Undoubtedly correct. Wonder when the caption was added. My Great Uncle worked there in the 1930's....
Anyway, today is Tisha b'Av, the day that we commemorate the destruction of the two Holy Temples, the day that God told us would be a day for crying for generations (in response to the spies lying about the land of Israel - see Numbers 13-14), and the day that many other disasters and tragedies in Jewish history have taken place.
This year, Tisha b'Av was pushed off to the 10th day of Av, and it coincides with the day that the Jews of Gush Katif in Gaza were expelled from their homes eleven years ago.
I hope you will all forgive me if I share a video with you that has nothing to do with Israel or politics.
As many of you know already, Sunday is Tisha b'Av, the day we mark the destruction of the two Temples. The Talmud says that the Second Temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred. That's what this video is about.
Let's go to the videotape.
I hope that all of us can let go of some of the resentments in our lives and bring the Messiah closer.
Breaking: Messiah's times: Police stop Arabs from attacking Jews on Temple Mount
When we were walking toward the Western Wall today, my sons and I passed a group that was being briefed for entry to the Temple Mount. They were being told: "The Arabs know only one word in English: 'Out.' And that's what they will keep yelling at you."
A short while ago, police entered the 'holy' al-Aqsa mosque after receiving a tip that Muslim 'youth' lay in wait for Jews to ascend the Mount. They planned to attack them with rocks and firebombs.
Israeli police entered
a holy Jerusalem site on Sunday to prevent Arab youths from attacking
visiting Jews marking a biblical holiday, a police spokesman said.
Micky
Rosenfeld said police received prior warnings that masked Arab youths
were barricading themselves inside the al-Aqsa Mosque armed with rocks
and fire bombs. He said the youths planned to attack Jews visiting the
area Sunday for Tisha B'Av - the Jewish holiday marking the destruction
of ancient Hebrew temples.
Rosenfeld said some officers were wounded as they pushed the youths back, without providing further details.
If the mosques are so 'holy,' why is their use as offensive military sites permitted?
By the way, I called this 'Messiah's times,' because normally the Israeli police do nothing to stop the Muslims from attacking non-Muslim visitors to the Mount.
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone. For those who do not know, today is Tisha b'Av, a day that commemorates the destruction of the two Jewish Temples in Jerusalem 1,940 and 2,601 years ago. For a list of the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people on this day, go here.
I just returned from afternoon prayers at the Kotel (Western Wall - the sole remnant of the Temple that is standing) myself.
Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khameni is celebrating in his own way:
US president has said he could knock out Iran’s military. We welcome no war, nor do we initiate any war, but.. pic.twitter.com/D4Co7fVuVg
I think that the picture above probably best illustrates how many fewer people were at the Kotel this year for Tisha b'Av - both last night and today - than is normally the case. People were afraid to go due to the two terror attacks in Jerusalem on Monday.
Let's go to the videotape.
I go to the Kotel at mid-day on Tisha b'Av for the afternoon prayers. I find it too social for Tisha b'Av at other times.
I just came back from the place you see in the picture below, and it was much less crowded than in past years. In fact, the crowds this year were so small that the buses actually came in the Dung Gate and parked right outside the parking lot. I cannot remember the last time that happened on Tisha b'Av - usually you have to walk outside the walls of the Old City.
Lots of people dump irrelevant links to their own blogs into my comments (which is one of the reasons I moderate comments), but today I got one that was really good and I urge you all to read it. It's called Math v. Anti-Semitic Propaganda and you can find it here.
Monday night and Tuesday are Tisha b'Av, the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar.
Five tragedies befell the Jewish people on Tisha b'Av
in ancient times, the two most important of which were the destruction
of the two Holy Temples:
- It was decreed that the generation which left Egypt
would remain in the desert for 40 years and not enter the land of
Israel, after believing the inaccurate report of 10 of the 12 spies in
the year 2449 (the current Jewish year is 5774).
- The first Bet Hamikdash (Holy Temple) was destroyed on 9 B'Av in the year 3339.
- The second Bet Hamikdash (Holy Temple) was destroyed on 9 B'Av about 1944 years ago.
- The city of Betar was captured and tens of thousands of Jews were killed in the year 3893.
- The wicked Turnus Rufus plowed the site of the Bet
Hamikdash and its surroundings and renamed it Aelia Capitolina, also in
the year 3893.
Since these tragedies occurred on 9 B'Av, it was decreed as a day of fasting and mourning.
