Yebaneh HaMikdash

On the eve of Tisha b'Av, the date marking the destruction of both of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, as well as a number of other tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people over the generations, Jews around the world prepare themselves for a night and day of fasting, and mourning. This year I am going into the fast with a greater degree of hope.

Last week a crowd of at least 10,000 Jews massed at the old gates of the Temple Mount to declare Jewish allegiance to the site, and to protest the discriminatory practices of the Israeli police, who prevent religious Jews from ascending Har HaBayit, and arrest those that attempt to pray there, while Muslims who pile stones there to throw at the Jews below walk unencumbered.

This trend is growing at other Jewish holy sites. The tombs of our fathers and mothers in Hevron, as well as Joseph and Joshua's tombs are receiving more and more visitors as Jews awaken to the reality that this is their land, it is their home, it is their blood being shed.

Meanwhile, that miserable genocidal scumbag, Mahmoud Abbas, the great arab "moderate" recently offered the Jews the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter to us in a "peace deal." Here's news for the lecherous, malodorous troll...you cannot give us what is already ours, and was given by HaKadosh Borachu. You Mr. Abbas are, as are the rest of your people, living on borrowed time on land you don't belong in.

We recently read Hashem's directive to the Nation of Israel as it stood poised to enter Eretz Yisrael

'Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: When ye pass over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their figured stones, and destroy all their molten images, and demolish all their high places. And ye shall drive out the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein; for unto you have I given the land to possess it.

And ye shall inherit the land by lot according to your families--to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer thou shalt give the less inheritance; wheresoever the lot falleth to any man, that shall be his; according to the tribes of your fathers shall ye inherit.

But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then shall those that ye let remain of them be as thorns in your eyes, and as pricks in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land wherein ye dwell. And it shall come to pass, that as I thought to do unto them, so will I do unto you.'

We stand on the verge of another fast of Av in part because of our failure to follow this advice, then, and now. But as the strength and will of the nation grows to reclaim what is ours we draw closer to the day of our final redemption, and the last fast of Tisha b'Av. If we must fast this year, may it be, B"H, the last.