Five National Disasters That All Fell on the Same Day

Five disasters. Five different centuries. Five different enemies. The Talmud says they all happened on the same date — the ninth of Av, Tisha B'Av — and that this is not a coincidence but a pattern embedded in history by God.

The Mishnah, compiled c. 200 CE, lists the five calamities in Tractate Ta'anit 4:6. What makes the list disturbing is not any single item on it. It is the accumulation. A date that has absorbed this much grief is not an ordinary day on a calendar. It is a crack in the year where catastrophe enters.

The Five Calamities Listed in the Talmud

The first calamity: the spies returned from Canaan with their evil report. This is from the book of Numbers — twelve spies sent to scout the land, ten returning with despair rather than courage, the people weeping that night, and God declaring that the night of weeping would become a permanent night of weeping in every future generation. The Midrash Rabbah (Bamidbar Rabbah, c. 400–500 CE) records that God told Israel: "You wept for nothing. I will give you reason to weep for generations."

The second and third calamities: the First Temple was destroyed by Babylonian forces under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, and the Second Temple was destroyed by Rome in 70 CE. Both burned on the ninth of Av. The Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Ta'anit 29a, compiled c. 500 CE) treats the dual destruction as a single tragedy playing out across six centuries — the same wound reopened.

The fourth calamity: the city of Betar fell in 135 CE, ending the Bar Kokhba revolt against Rome. The Talmud records that the dead were so numerous they could not be buried. According to the Talmud, the bodies remained unburied for years until a Roman emperor finally permitted it, and the fact that they did not rot was considered a miracle.

The fifth calamity: the Temple Mount was plowed under and the city of Aelia Capitolina was built over Jerusalem, erasing the Jewish topography of the land entirely.

Why This Day and Not Another?

The Midrash Aggadah addresses this directly. The original sin was the weeping of the people after the spies' report — a night of faithless tears, an inability to trust that God could bring them into the land despite real obstacles. God accepted that as a decree. The ninth of Av became the appointed time for the nation's tears, the date when grief was, in some sense, guaranteed.

The Kabbalistic tradition describes Tisha B'Av as a day when the protective divine energy withdraws, when the aspect of judgment is stronger than the aspect of mercy. This is not fatalism. It is a recognition that certain patterns in history carry their own momentum. The mystics of 16th-century Safed — Isaac Luria, Joseph Karo, Shlomo Alkabetz — treated the day with profound seriousness, gathering to study Lamentations by candlelight, sitting on the floor, removing leather shoes as a sign of mourning.

What People Actually Do on Tisha B'Av

Tisha B'Av is the most intense fast day in the Jewish calendar, second in severity only to Yom Kippur. For twenty-five hours, observant Jews do not eat, drink, wash, wear leather, or have marital relations. They sit on low chairs or on the floor. The Torah ark curtain is removed. The synagogue lights are dimmed. After nightfall, the Book of Lamentations is chanted — the five poems attributed to Jeremiah, written from inside the ruins of the First Temple, addressed to the personified figure of Jerusalem as a widow sitting alone in the rubble of what she was.

The Legends of the Jews describes God weeping on Tisha B'Av alongside Israel, mourning the destruction of the Temple with the same intensity as those who built it. The day is not merely national mourning. According to the tradition, it is shared grief — between God and the people God chose, over a relationship that has never been simple. Explore Tisha B'Av traditions and related texts at jewishmythology.com.