The Fast of the Ninth of Av

Tisha b'Av—the ninth of the Jewish month of Av—is the saddest day of the Jewish year. It is the day that Jewish tradition commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples—but that's not all that happened on it. As Rabbi Schacter explains in this lecture, the rabbis of the Talmud believed that bad things always happened on this day, so they subsumed a variety of Jewish tragedies into it. He also explores how Tisha b'Av developed its particular character, the theological meaning of a fast, and how the Holocaust fits into the day.