Reflecting on "Tisha B'Av," What Makes Me Sad...

Photographed by me 9/2014 when on
Har Habayit, the Temple Mount. These are not from the
destroyed Holy Temples. This is how the Muslims treat
our holiest site. (Photo by Batya Medad)

It's now Tisha B'Av, the 9th of the Jewish month of Av, but to be a stickler, I must say that it's really the 10. The 9th was Shabbat, and the Fast of Tisha B'Av has been postponed to the 10th. Today is considered the saddest day in the Jewish Calendar, a twenty-five 25 hour complete fast, no bathing, no clean clothes, no comfort.

Today at a Tisha B'Av class discussion in my Shiloh neighborhood, we were asked what makes us sad on this day. What do we mourn? I don't think that my answer was the one the teacher was expecting or hoping for. I'll tell you here what I mourn:

(Photo by Batya Medad)

(Photo by Batya Medad)

At this point, I don't really mourn the two destroyed Holy Temples. I mourn, or best described as in pain about something else. It pains me that after almost seventy 70 years of an Independent State of Israel, a half a century since the miraculous Six Days War in which with the Help of Gd the IDF liberated Har Habayit, the Temple Mount, we haven't yet built the Third Temple. And even worse,  we have ceded all sovereignty of the Temple Mount to the Wakf.

(Photo by Batya Medad)

In addition, entrance to Jews is very restricted, and it's davka our army and police that make sure that we are inspected in ways that non-Jews aren't. Even worse, Jews are forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount. Where is the basic civil right of "freedom of religion?"

Jews on the Temple Mount are restricted to small groups and escorted, like the KGB at the time of the USSR and North Korea today, by our soldiers, not to protect us, but to prevent Jewish Prayers!

(Photo by Batya Medad)

In June 1967, when the three Arab armies, Egypt, Syria and Jordan surrendered to the IDF after their unsuccessful war to destroy the State of Israel, we should have immediately declared full sovereignty over the Temple Mount and begun serious plans to build the Third Temple. It's very possible that if we had started the process of learning and planning, then the Holy Temple would have miraculously materialized.

Many Jews insist that Gd will create the Holy Temple, and it will suddenly appear, but I think that they are mistaken. The Temple will not just suddenly appear. Just like Nachshon had to step in the Red Sea for Gd to miraculously open and make a safe dry path for the Jewish People to cross when leaving Egypt, we must make the first daring step and begin to clear away the Muslim presence and begin to build a Third Temple. And only then will the Holy Temple miraculously appear. Gd willing may it be soon, speedily in our day...