Tisha B'Av

Culture of origin: Jewish · Cultural

Holiday sources: Iran · Israel · Judaism

Tisha B'Av, the Ninth of Av, is a fast day mourning above all the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 587 BCE and of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. Called the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, it ends the Three Weeks of mourning and falls in July or August. It is kept with a 25-hour fast, the reading of the Book of Lamentations and dirges that also recall later calamities, among them the Holocaust. When 9 Av falls on the Sabbath, the fast moves to the Sunday after.