Each summer, for three weeks, many Jews around the world engage in an ancient and communal act of mourning — culminating in a full fast on the 9th of Av, or Tisha b’Av. This day marks the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, in 586 B.C.E. and 70 C.E., respectively. But for most contemporary Jews, especially those who didn’t grow up observant, the events feel so remote, the rituals so foreign, that the grief might seem abstract — if not confusing.
So why do some of us still feel it?
Raised in a Modern Orthodox home, I know the weight of the day well. Even during the years I was too sick to fast, I felt a heaviness settle in. The haunting chanting of Eicha (Lamentations), the low stools, the dimmed lights — it was deeply emotional. Yet, when I met my husband, who was raised in a Conservative-leaning environment, he confessed that he had never heard of Tisha b’Av until adulthood. The first time he witnessed people crying in synagogue on that day, he was bewildered. “How can they mourn something they’ve never seen?” he asked.
That question stuck with me. Why does it still move so many of us — even if we’ve never seen Jerusalem or studied the Temple service? And what are we actually mourning?
Trauma Travels
Over the past decade, trauma research has uncovered what Jewish tradition has intuited for generations: pain travels through generations. The idea of intergenerational trauma — that trauma can be biologically, psychologically, and culturally inherited — is now well-supported. A 2015 study published in Biological Psychiatry by Rachel Yehuda, a leading trauma researcher, found that Holocaust survivors’ descendants exhibited epigenetic changes related to stress hormone regulation.
This echoes broader findings in other historically traumatized communities. Descendants of enslaved African Americans, Native Americans, Rwandan genocide survivors and Cambodian refugees have also shown signs of inherited trauma—sometimes in the form of anxiety, depression, or even cellular inflammation.
Tisha b’Av is often explained as a religious obligation, but it also functions as an annual encounter with communal grief. We may not remember the Temples, but we remember loss. And that memory is not just emotional — it’s structural.
Systems That Shape Us
In social work, we often cite ecological systems theory, a framework developed by psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner in the 1970s. It posits that individuals are shaped by overlapping environments: personal, social, cultural, and historical. Our emotional responses aren’t just “ours.” They’re echoes of the systems we inhabit.
In this light, Tisha b’Av isn’t just about two buildings. It’s about exile, fragmentation, and yearning that’s been woven into the Jewish psyche for thousands of years.
Vicarious Grief, Real Emotion
Another framework that helps explain this phenomenon is vicarious trauma — a condition often experienced by mental health professionals, caregivers or anyone who bears witness to others’ suffering. It’s a kind of “secondhand grief” that still leaves a mark.
Even those of us who didn’t live through the destruction of Jerusalem — or the Inquisition, pogroms or Shoah — may still internalize the collective trauma these events represent. Rituals like fasting or reading Eicha may function as communal containers for that grief.
Memory, Not Just Religion
Historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, in his foundational work “Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory,” distinguishes between history as an academic discipline and memory as a sacred communal act. What Jews preserve through Tisha b’Av is less about linear facts and more about emotional continuity.
It’s not just religious Jews who carry this memory. In a 2020 Pew Research Center study, 72% of American Jews — across denominations — said that “remembering the Holocaust” was essential to their Jewish identity. Far fewer emphasized religious law or synagogue attendance. The takeaway? Memory is a key cultural connector — even for secular Jews.
And Tisha b’Av is a day of memory.
A Personal Anchor
When I walked the streets of Jerusalem in 2004, I felt something shift. I wasn’t mourning a Temple; I was connecting with a long line of family history. My great-grandfather was born in the Old City in 1898. His family fled in 1912, fearing Ottoman conscription. His father — a rabbi — continued traveling between New York and Jerusalem until his death in 1951. He is buried in Sheikh Badr Cemetery in Givat Ram, now tucked between the Israeli Supreme Court and Sacher Park.
In that city, I felt the footsteps of people I never met—but somehow knew. I remembered the late Elie Wiesel’s words: “For a Jew, to be in Jerusalem is to be at home.” That day, I felt it.
Meaning Without Uniformity
The day may not resonate with everyone in the same way. And that’s okay. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, once wrote: “Jerusalem is the city where Jews of every background — secular or religious, Ashkenazi or Sephardi — find their past and future. It is not just a place, but a symbol of hope and return.”
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, a mystic and early Zionist rabbi, believed Jerusalem’s holiness was not tied to the behavior or observance level of its inhabitants. “Even those far from Torah are drawn to her,” he wrote, “for Jerusalem calls to every Jewish soul.”
That idea — that there’s something deeper than law or ritual that draws us — feels true in my bones. Maybe we don’t cry on Tisha b’Av because we’re mourning a building. Maybe we cry because we recognize the feeling of rupture, of loss that has no clear source. And maybe, in remembering it together, we begin to heal.
Preparing for the Next Generation
As I await the birth of my first child, I think about what grief and hope he’ll inherit. What stories I’ll tell him. What feelings will live in his bones before he has words for them.
Tisha b’Av will likely feel different to him than it does to me. And yet, the threads will still be there — woven into lullabies, family stories and unspoken longing.
We may not have seen the Temples fall.
But we’ve all seen things fall apart.
To mourn something we’ve never seen isn’t irrational.
It’s profoundly human.
It’s how we honor memory.
It’s how we stay connected.
It’s how we begin again.
Ariel Rose Goldstein, LSW, LMSW, is a licensed trauma therapist and writer who integrates Jewish values with mental health and disability advocacy. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and is expecting their first child in early fall.
