The 9 Days: Page 1

Shalom,
My name is Hillel Levin. I am a neighbor of Batya's here in Shiloh. Batya is taking her father, Sidney to to his new home in Arizona. If you would like to read about my parting with Sidney, check out Batya's other blog: ShilohMuse.

By way of introduction, I am a LISTER. What I mean is that I am a member of and post on over 200 Yahoo/Google Groups for Jewish Communities, Israel Action, Jewish and Zionist Groups on 6 continents.

I post for the various chessed (loving kindness) projects that I am involved in. I also receive digests from on average 100 groups per day. I admit that I do not succeed in reading them all, but I do read a broad cross-section.

Before we made Aliyah the fall of 2006, I focused in on my Tafkid, Mission in Life, that is to connect with my brothers and sisters worldwide.

I guess that one of the benefits of having the Hyper-Focus of Adult ADD is my ability to have so much stimuli coming at me all the time.

Anyway, to get to my post about The 9 Days:

This is the nine day period, from Rosh Chodesh Av until the 9th of Av. The first of the Jewish Lunar month of Av through the 9th day of Av. Today is Rosh Chodesh Av, it is in the middle of the period referred to as the 3 weeks. A period of remember-ation of the destruction of the walls of Jerusalem through the destruction of G-D's House (the Temple) on the Temple Mount.

Now G-D's House was destroyed twice. The first was the House that King Soloman Built, about 3000 years ago and it stood for about 1000 years and the second, which construction was started by Cyrus, Queen Esther's son and later re-fitted by King Herod, which was destroyed in the year 70 of the Common Era.

Two interesting things to note:

First, both of G-D's Houses were built ling before the prophet Muhammad was even a glimmer in his grandfathers' eyes. The 1st over 1600 years before, the 2nd over 600 years before. There has be at least a remnant of Jews living in the Holy Land of Israel for over 3000 years. So these facts fly in the face of any claim that Jews have stolen The Holy Land from arabs.

Second, both of G-D's Houses were destroyed on the same day of the calendar: 9 Av.

Let us look first at the reasons that are shared by the Sages of Israel that G-D's House was destroyed not once, but twice.

One learns that the House that King Soloman built was destroyed because the Nation of Israel turned away from the laws that G-D gave regarding proper behavior in the area dealing with physical relations, intimate relations.

The House that Cyrus and Herod built was destroyed because of baseless hatred among the Children of Israel.

Let us think about both of these reasons.

While I am not Paul Harvey, please look forward to Page 2.

Please leave your comments here, in addition, I would appreciate it if you would connect with me at: hillel.leib@gmail.com.