Other tragedies that happened on 9 b'Av include:
- 4,000 Jews were expelled from England by King Edward I in the year 5050 (18 July 1290)
- 300,000 Jews were expelled from Spain by Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon in the year 5252 (2 August 1492)
- Word War 1 started in 5674 - 1 August 1914 - with Germany declaring war on Russia
- The Jews of Gaza were to have been expelled from
their homes on Tisha b'Av nine years ago, but the Israeli government
postponed the expulsion for a day in an effort to avoid making this
list.
You can find out more about Tisha b'Av, including online audio and visual programs and a live webcast, for which you can register here.
Posting tonight and on Tuesday (especially early in the day) may
be a little lighter than usual. I don't fast well, and must sleep
tonight or I will get caffeine addiction headaches.
For those of you who are fasting, have an easy and
meaningful fast, and may this day be a holiday next year instead of a
day of mourning.
Twelve and a half years ago, Mrs. Carl and I and the then-baby took a week-long trip to Spain using frequent flier mileage and compensation from Iberia for sending my luggage to Cuba a couple of years before (really!). For the Sabbath we were in Madrid and stayed in a hotel called the Trafalgar, because it was the only hotel that was in walking distance to the Chabad emissary, who was the only Kosher place to eat on the Sabbath.
The emissary had 20-30 people at his table, some of whom were Brits, and I can recall that when I mentioned the name of the hotel where we were staying, one of the Brits remarked that it was odd that the Spaniards chose to remember their defeats. Well, it's not so odd. We Jews do the same thing. It's called Tisha b'Av.
On that date the following awful events occurred:
586 BCE – The First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians
70 AD – The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans and the Jews
fled into the Diaspora – mostly areas surrounding the Mediterranean
including Spain.
133 CE – Simon bar Kochba Revolt with remaining Jews warring against the Romans brutally butchered in the final battle at Betar.
1290 – July 18 King Edward I expelled the Jews of England
1492 – August 2 – Expulsion of Jews from Spain as a result of the
Inquisition. Among them a likely Jew, Christopher Columbus, who, with
his Jewish navigators, took his 3 ships to look for riches in the New
World.
1941 – August 2 – The German Nazi SS murdered 600 Jews in Targivica,
Ukraine with the Ukrainians participating joyously as “Willing
Executioners.” (Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhaggen 1996 No. 1 bestseller)
So why do we remember our tragedies? Watch the video here to find out.
I will be offline for parts of today and tomorrow, because synagogue services are longer, because I need to contemplate the destruction, and because blogging while sitting on the floor is not easy. When I return from the afternoon prayers at the Kotel tomorrow, I will blog more regularly.
A reminder that the Kotel (Western Wall) is the outside wall of the Temple Mount on which the Temple actually stood, and visiting it on Tisha b'Av can be particularly moving.
May we be privileged to see the Third Temple on the Temple Mount, speedily and in our time.
Some of you might recall that on Tisha b'Av, when I happened to be in the right place at the right time to see Mitt Romney at the Kotel (Western Wall), I ran into a California State Assembly candidate from Orange County named Travis Allen.
This evening, I received an email from reader Morry W, who forwarded this link to me from the blogs of the Orange County Weekly. The blog is one of the bluest pieces I have ever seen in a mainstream publication (40 years ago, it would have been laced with the term 'expletive deleted' several times), and goes after Allen for being a friend of Israel.
Allen is expected to lose, so he's hitching his campaign on an issue that most voters in the 72nd couldn't give a shit about: Israel, and its insatiable thirst to boot Palestinians out of the West Bank.
On his issues page, Allen goes from pertinent issues (education, taxes, budget) to the non-sequitor that is Israel. "As part of his service," reads his website, "Travis Allen is currently running for the California Legislature to begin a career of public service which will enable him to directly impact US policy toward Israel as our most cherished ally in the Middle East, and a bastion of Democracy and Security in an increasingly hostile environment."
Because that'll improve the atrocious asphalt streets in Westminster how?
But Allen is no mere chicken hawk; he's a war eagle for the idea that Israel should occupy as much land as they damn well please. He wants a "unified Israel that includes Judea and Samaria, the heartland of the Jewish people, and the recognition of Jerusalem as the undivided and eternal capital."
Judea and Samaria, of course, is the far-right term for what the rest of the world calls the West Bank, almost universally recognized as (at worst) occupied territory taken away from and (at best) the land for a future Palestinian state.
