Monday night through Tuesday night was the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’av, which commemorates several disasters befalling the Jewish people, most importantly the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE and the 1st century CE.
The day was marked differently by different Jewish groups.
In Los Angeles, the Jewish-led activist group If Not Now organized a shutdown of the southbound lanes of Interstate 405 “to demand an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate ceasefire.” In a statement released for the occasion, the group writes that “Tisha B’Av … is a day of immense Jewish sorrow, a commemoration of the destruction of our temple. We mourn the ethnic cleansing of our ancestors, driven from their homes by violence. We say: No more.”
Reflecting on the 76 years of the Nakba, “destruction of the overwhelming majority of Gaza’s homes and schools and hospitals,” and the tens of thousands killed in Gaza, the group gives its sense of what Tisha B’av should mean: “no more ethnic cleansing … reject AIPAC … not another bomb.”
