Did you know that it is the year 5771? In fact, in September it’ll be 5772. It is in the Jewish calendar anyway. I never thought I would live to see the day. Shows how much I know. As Einstein showed, time is relative. This is something we can also see in different rhythmic structures in music (for example 3/4 time and 4/4 time) and in various other calendars which keep time – the Gregorian calendar (which we use), the Jewish calendar, and the Chinese calendar, to name a few. I guess the moral of this relativity might be that we should have the wisdom of humility and admit we do not know everything so that we may further our learning and see how we can benefit from understanding other rhythms and even applying them in our own lives.
The 9th of Av happens to be on the 9th of August this year, which happens to sound strikingly similar. However, the Jewish calendar is based on floating dates based on a lunar calendar where each day begins at sundown (so Monday begins at sundown on Sunday, etc), until you get to the 7th day, the Sabbath, known as Yom Shabbat, in Hebrew (Day of Rest). The 9th of Av is called Tisha B’Av in Hebrew (or der neunte Aw in German) – or even #TishaBAv among the Twitterati.
The Star of David in Birmingham
Important Events on the Ninth of Av
The 9th of Av is an important date in history for Jewish-German studies as so many terrible things happened on the 9th of Av such as the Destruction of the 1st temple, Destruction of the 2nd temple, the declaration of the First Crusade against the Jews in 1095, expulsion of all Jews from England (18th of July, 1290), the expulsion of all Jews from Spain (2nd of August, 1492, the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue), the declaration of World War I on the ninth of Av, the 1st of August, 1914, just to name a few.
On the 10th of July 1492, Germans began systematically deporting and exterminating the Jewish people (on the 9th of Av). This was their plan for the Final Solution to the Jewish Question [die Judenfrage].
As I learned at the Beth Hallel service on the 9th of Av, 2011, the odds of having so many significant events occur to one ethnic group like this is mindgooglingly astronomical – about 1 chance in 15,318,685,820,000,000,000,000,000,000.
A common belief is that around the 9th of Av, 40 days of spiritual testing may occur. Jesus and Moses (Yeshua and Moshe) were both tested for 40 days and 40 nights. Check out more about the significance of the number 40 in the Bible.
For more info about the 9th of Av, see:
TheFoundationStone.org – the 9th of Av
Intimacy in Flames – TheYeshiva.net
