A Birthday for the Messiah

The Ninth of Av, the peak of destruction, is also the day of the birth of redemption – the day on which the Messiah was born. The burning of the Temple was the final event in the crumbling of the holy House and the crumbling of the nation. On the Ninth of Av came the end of wood and stone, whose fall and burning heralded, precisely, the redemption. But in truth the House had been destroyed months and years earlier – in the hearts, the minds, and the twisted tongues of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and its surroundings. Tongues of fire licked at the city long before the first torch was thrown; hatred and suffering had sealed its fate before the city's gates were shut with none coming or going. The day of Jerusalem's burning is the day on which the repair began. From the immense abyss into which we all fell, we began to rise, from then until now. This is a reality that continues to our own day, and we must be part of its building and its glory, and of preventing its destruction.