Episode 33: Thoughts for Tisha B’Av - We live in history

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

History

4.9 • 640 Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Our Patreon subscribers asked for a dvar Torah, a short homily, on the Jewish fast day of Tisha B'Av, which commemorates many of the great tragedies of Jewish history, including and especially the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem millennia ago.

Tisha B'Av, Haviv argues, is a window into the Sages' conception of history, their view of the brokenness of the world reflected in the tragedies of history, and the power of the study of history to mend that brokenness.

This episode is sponsored by Alex and Betty Verjovsky in honor of Sayeret Tzanchanim, the reconnaissance company of the Paratroopers Brigade, in memory if their fallen and wounded, and the soldiers who have been fighting since October 7 and have paid a heavy price for Israel's defense. The sponsors' close friend, the unit's top NCO, is finally retiring after 35 years of service.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠.

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected]⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody. This is a short little contemplative episode. It's Tishabbe Av, the ninth day of the month of Ava. A fast day, a day of morning on the Jewish calendar, a day that commemorates a great many tragedies that happened to the Jews, not because they all happened on this day, but because the sages of the Talmud, the rabbis told us to commemorate them on this day. They wanted, first of all, to make sure that we don't remember some tragedy or another on every day, right? This is a very ancient and old history in which Jews are often vulnerable, often a minority where they live,
0:37.9	and so there isn't a day of the year where something bad didn't happen,
0:40.6	but also they wanted to thread through a single day and a single moment
0:46.3	and a single act of commemoration that happens on the 9th of all the great tragedies,
0:53.6	because they wanted to use those tragedies.
0:55.9	The destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile, the destruction of the second
0:59.9	temple by the Romans, and the 2000-year exile since, the expulsion from Spain that reshaped
1:07.3	the Jewish world, a great many of the tragedies of Jewish history.
1:10.9	They wanted them to be part of a continuum, and they wanted us to think of them as part
1:15.1	of a continuum.
1:16.1	Obviously, every community has its own traditions, its on history, its own triumphs, and
1:20.4	its own tragedies.
1:21.4	But Jews as a whole have a thread of tragedy that all form a kind of single unified memory
1:29.3	that Jewish culture instills in us through this day
1:32.3	by bringing them all into a single day.
1:35.3	I want to just say one important thing about Tishabbe'av that I think is relevant to this podcast, to my work,
1:41.3	and to what I think Jewish history, the sages try and tell us
1:47.0	about history. This is going to be a podcast about how Tishababab, I think, is a window into
1:53.8	the rabbinic conception of history, of what it is, of how it operates. And I think that's
1:59.7	important now, because we are at a pivot of history.
2:03.6	We have lived through a very trying and complex time. There is a terrible, painful war underway.
2:11.6	There is a period now of tremendous opportunities and tremendous good and tremendous tragedies and tremendous pain and evil.
	...

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