Posted on 07/23/2007 4:38:04 PM PDT by Alouette
(IsraelNN.com) Hundreds of thousands of Jews flooded the Kotel (Western Wall) Plaza on Monday night to say traditional Tisha B'Av lamentations for the loss of the First and Second Jerusalem Temples. Thousands encircled the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, as well, to mark the day of mourning.
Police prevented a group of Jews led by right-wing activists Noam Federman and Itamar Ben Gvir from praying at a gate leading up to the Temple Mount. Noam Federman was arrested.
Tisha B'Av, the ninth day of Av in the Hebrew calendar, is a sundown-to-sundown day of fasting and mourning marking the destruction of the First and Second Jewish Temples in Jerusalem, the subsequent exile from the Land of Israel, as well as other historical calamities that befell the Jewish People on the same date.
Traditional rabbinical literature links the ninth of Av date with the day that the spies in the Biblical account brought back their negative report of the Land of Israel, which the children of Israel believed and over which they wept.
Jewish tradition treats Tisha B'Av as one of the most severe of fast days, in that it lasts more than 24 hours and entails stringencies of behavior akin to those observed by mourners. In fact, the rabbis enacted a prohibition of the study of Torah on Tisha B'Av, as such learning is considered too joyful an activity for this day of distress over the destruction of the Temple and the loss of Jewish sovereignty.
Among the special prayers of the day are the reading of the scroll of Eicha (Lamentations) and a recitation of dirges memorializing the Jewish victims of Roman, Babylonian and other persecutions through the ages. Since World War II, many communities include additional dirges composed in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
The ninth of Av this year marks 1,939 years since the Roman conquest and destruction of the Second Temple. The Temple was the symbol of continuing Jewish national life in the Land of Israel and its destruction marked the end of a Jewish revolt against foreign, in this case, Roman, domination.
Following their hard-won victory over the Jewish rebels, the Romans renamed Jerusalem "Aelia Capitolina," and the Land of Israel, then known as Judea, they renamed "Paelestina," in an effort to erase the Jewish connection with the area. It is from this imperial effort at revisionist history that the term "Palestine" for the region roughly between Iraq and the Mediterranean Sea is derived.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
crowded but quiet at the Wall, even at 2:41 am local time
http://www.aish.com/wallcam/
I was just about to post a link to the Kotel cam. Thanks!
I always check it when something important or interesting is happening there.
May this day's fasting be turned to joy in our day!
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