Tisha B’Av – ‘But this do I call to mind, therefore I have hope…’ (Lamentations 3:21)

Saturday evening 2nd August 8.30-10.00pm | Online only

 Please join us as we mark Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning for tragedies that have taken place across Jewish history and as we reflect on hope.

The Book of Lamentations (Eicha in Hebrew) is a series of five lyrical elegies mourning the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. Each of the first four chapters is structured as an alphabetical acrostic – a way of declaring both the immensity of the tragedy borne by the Jewish people (from ‘A to Z’) but also containing it within the vehicle of a poetic structure.

The final chapter is confessional and liturgical. Eicha is not simply rooted in historical time; it transcends the loss of the Temple and becomes Israel’s eternal lament for all catastrophes that befall our people, past, present and future.

Eicha is the lament of a whole people mourning the ‘slaughter without pity’. It is also an elegy by an individual exhausted and shattered by grief, wrestling with faith in a God who seems to ‘bring down His hand again and again, without cease’, who weighs down the poet with chains, who shuts out prayer, and leaves the poet numb and confused. Yet, this individual is not without hope. When morning comes, this individual is willing to sit patiently and to affirm faith in God’s goodness and mercy.

This complex lament will form the centre of our liturgy on Erev Tisha B’Av as we reflect on the tragedies of the past and the most recent on 7 October and its aftermath.

To attend the 2025 Tisha B'Av service which will be held solely online please register.