The Midrash characterizes the three weeks between the Seventeenth of Tammuz and Tishah B’Av as the time when demons prowl and the destroyer lays waste at noon. It is the time when our people’s pursuers – demons in bodies of flesh and blood – overtook and laid waste to her as well.
Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler (Michtav MeEliyahu, Vol. 2, p. 48) points out that the Midrash is teaching us not only of a phenomenon that occurred at the time of the destruction, but of one that recurs throughout history. The edict banishing the Jews from England was signed by the English monarch on Tishah B’Av in the year 1290. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain occurred on Tishah B’Av in 1492. And World War I, which caused great upheavals for European Jewry and was the precursor of World War II and the Holocaust, essentially began on Tishah B’Av of 1914, the day that Germany declared war on Russia.
More Recent Events During the Three Weeks
[None of these events occurred on the spur of the moment. All were preceded by incidents and plans that took place “between the straits.”] In a fascinating book, “The Hidden Hand,” Rabbi Yaakov Astor expands on this theme and adds several other events to this list, among them:
The Seventeenth of Tammuz, 1934, was “the Night of the Long Knives,” the internal purge of the murderous Nazi party, which consolidated the power of the Nazi leader, whose blotted name we will not dignify with mention in these pages. And the gas chambers of Treblinka began their grisly work precisely on the day of Tishah B’Av, 1942.
The fact that these misfortunes befall our people during the Three Weeks is in fact a source of consolation to us. For it makes us realize that these events are not mere happenstance, but are part of the Divine plan and orchestration of history.
Obviously the Hand of G-d
Rav Desser (ibid.) quotes a prominent historian to the effect that the Spanish tyrant would surely have reconsidered his actions had he only known how much faith and hope he implanted in the Jews whom he banished by expelling them on Tishah B’Av, unwittingly demonstrating to them that it was none other than the hand of G-d that directed them even in their time of distress, and that in their exile He had sent them on a great and exalted mission.
The hand of G-d is not only upon us during these times; it is also with us. Our Sages say that Mashiach was born on Tishah B’Av (Yerushalmi Berachos 2:4). With the destruction are sown the seeds of redemption. Rabbi Yaakov Astor (ibid.) points out some fascinating examples from more recent history.
As mentioned, the Spanish expulsion of 1492 occurred on Tishah B’Av. The very next day, Columbus set sail from Spain on a voyage in which he would discover the New World, planting seeds that would take 400 years to sprout into the haven that America would become for Jews fleeing the cauldron of Europe before and after the Holocaust. And on that same day of infamy of Tishah B’Av 1942 that saw Treblinka’s gas chambers begin their operation, the Nazi leader gave the inexplicable order to divert his eastern armies to attack Stalingrad, a strategic blunder that initiated the decline of the Nazi war machine and that many military historians regard as the fateful turning point in the fortunes of World War II.
Destruction Initiates the Process of Redemption
The seeds of redemption were sown amid the ashes of destruction. [Rav David Cohen (Ohel David, Rus 2:23) makes a fascinating calculation to show that Rus conceived the progenitor of the Davidic and Messianic dynasty on the night of the Seventeenth of Tammuz.] It is not just that destruction and redemption coincide. Destruction initiates the process of redemption.
Maharsha (on Bechoros 8a) observes that the 21 days between the Seventeenth of Tammuz and Tishah B’Av parallel the 21 days between Rosh Hashanah and Hoshana Rabbah. Just as the latter period is one of Divine forgiveness and closeness, so too, the 21 days “between the straits,” when the tribulations of exile and suffering move us to repentance, atone for our sins and bring us closer to G-d.
Moreover, both periods are times when we are keenly aware of the hand of G-d in our lives - whether it is the hand that strikes or the hand that caresses. They are times of mo’ed, appointed times of meeting our Father in Heaven.
The Days Were Originally Designated to be Times of Joy
Rav Leib Minzburg (Ben Melech on Yemei Bein HaMetzarim, p. 11ff) suggests an additional understanding of this festival-like quality of the time “between the straits.” Both the Seventeenth of Tammuz and Tishah B’Av were originally designated to be times of joy - the former as the day that our ancestors were to receive the First Tablets, and the latter as the day they were to contemplate the reports of the spies encouraging them with reports about the goodness of the land to which they were returning.
Because of our sins, however, we transformed them from days of joy into days of mourning – days on which we caused the Tablets to be shattered and on which we shed tears of no substance, rejecting the land of our fathers.
When our repentance and atonement are complete, these times will revert to being the times of joy they were always meant to be, when the shattered and scattered fragments of our people are made whole again in our Holy Land and the tears are dried from upon every face.