I remember learning in my initial studies into the Jewish calendar that as the summer gets hotter, Judaism gets sadder with fast days and other restrictions leading up to Tisha B’Av, the only 25-hour fast aside from Yom Kippur.
Rabbi Eliakim Koenigsberg writes: The customs we observe on the day of Tisha B’Av are strikingly similar to those of an avel (mourner), one whose close relative has recently passed away. We abstain from washing ourselves and putting on perfume, from wearing leather shoes and talking frivolously. We even refrain from studying parts of Torah which are unrelated to the events and the mood of the day. Instead we sit on the floor or a low chair and solemnly contemplate the loss of the Beit HaMikdash, the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.
On Tisha B’Av the sense of mourning and sadness is palpable. But, in truth, the observances of mourning begin long before Tisha B’Av itself. Already from the Seventeenth of Tamuz, at the start of the “Three Weeks” period, Ashkenazic communities minimize their involvement in pleasurable activities like getting married, taking haircuts and buying new clothing. From the beginning of the month of Av through Tisha B’Av, a period commonly referred to as the “Nine Days,” we refrain as well from doing laundry and from wearing freshly laundered clothing. Many men refrain from shaving. Tisha B’Av itself is certainly the most restrictive of the entire Three Weeks period, but the observances of aveylut (mourning) are not limited to that day alone.
Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik zt”l, (1903-1993) known to his many talmidim as the Rav, used to say that these three periods of time mirror the three periods of mourning that a child observes when losing a parent. Tisha B’Av is like the seven-day period of shiva when the sense of mourning is most intense. The “Nine Days” beginning with Rosh Chodesh Av are similar to the period of shloshim (30 days of mourning), and from the Seventeenth of Tamuz until the month of Av we observe laws of mourning similar to the twelve-month period of aveylut that a child observes after losing a parent.
What’s interesting, though, is that the order of observances is reversed. The child who loses a parent observes shiva first, then shloshim and then the twelve-month period of aveylut, while during the “Three Weeks” we first observe the aveylut of the twelve-month period, then shloshim, and only on Tisha B’Av do we keep to the restrictions of shiva. Why is the order changed when we mourn the loss of the Beit HaMikdash?