I'm going to post below the video highlights of Allen's trip to Israel, because they show just how strong a friend of Israel Travis Allen is. I don't know how many of my readers vote in the 72nd Assembly district in California, but if you do, I would urge you to vote for Travis Allen.
The bodies of Jews who were massacred by the Romans during the destruction of the Second Temple some 1940 years ago may have been found on the Temple Mount.
According to daily newspaper Israel HaYom, [archaeological journalist Benny] Liss screened a video clearly showing thousands of human skeletons in what appears to be a mass grave.
Liss "told the amazed audience that the film had been shot in a spacious, underground cavern in the area of the Mercy Gate [Sha'ar Harachamim in Hebrew, a sealed gate in the wall of the Old City, opposite the Mount of Olives, ed.], near the eastern wall of the Temple Mount, but just outside it," the newspaper reported. Liss raised the possibility that the skeletons were the remains of 6,000 Jews, mostly women and children, killed on the Temple Mount when the Romans destroyed the Second Temple.
The massacre is described in the writings of Josephus Flavius, who defected from the Jewish to the Roman side and witnessed the destruction.
The movie shows Liss entering the cave, followed by a lighting technician and cameraman. The three first pass through a narrow passage and then enter the cave with the skeletal remains. As soon as Liss left the cave, Antiquities Authority (IAA) staff resealed the entrance to it, he said.
"The Romans stayed on the Temple Mount for a month after the destruction of the Temple until going on to conquer the upper city [today's Jewish Quarter],” says Liss. “They had to get rid of the thousands of decomposing bodies and the most obvious place to do this would have been the natural caves on the upper slope of the mount, around Mercy Gate."
Hmmm. By the way, because the IAA resealed the cave entrance, the official line is that 'no one can determine' whether the bodies are Jewish or Muslim.
Mitt Romney's visit to the Western Wall on Tisha b'Av has raised some interest in the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. CNN interviewed Rabbi Yossi Lew on Sunday and asked him about the Western Wall and Tisha b'Av.
Hamas and friends issue responses to Temple Institute video
On Thursday, I reported on a video issued by the Temple Institute for Tisha b'Av. Over the weekend, two responses were issued, one by Hamas, and one by an individual named M. Saber Alian. Here's Hamas' version.
Music warning for those for whom it is still Tisha b'Av.
Obviously, the one on the Left is the Temple Institute video, while the one on the right is in the shape of the state of Israel – which they claim is "Palestine."
Here's the second one. Let's go to the videotape.
Once again, a music warning for those for whom it is still Tisha b'Av.
Rabbi Chaim Richmanת International Director of the Temple Institute, told Arutz Sheva Sunday: "The irony is that this video, aimed at the Jewish world, has succeeded in moving many people towards a deeper feeling about this period of mourning, and the Temple. This whole thing that has angered the Arab world and plunged us into international intrigue, is simply a red herring...
"The irony is that Hashem has used the international media, focusing on Morsi's imagined insult, to bring the idea of the Holy Temple to the attention of people the world over. So actually there is no coincidence even though we didn't plan for the paper to fall on any particular page...that is just what happened to be in the news that day -- but min hashaymaim [from the Heavens, ed.] the video got much more exposure, and thus the idea of the Temple got more exposure."
Indeed it did. The Temple Institute video has more than 300,000 views - more than the other two combined.
The Temple Mount was closed to Jews on Tisha b'Av out of fear of 'provocations.'
Nearly 100 right-wing activists arrived at the entrance to the Temple Mount on Sunday morning only to be informed that the site was closed to Jewish visitors.
The activists held a reading of Eicha (Lamentations) the traditional text of Tisha Be’av, which commemorates the destruction of the Temple, outside the entrance to the Temple Mount.
“There were indications from Muslims and from Jewish worshippers that there would be a possibility of incidents taking place on Temple Mount, so after security assessment made early hours of this morning the decision was made by Jerusalem district police in order to prevent any incidents,” said National Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
“The time has come for the racist policies of the police to end,” said MK Michael Ben Ari (National Union). He accused Public Securities Minister Yitzhak Aharanovitch of “implementing apartheid policies” by not allowing Jews on the site.
“The fact that this happened on Tisha Be’av shows how much Temple Mount is not in our hands,” said Likud activist Moshe Feiglin, who compared the decision to a “modern destruction” of the Temple.
Feiglin said former Jerusalem Police chief Nisso Shaham had promised the Temple Mount would be open to Jews on Sunday. On Thursday, Shaham was forced to take a leave of absence following an investigation into charges of sexual harassment and improper sexual relations with a policewoman.
