Thoughts leftover from Sun Oct 3rd

Yesterday we had a rare reading from the book of Lamentations--a book of sorrow traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah. One of the things I attempted to stress was that it was Jeremiah's contention that even this great LAMENT needed to become integrated into the spiritual consciousness of the people. In order to accomplish this he wrote not only an 'account' of the devastation of his times, but wrote it as an acrostic poem -- both for ease of memorization, and to encourage continued liturgical use.

Given that, some may find it interesting that the entire book of Lamentations is recited one day a year by devout Jews -- their Day of Fasting -- the 'Tisha B' AV'....the 9th day of the Jewish month of Av. [note: this occurs either in late July or early August on the Gregorian calendar].

When the book of Lamentations is recited, it is done so with the idea of keeping in mind, primarily, the "FIVE CALAMITIES" that have historically occurred on this calendar date. In other words...history and tradition say that on the 9th of Av, these things happened:

1. The 12 spies returned from spying out the land of Canaan, but only two (Joshua & Caleb) gave a positive report concerning Israel's chances to subdue the land. Because of the majority-negative report, Israel wandered in the dessert for 40yrs.

2. The Babylonian army destroyed Solomon's temple

3. Hundreds of years later, but on the same date, the Roman army under Titus destroyed the temple of Jesus' day (commonly known as "Herod's Temple").

4. During the next Jewish-Roman conflict known as the Bar Kockba War, the Romans dealt a decisive & crushing blow to the revolt, killing 100,000 Jews at Betar in 132AD.

5. One year later in 133AD the Romans plowed over the site of the temple ruins in Jerusalem.


TM