Will We EVER LEARN FROM Tisha B'av ?

Tisha B'Av always reminds me of my Mom. When I was a kid I would cry at the drop of the hat, my mom would tell me that if I continued to cry she would give me something real to cry about. Many of my friends claim that it was their parents that invented that saying but in actuality it was God who invented it and he was talking about Tisha B'Av.

When Moses sent twelve spies into Canaan, ten of them came back with a report that the land was unconquerable. The fledgling Israeli nation could never defeat those Canaanite Giants. There were cries throughout the Children of Israel asking Moses to take them back to Egypt.

They forgot all about God, and his promise to help us conquer the land. That was the first Tisha B'Av. God's response was not only the generation that knew slavery would die out in the desert, but that Tisha B'Av will be a horrible day for the Jews, in other words God would give us something real to cry about.

From that day on horrible things have happened to the Jewish people on Tisha B'Av. Some of them include:

• The First was destroyed

• The Second Temple was destroyed

• Bar Kokhba's revolt against Rome failed

• In 1290 King Edward I expelled the Jews from England

• In 1492 the deadline for Jews to leave Spain, Convert or Die

• The beginning of WWI –which lead directly to the rise of Hitler

• 1941 Hermann Göring ordered SS general Reinhard Heydrich to make all the necessary preparations for the Final Solution.

• The first transports reached Treblinka and the extermination of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto began on July 23, 1942.

• In 1955 El Al Flight 402 was shot down over Bulgarian airspace on the 8th of Av.

• The AMIA Bombing (Asociación Mutua Israelita Argentina) by terrorists in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 86 and wounded more than 120, was on July 18, 1994, the 10th of Av.

• The Disengagement from Gaza began on the 10th of Av

• Barack Obama Gave the Keynote speech at the Demoratic Convention and was crowned the heir apparent of the Democratic Party. If Elected, he might prove to be the most anti-Israel President ever.
  

That first Tisha B'Av occurred because we didn't trust God and his promise to give us the land of Israel. In a way our collective ego's were too big, even if we felt that we were unworthy of God's reward, it was still an ego issue. We felt that we knew better than God. That he wouldn't keep his promise.

Thirty-five hundred years later we are still weighted down by our large egos. Israel's leaders are armed with Hubris and feel they can do no wrong. When criticized for the way the Lebanon war was waged they blame others, when they see that the "disengagement" from Gaza harmed more than it helped they show no remorse, they look for even more territory to give back. When faced with rocket attacks they worry about themselves. Even the Rabbi who runs the Shas party, sold out God's gift of Jerusalem for $135 Million in government grants.

Thirty-Five hundred years ago, Israel said they could not conquer the land and were punished. Today Olmert, Barak, Peres and Livni say they can't keep the land. They show no faith in God and God's promise. On this Tisha B'Av, I will pray that they wake will up before it is too late.