A little less than two weeks ago was Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av -- a fast day that commemorates the devastating destruction of both the first and the second Holy Temples in Jerusalem, nearly 2,000 and 2,500 years ago. For three weeks before that day Jewish tradition mandates that we minimize our expressions of joy and create an atmosphere conducive to the feeling of mourning. We don't schedule weddings, we don't go to concerts, we don't cut our hair or buy ourselves new clothing. As the day gets closer, the restrictions become more limiting—we don't go to the pool and we don't eat meat, so by the time Tisha B'Av approaches, we are truly sensing the loss. We start imagining being under siege as the soldiers surround Jerusalem's walls and we feel the solemnity of the day.

The last meal before the fast begins is a special one and we try to invest it with a strong sense of spirituality, trying to keep the table talk on a level that is worthy of ushering in the saddest day of the Jewish calendar. Once the meal is over we will not eat or drink for 25 hours. Children from the ages of 12 (13 for boys) partake fully in the fast. The younger ones fast part of the day beginning around the age of 9.

When we finish eating we say the Grace After Meals, clear the table, then sit down on the floor for "dessert." We take hard-boiled eggs—a traditional Jewish symbol of continuity and comfort in the midst of mourning, and we dip them into ashes before we eat them. The taste of ashes is the last taste in our mouths as we enter the fast. Later, in the synagogue, as we read the Book of Lamentations, the bitter taste helps add atmosphere to the words as we read of destruction, as we try to picture the beautiful Holy Temple being licked at with flames, the stench of smoke alive in our nostrils, knowing our holy place of worship is gone and we have to win favor in God's eyes once again. But are we ever out of His favor? And the grieving refrain of the post-biblical lamentations: "Oh, alas, what has befallen us...?"

This year I took my three-year-old son, Elitzur (the Hebrew name meaning my God is a rock) to the synagogue, with the hope that the past year’s weekly short "visits" to Sabbath services will have gotten him sufficiently trained to sit quietly for the evening’s hour-long service. And the setting truly subdues him. The congregation sits on the floor of the synagogue, the older people on low beach chairs or cushions as they prop themselves against a wall. The lighting is dim and candles are set haphazardly along the floor, casting a grave shadow over the faces of my neighbors, as we wait for the haunting, chanting melody of the Book of Lamentations to begin.

It is so hard to picture those days of glory. So hard to picture what it is we pray for and dream about...as we ache for that Third Temple to be built— the one we are promised will never be destroyed. How do we picture the loss when we never felt the glory? The Holy Temple in all its magnificence as all the people of Israel flocked to Jerusalem, to worship, to bask in God’s love, to prove their faith.

I remember...one year at summer camp when I was a child. The first couple of weeks in July we built a reconstruction of the Holy Temple. The descriptions, the measurements, the colors, are all listed in the Scriptures, and the camp really invested in supplying us with the finest materials, though everything was naturally scaled down to size and gold was obviously not gold. Every age group—every bunk - took part and had a job. The older kids built the structure itself, figuring out how bars slid into slots, how beams matched up together. It was massive. Other groups worked painstakingly with art counselors to shape the instruments of worship...the menorah, the altars, the ramps, even the ark. Then the younger children got to spray paint in glorious colors of gold and silver. Others found fabrics of the richest colors to drape as the curtain. It was a project of love.

By mid-July we were done and the next day we were to forego our morning service in our well-worn, always-damp wooden shack of a synagogue. We were going to pray outdoors in our own beloved Temple, spread gloriously and massively in the center of camp. We knew we had just created a model, a poor imitation, but we went to bed with a feeling of a festival about to happen. We woke up to the smell of smoke and grabbing robes and slippers, everyone raced outdoors and fell silent. Our Temple was on fire. Flames licked at the wood, the fabrics curling hotly, the blaze making its way over every article of holiness. We all stood there, shock, anger, pain on our faces. The camp administrator had tears streaming silently down her cheeks, knowing that she was the one who had set this fire that morning, knowing that she was teaching her campers a lesson in destruction they would never forget. It was the eve of the 9th day of Av.

It was also a lesson that one can fall from dizzying heights of holiness to the depths of pain and desolation. Without Divine Presence even a Holy Temple becomes degraded, reduced to an example of magnificent architecture. Brilliant gold, glistening silver, in service of God is beautiful. But when the people of Israel occupied themselves with bloodshed, immorality, idol worship... then, devoid of Godliness, the Temple became merely ostentatious and had to be destroyed.

The fast day is a time of tragedy and sadness... a day of eternal weeping, and we spend it in prayer, reading the elegiac poems of mourning...about Mount Zion laying desolate, Jeremiah's words chilling us, "Alas, she sits in solitude! The city that was great with people has become like a widow...Zion spreads out her hands; there was none to comfort her." But we find comfort in the promise of Zachariah’s words, "Old men and old women shall yet again dwell in the streets of Jerusalem...and the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets." And we raise our voices as we read the last words of the book of Lamentations, "Bring us back to you, God, and we shall return, renew our days as of old."

My 21- year-old daughter, Avigayil, was not home with us on the ninth day of Av. Not surprisingly she was in Jerusalem— she wanted to spend this day in the city of ancient glory, the city of destruction. She has a special relationship with Jerusalem. The busiest day of university—even during the pressured weeks of exams—she finds a small window of time and takes a bus to Jerusalem for a quick breather in the city she loves, and she comes home, rejuvenated. Sometimes on a Saturday night, after the Shabbat is over, she'll ask for the car and do a quick round trip-drive, the hour and a quarter to Jerusalem, park at the Western Wall, rest her hands on the cold comforting stones, recite a few chapters of Psalms, and get back in the car for the hour and a quarter ride home. The eve of the fast, she found a prayer service outside on the streets of Jerusalem, crouching on the smooth stoned pavement, listening to the chanting of the Book of Lamentations. Then she joined those who walked along the ramparts of the Old City, by the night-lights of Jerusalem of Gold, not minding that she was chancing premature thirst from exerting herself while fasting in the hot summer night.

I know that my two teenagers, Ahuva and Leora, will have equated the destruction of the Temple with the destruction of Gush Katif. Exactly a year ago they were in the synagogue of Neve Dekalim, waiting and wailing for the Redemption, singing prayers of yearning as they were among the last to be dragged from the synagogue. Should I stop them from making that comparison? Or should I allow it, thankful, at least, that it could be an impetus for feeling the pain of loss, of devastation that we are meant to feel on this day? Tragedy is tragedy. And I fear our local services will pale in comparison with the passion and strength of the services they were a part of and experienced last year in the once glorious/ now destroyed Gush Katif.

The people of Israel are no strangers to destruction. Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army are extinct and the Roman barbarians are no longer...yet we are still in exile and still await the redemption. We know we are undeserving of salvation so we take comfort in Jeremiah's words, a prophecy said on the threshold of Jerusalem's destruction. "Thus says God, I remember for your sake the devotion of your youth...when you went after Me in the wilderness, in an unsown land. Israel is holy to God." It is comforting to see that God keeps memories of His people's goodness and dedication even thousands of years later, in the midst of His children’s most grievous sins. Perhaps we are meant to learn the importance of a sound foundation in our youth. Israel, in its youth, created the basis of a lifetime of purity to be remembered and even rewarded by God after a fall. Oh if this could only be so and I could try to preserve my little ones with their unblemished innocence, with a blanket of their purity, to keep them protected during the trials of growing up, during times of inevitable stumbling.

The Scriptures tell us that those who grieve with Jerusalem will one day rejoice with her. May we merit seeing the building of the Holy Temple in our days.