- This event has passed.
Tisha B’Av begins at sundown
August 12
An important fast day commemorating the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and 70 CE. It is the culmination of the Three Weeks, an annual mourning period that falls in the summer. Jews mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple and their launch into a still-ongoing exile.
Tisha B’Av, or 9th of Av, is the date the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BC by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and the Second Temple by the Roman emperor Titus in 70 AD.
This is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, the date that many other tragedies befell the Jewish people, including the expulsion of Jews from England, France, and Spain over a period of roughly 200 years.
Your foes roared in the place where you met with us;
they set up their standards as signs.
They behaved like men wielding axes
to cut through a thicket of trees.
They smashed all the carved paneling
with their axes and hatchets.
They burned your sanctuary to the ground;
they defiled the dwelling place of your Name.
They said in their hearts, “We will crush them completely!”
They burned every place where God was worshiped in the land.
~Psalm 74:4-8
See https://www.chabad.org/ for more information.
