It can be a bizarre thing to commemorate Tisha B’av because Jews were exiled from Israel, at a time when Jews are freely living in Israel. It begs the question, why do we need Tisha B’av?
The question demonstrates the true tragedy of the exile was not geographic but spiritual. On Tisha B’av, above and beyond all, we mourn the loss of our true selves.
We might believe in G-d where we can chant “everything happens for a reason”; but beyond that, He bears no relevance to how we live. We might find Judaism beautiful, but it’s merely a culture and not a set of profound laws that guide our life. We might even practice some of its laws but it represents a rigid set of rules rather than a fountain of life. Morality might exist but it’s more an opinion than universal truths.
The root of all these problems is when the center of our identity shifts from spiritual beings to physical beings. The nature of a human being is that he is a soul that is in possession of a body. But when we relate to ourselves primarily as physical beings with spiritual elements, this is exile of the true self. And it causes us to misunderstand the structure of reality. As a physical being, G-d is too difficult to relate to; laws are perceived as limiting rather than empowering; morality becomes unmoored from its Divine origin leaving it to being a matter of taste; people live in division rather than feeling a sense of being united. And ultimately in how we relate to ourselves, we feel a richness, a profundity in being human yet a simultaneous emptiness, hollowing out of our identity.
So on Tisha B’av we mourn a loss, the estrangement we feel with our inner selves.
And that is something to truly mourn over.
2021