcasts, we will be following these new developments and for daily updates, be sure to subscribe to Ark News Daily. Now to today's episode. This Wednesday evening, July 22nd, Tisha b'Av begins. Tisha b'Av is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. It marks the destruction of both the first and the second temples in Jerusalem. The first temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, and the second temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. And our tradition commemorates nearly every major catastrophe that has befallen the Jewish people on to this single date. Expulsions from England and Spain, massacres during the Crusades, and later reflections on the Holocaust, just to give a few examples. Not every event literally occurred on Tisha b'Av, but the day became the symbolic focal point for Jewish historical suffering. Tisha b'Av is not simply a remembrance of ancient history, it is Judaism's annual meditation on how a people responds to catastrophe. Along with Yom Kippur, it is one of two major fast days on the Hebrew calendar, meaning they're one of two days in which we are supposed to not eat for 25 hours straight. But while Yom Kippur is a day of repentance, Tisha b'Av is a day of collective mourning. There are no songs, no festival meals, no costumes, no celebrations, no exchanging of gifts. It's the most solemn day on the Hebrew calendar, the floor of the Jewish year.
In this episode, Rachel Goldberg-Polin joins me from Jerusalem to take us inside this day. Rachel, who's the author of When We See You Again, is a Jewish educator. And she became a teacher on this show on Call Me Back, helping us learn the Jewish holidays. Not as they appear on the surface, but how they actually work. Every other time we have done this together, these study sessions together for the Call Me Back community, Rachel has taken a holiday we think we understand and turn it inside out. But each of those days had something lighter to open with, some familiar surface before and beneath the depth. Tisha b'Av has none of that, or so we think. So today I'm asking her to take us down into it and then show us how the tradition built the way out of the grief. We'll be right back.