Around July or August every year, depending on the Jewish Calendar, is a sad holiday called Tisha B’Av. This is a one-day holiday where people fast to remember when the first and second Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed. This holiday takes place on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av and is a national Jewish day of mourning.
In the afternoon the day before the fast it is customary to eat a hard-boiled egg sprinkled with ashes as a symbol of mourning.
Leather shoes are traditionally not worn on this day and in synagogues people sit on the floor or on low benches. The curtain covering the Ark is removed.
In the evening, we read the book of Eichah (Lamentations) which mourns over the destruction of the first Temple. In the evening and morning, we say kilnos prayers of mourning. In many synagogues, a special kinah is said in memory of the six million Jews murdered during the Nazi Holocaust.
Tisha B’Av and Yom Kippur are the only Jewish fast days that begin at sunset and end the following night. This year, it falls on the evening of Saturday, July 28th.