Come on guys - no one really believed it was going to be open to Jews, did we? We should be used to this already.
We went to afternoon prayers at the Kotel (Western Wall) as we do every year at mid-day on the Tisha b'Av fast, and as we were praying a corner of the plaza was being cordoned off. Yes, you guessed it - we saw Mitt Romney. Unfortunately, I'm not able to download the pictures from my phone yet, but I will. Eventually. (I have a great one of him putting a note in the Wall - he reached way up!). In the meantime, there's one at the top of this post from AP's Charles Dharpark.
I was also interviewed by one American television network, one major US newspaper, and one prominent online political magazine. If you find links you can let me know. By email.
There were a lot of people who hung around to see Governor Romney and a lot more who joined them. Some of them were just curiosity seekers, but many of them seemed to know who he was, even if they didn't speak a word of English.
And I met a lovely gentleman named Travis Allen, who is traveling with Governor Romney, and who is a candidate for the California State Assembly in the 72nd district (Huntington Beach).
Oh yes, and Romney shook my 10-year old son's hand (that would be son # 4, child # 7).
He's quite a world traveler. But not to Israel. An oversight? Or an indication? According to a front-page story in the Washington Post two weeks ago, Obama has pursued a strategy of putting "daylight" between the U.S. and Israel. He's traveled to the Middle East multiple times -- to accept an award in Saudi Arabia, to give a major speech in Cairo, to hold town hall meetings in Turkey -- but never stopped to visit our closest ally in the region.
Today ECI released a 30-second TV ad called "Postcards" that highlights Obama's "daylight" strategy. In a significant buy, it will appear today and Monday on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News in Washington and New York, and through next week on broadcast and cable in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
Let's go to the videotape.
I really like this, and hope they will keep pounding on that theme.
Saturday night and Sunday are Tisha b'Av. Posting will be very light until mid-afternoon on Sunday.
Shabbat Shalom and an easy fast to those of you who God forbid have to fast (if the Messiah comes before then, it becomes a day of rejoicing and then we won't have to fast).
The video, which the Temple Institute says is designed to “change the way people think about the Temple and the commandment to rebuild it,” has garnered almost 200,000 hits in five days. It depicts two children building a sand-castle model of the Temple on a beach, and fleetingly features a copy of The Jerusalem Post open to an article about new Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi.
...
According to the Temple Institute, Egyptian activists flooded the YouTube page of the video with anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slogans – which were subsequently removed – protesting what they interpreted as a subversive suggestion that Mursi would not hinder the rebuilding of the Temple on the Temple Mount, where the Dome of the Rock shrine and Al-Aksa Mosque stand.
Several Egyptian and Palestinian news websites also picked up on the video.
Let's go to the videotape. Music warning for those who don't listen to music during the nine days (again, music not the key here) and yes, I showed this video earlier in the week.
More below the fold.
According to its website, the Temple Institute’s “long-term goal is to do all in our limited power to bring about the building of the Holy Temple in our time,” while in the short term seeking to “rekindle the flame of the Holy Temple in the hearts of mankind through education.”
The organization has reproduced the Temple vessels in strict accordance with Jewish law, including a golden Menora costing $2 million, and also strongly advocates Jewish prayer rights on the Temple Mount.
In response to the backlash over the video, it said that the paper having fallen open to a page featuring Mursi was entirely coincidental, and that the film was meant as “an educational tool for Jews during the nine days [of mourning from the first to the ninth of Av], to enrich their understanding of the Holy Temple as a house of peace and prayer which is truly missed.”
According to the institute, people have become “entrenched in mourning for the sake of mourning, instead of contemplating the true meaning of the Tisha Be’av: the loss of the Beit Hamikdash [Temple], a universal house of prayer and peace for all nations.” The video seeks to redress this, it said.
The Egyptians can seethe all they want, but when God decides it's time, it's time, and not a moment will be wasted.
The ruling party has been boycotting Israel for the past few years and excluded Syria from the guest list this year due to tension between Damascus and Ankara over the uprising in the country and Syria’s recent downing of a Turkish plane.
All country's ambassadors except Israel and Syria were invited to the fast-breaking dinner at which Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is expected to give a speech.
The dinner will be held at the AKP's headquarters in Ankara and famous musicians will take the stage, the reports said.
I'm sure the Israeli ambassador will be happy to have the night off. At least it won't matter if they make it this Saturday night.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
