There is a strange kind of holiness in Jerusalem on Tisha B’Av. Not the holiness of joy, not the radiance of Yom Tov or the gentle stillness of Shabbat, but a heavier sanctity—dense with memory, with grief, with longing. A sanctity that does not float but settles, like ash. And yet, to sit in this city on the night of Tisha B’Av is to feel not only its pain but its permanence. To mourn what was lost while surrounded by what has, impossibly, returned.
This year, Tisha B’Av begins on Shabbat. The fast is postponed until Saturday night, forcing us into one of the most jarring transitions in the Jewish calendar: from the peace of Shabbat into the sorrow of national mourning. One moment we sing Shalom Aleichem and bless our children with light in their eyes, and the next, we dim those lights, take off our shoes, and sit on the ground to read Eicha—Lamentations.
And where will we do this? Not in exile, but on the tayelet—Jerusalem’s promenade overlooking the Old City, with its golden walls and ancient stones. We will read Eicha with a view of the very place the prophet Jeremiah wept over. We will mourn destruction in the shadow of rebuilt sovereignty. That, in itself, is awesome.
Not awesome in the diluted modern sense—“cool” or “impressive”—but in the biblical sense: terrible and majestic at once. To be in Jerusalem on Tisha B’Av is to live inside a paradox. We weep for what was lost while standing in the place we never stopped dreaming of. We recite ancient words of exile while hearing Hebrew echo from IDF patrols and children playing soccer behind us. We remember the Temple’s fire while watching the lights of modern Jerusalem flicker to life at night. It is dissonant. And it is holy.
Rav Soloveitchik once wrote that “the halakhic man does not weep for the past; he longs for the future.” But even so, on Tisha B’Av, we allow ourselves to step outside that frame—to become not halakhic builders alone, but mourners. And yet even in mourning, the Rav insisted, we do not surrender to despair. “The Jew does not shout against fate but accepts it, yet he dreams and hopes.” To sit in Jerusalem on Tisha B’Av is to live that dialectic—to cry and to build, to fast and to hope, to mourn and still believe.
There is a Gemara in Makkot (24b) that tells of Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues walking by the ruins of the Temple. The others weep. Akiva laughs. When asked why, he says: just as the prophecy of destruction has been fulfilled, so too will the prophecy of redemption. His laughter is not denial—it is defiance. It is a faith that binds memory and hope in unrelenting tension. It refuses to believe that history has the final word.
That is the spiritual posture of Tisha B’Av in Jerusalem. It is not a day of passive mourning, nor is it a celebration. It is a night in which we sit with destruction—not to wallow, but to witness. To remember it so deeply that we refuse to repeat it. To honor what was lost without letting go of what still might be. And we do this while surrounded by living proof that our story didn’t end.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, in Israel: An Echo of Eternity, wrote: “The land of Israel is a promise that never ends. It is a covenant inscribed in geography.” To weep for Jerusalem while standing within it is to feel that covenant pulse beneath your feet. It is to mourn not just as victims of history, but as participants in a redemptive drama that is still unfolding. We are not merely remembering what was destroyed—we are bearing witness to what refuses to be destroyed.
Our very presence here is a contradiction. We are the only people in history to return to our land after two thousand years. We speak the same language. We walk the same streets. We whisper the same prayers. And on Tisha B’Av, we cry the same tears.
But our tears now fall on Jewish soil.
To sit on the tayelet and weep for Jerusalem is to understand that we are no longer exiled in body, even if we are still, in some ways, exiled in spirit. We have sovereignty. We have a flag. We have power. The Temple is still in ruins. Unity is fragile. Redemption incomplete. And exile echoes not in our geography, but in our moral and spiritual fragmentation.
Yet there is a difference between exile and estrangement. Heschel taught that “to be in exile is to be where God is not.” But we are not there. Not fully. God still dwells in the cracks, in the longing, in the love that drives us to gather each year and weep beside the walls. We have not been abandoned—we are being summoned.
Tisha B’Av in Jerusalem is a calling to maturity. It is a reminder that being home doesn’t mean the story is over. It means the responsibility is now ours. Our ancestors wept because they were powerless. We weep because we are not. And that is its own kind of burden.
Yet it is also a gift. Because to grieve from within Jerusalem is to know that you are still in the story. To cry in Babylon is despair. To cry in Zion is longing. And longing is the soul’s deepest form of love.
So yes, this year the fast begins late. We will delay our mourning to honor Shabbat. We will eat, sing, rest, and bless. And then we will descend into grief. We will walk the path of our ancestors—not in exile, not in Rome, but in Jerusalem. We will cry for the destruction of a house not yet rebuilt. But we will do so knowing we are already home.
Because we know destruction. But we also know return.
We know exile. But we also know covenant.
We know how to mourn. But we have never forgotten how to hope.
And that, in the deepest sense, is the awe of being in Jerusalem on Tisha B’Av.