Thousands of people descended on the Western Wall Plaza on Sunday to mark the
Tisha Be’av fast, pray and listen to the reading of the Bible’s Book of
Lamentations.
The 25-hour fast, the second most important in the Jewish
calendar, commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples in
Jerusalem, as well as several other tragedies that befell the Jewish people
during its history, and is seen as a day of national mourning and
soul-searching.
In comments made on Sunday, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar
highlighted the need for national unity and to overcome societal
differences.
“During these days in which we mourn for the destruction of
the Temple and Jerusalem, the exile of the Divine presence and the dispersal of
the Jewish people, and the loss felt in each generation in which the Temple is
not rebuilt, it is incumbent on us to think deeply about what we can contribute
and do to accelerate the building of the Temple,” Amar said.
“Our sages
taught us that both Torah study and acts of kindness will hasten this process.
When we say acts of kindness, we mean thinking about the other, for a person to
love his fellow man, kindness through love, because what brought about the
destruction was baseless hatred among the Jewish people.”
Amar called on
the public to “shake off” the inclination toward “baseless hatred” that has
beset the Jewish people during its history, to distance oneself from argument
and look for the good in each other.
“When we do so, we’ll see that the
majority is good, in the majority of times we agree with one another, not just
the majority but the overwhelming majority, and that the things that divide us
are small.”
In a similar vein, prominent national-religious leader Rabbi
Benny Lau spoke of the need for social responsibility to fulfill Torah-mandated
requirements for repairing society.
“[We need to show] responsibility for
elderly parents, for children who have become young couples who are working hard
to stand on their own two feet, and responsibility for our community that
includes new immigrants and longstanding citizens, conservatives and
innovators... responsibility for the huge gap between the religious and secular
that is causing alienation and detachment [from one another].”
Lau
emphasized that the Tisha Be’av fast of the present day “is not depressing,” and
that the prayers of the Jewish people today need to be different from previous
generations because “the city [Jerusalem] is not desolate, and is not in
mourning without its children.”
Separately, MK Arieh Eldad of the
National Union spoke on Saturday night during a tour around the walls of the Old
City of Jerusalem and said that the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount will be
dismantled when the Temple is rebuilt in the near future.
“When the time
comes to build the Temple, and it’s coming soon, we’ll saw up the building that
stands there at the moment, we’ll saw it up and they can take it wherever they
want to, because the Third Temple needs to stand in that place,” he
said.
MK Taleb al-Sanaa of the United Arab List-Ta’al called on the
attorney-general to initiate criminal proceedings against Eldad for “wild and
irresponsible incitement that may ignite a fire in the entire
region.”
Eldad said in response that he was referring to the Dome of the
Rock, “which is not a mosque and where no prayers are said.”