For the last three years, ever since the creation of the State of Israel, many of our fellow Jews, good, synagogue-going Jews, have been coming to me with a very intelligent complaint. “Why,” they ask, “must we observe days of national mourning such as Tisha B’av when we already have a State of Israel? Why cry and mourn over some catastrophe which occurred almost 2,000 years ago when today G-d has helped us and the ingathering of the exiles has begun?” And this, my friends, is a query which is difficult to answer. Why, after all, will it be necessary for us to fast tonight and tomorrow, and observe the other laws of Tisha B’av, when the Jews in Israel now have a healthy, progressive government, which is something for which we have dreamed so long? Of what use is it to remember a past tragedy? In short, what meaning does Tisha B’av have for a Jew of Today?Before we attempt to answer that question, let us make one important observation on the nature of Tisha B’av. And that is, that Tisha B’av is an occasion which requires more than memory. Remembering alone is a dull, passive act. A memory by itself is merely a stagnant picture momentarily projected on the screen of one’s mind, and is overlooked as any dull commercial is overlooked by a typical television audience. It may be entertaining but it means little if anything. No, Tisha B’av does not mean remember, it means reliving. It means, if I be permitted to paraphrase the Passover Haggada, that בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא ראה בחורבנה של ירושלים, that in every generation every Jew must feel as if he himself lived in Jerusalem as it was being destroyed by the cruel invader, as if he himself was one of the faithful onlookers who wept endless tears as they watched the בית המקדש, the Holy Temple, go up in flames, desecrated by the inhuman legion of Rome, and then threw themselves bodily into those very same flames. Every Jew must feel as if he personally were uprooted from his own sweet Palestinian soil …