On the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av in the year 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian forces destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. Since then, Tisha b’Av has served as a day of commemorating Jewish tragedy, a day when Jews remember those killed for being Jews and recite kinnot, elegies recounting the sacrifice and suffering that is an inescapable part of the Jewish past.

Tisha b’Av this year, taking place on August 12 and 13, will be the first since the October 7 attack on Israel, and its arrival raises a number of questions. To examine them, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver is joined here in conversation by Rabbi J.J. Schacter, who for decades has led important Tisha b’Av services and has reflected deeply on questions of kinnot and memory as both a professional historian and a communal leader and teacher. (He recently delivered a free online video course on the meaning of Jewish memory accessible at memory.tikvahfund.org.)

Together, they explore how the liturgy of Tisha b’Av might be expanded to address October 7, why rabbis decide to commemorate some specific events with their own fast days and subsume others under the rubric of Tisha b’Av, and what elegies Jews recite this year and in the future to weave October 7 into the Jewish liturgical consciousness.