Tradition marks this time of year as the occasion for Jewish calamity, and a biblical perspective helps us understand why.The weeks preceding the saddest of Jewish holy days, Tisha b’Av, have seen remarkable displays of anti-Jewish sentiment, from the deadly to the merely despicable. As Israel was slammed with long-range missiles from Hezbollah, the world’s “civilized” nations (with a few exceptions, including the United States) condemned the Jewish state for striking back in self-defense. In Seattle, where I live, a depressed Muslim gunman opened fire on six women at the Jewish Federation office, killing one. Later the same weekend, Mel...