On Tisha B’Av, Herzog urges ‘baseless love’ for sake of Jewish home

Israeli President Isaac Herzog called on Wednesday night, Tisha B’Av, for “baseless love” as the platform to continue building the national home of the Jewish people.

“If baseless hatred destroyed the Temple, then only baseless love, love of the people, and love of the land can continue building our shared home,” Herzog said during a visit to the training base of the Israel Defense Forces’ Hasmonean Infantry Brigade in the northern Jordan Valley.

“That is precisely the spirit I encountered this evening among the soldiers of the Hasmonean Brigade—a spirit of dedication, faith, responsibility and partnership,” he continued.

Herzog visited the IDF’s first ultra-Orthodox brigade to read from the Book of Lamentations, a collection within the Bible of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC.

Tisha B’Av, marked this year on Wednesday evening and Thursday, is an annual fast day commemorating a number of disasters in Jewish history, chief among them the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BC by the Babylonian Empire and the Second Temple in 70 CE by the Romans.

The Israeli president said that while reading from Lamentations, he thought about the lesson of baseless love that has accompanied the Jewish people for 2,000 years.