{Originally posted to the author’s blogsite, The Lid}
Saturday night July 17th begins Tisha B’ Av (literally the 9th of the Jewish month of Av). Since the time of Moses and the exodus-through modern times, horrible things have happened to the Jewish people on or around the 9th day of Av. Generally not recognized is the fact that the former President of the United States, Barack Obama has an eerie connection to this sad day (above and beyond the P5+1 deal).
Tisha B’ Av is one of only two full days (27 hours) fasts on the Jewish Calendar, the other being Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is considered a happy fast, the thought is that Jews are concentrating so hard on getting close to God that they couldn’t think of eating (trust me, even through we are concentrating hard by the afternoon we are thinking of eating). Tisha B’Av is a sad mournful fast. This is a day of great tragedy. While the day centers around the loss of the two Temples in Jerusalem, they are only two of the horrible things which have occurred on Judaism’s saddest day.
As 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. My Mom, however, wasn’t the first to use that phrase, it was God who invented it, and he invented it on Tisha B’Av.
When Moses sent twelve spies into Canaan, ten of them came back with a report that the land was unconquerable and the fledgling Israeli nation could never defeat those Canaanite giants. This report caused cries throughout the Israelite settlement, they begged Moses to take them back to Egypt.
It was just a short time after they witnessed all those miracles; the ten plagues that gave them freedom, the splitting of the Reed Sea, the revelation at Sinai when heard God’s voice and received the Ten Commandments, but those newly freed slaves lost their faith in God and his promise to help them conquer the land. They were afraid and wanted to go back into bondage.
God’s response was not only that the generation that knew slavery would die out in the desert, but also that Tisha B’Av will be a horrible day for the Jews until the coming of the Messiah. In other words, just like my mom, God would give the Jews something to cry about.
From that day forward, horrible things happened to the Jewish people on or around Tisha B’Av. Some of them include:
- The First Temple was destroyed
- The Second Temple was destroyed
- Bar Kokhba’s revolt against Rome failed
- Roman general Turnus Rufus ordered that the Temple area and its surroundings were to be plowed-under. Jerusalem was to be rebuilt as a pagan city – renamed Aelia Capitolina – and access was forbidden to Jews.
- The First Crusade officially commenced. The Crusaders killed 10,000 Jews in its first month and destroying Jewish communities in France and the Rhineland. A grand total of 1.2 million Jews were killed by this crusade
- The Jews were expelled from France 1306
- In 1492 it was 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, Tisha B’av
- 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.
- In 2004, Barack Obama Gave the Keynote speech at the Democratic Convention on Tisha B’av and was crowned the heir apparent of the Democratic Party. He was proven to be the most anti-Israel President in the history of modern Israel, and the most anti-Semitic President since FDR.
- The Disengagement from Gaza began on the 10th of Av in 2005, leading to years of rocket bombardment from Hamas into Israel and three wars.
- In 2009 President Obama sends Robert Gates to Israel in his first of many attempts dissuade the Jewish State from carrying out military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. Eight years ago in the Jewish calendar, the US preached patience while Iran inches closer to Atomic Weapons.
- 2013-John Kerry returns to the Middle East for another naive attempt to make peace.
- 2014-(8th of Av) The US State Department bashed Israel for defending herself against Hamas terrorists, basically saying that Israeli soldiers are not allowed to defend themselves when attacked by terrorists using human shields.
- 2015 The three week period between the 17th day of the Jewish Month of Tammuz (the day the Jerusalem City walls were first breached) and Tisha B’ Av is a period of mourning. Observant Jews will not take a haircut, shave or listen to music. No Jewish weddings or other major celebrations are allowed during the “three weeks” as the entire time is considered a mourning period. “The P5+1 deal was signed on the 27th day of the Hebrew Month of Tammuz (during the three weeks) and the falsehoods and sell job by the administration is continuing up to and past Tisha B’ Av.
Tisha B’Av became the saddest day in the Jewish calendar because we didn’t trust God and His promise to give us the land of Israel. In a way, our collective egos were too big. After witnessing all of those miracles, the nascent Jewish people felt they knew better than God and didn’t believe that he would keep his promise.
Thirty-five hundred years later we are still weighted down by our large egos. Many American Jewish leaders sought to gain favor from an anti-Israel President Obama who became famous on Tisha B’av. Jewish organizations, such as the ADL, The AJC, AJ Committee, the Reform and Conservative Jewish movements have put progressive politics in front of their Jewish missions–they’ve begun to worship the “Golden Calf of big government,” and to protect their positions in liberal politics they wavered in their objections to the horrible deal with Iraq.
Thirty-five hundred years ago, the Israelites said they could not conquer the land and were punished. Today many Jews still show no faith in God and God’s promise, even worse they support a Democratic Party movement who believes they have the Jewish votes in the bag no matter what they do to hurt the Jewish people. They fight against anyone who would practice a faith. These Democrats would have us worship Big Government instead of God (as does many of our supposed Jewish Leaders), and is pressed the Jews to abandon their maker and the land our maker promised to the Jewish People.