Dear Friend,
I don’t like the Three Weeks. I don’t like the Nine Days, which start this Friday. And most of all, I don’t like Tisha B’Av. It’s the lousiest holiday on the Jewish calendar.
Tisha B’Av is a fast day. It commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem and our entry into exile. Exile of the body, exile of the soul. Mainly of the soul.
At first, I found Tisha B’Av an enchanting, living theater of the absurd. People sitting on overturned chairs. The curtain removed from the ark. Lights half off, half on. Everything deliberately put out of order, just to remember that this is not how things are supposed to be.
But by now I’ve had enough. I don’t need a day designed to make me depressed. I don’t need a day to remind me that things are not the way they are supposed to be. I need a day in which to make things the way they should be. A day not for mourning, but for fixing. A day to take this day away.
Well, maybe that’s what Tisha B’Av is meant to be. It’s meant to motivate us to fix up the situation and get out of this rut. After all, we were the ones who made the mess; we should be able to get out of it.
All the same, I’ve had enough fasting and mourning, exile and darkness. I’ve had enough of a world that is not the way it is supposed to be.
I don’t like Tisha B’Av. Dear G‑d, this year, please take it away.
Tzvi Freeman,
on behalf of the Chabad.org Editorial Team
