In a Tisha B’Av reversal, these American Jews grieve for destruction of Palestinian lives

DURHAM, N.C. (RNS) — A group of 40 Jews gathered in a public park under cloudy skies on Wednesday (July 22) and wrote on scraps of white cloth the things they were grieving for this Tisha B’Av:

Dead children of Gaza

Loss of precious life

Apathy in the face of destruction

Loss of imagined future

When they finished, they ripped the cloth, a Jewish mourning custom, and pinned it to a black banner with the words “For These Things We Weep” (a phrase from the biblical book of Lamentations).

Over the past three years, Tisha B’Av, the traditional day of mourning for the destruction of the first and second Jerusalem temples, has become an occasion among some on the left to lament not what was done to Jews (first by the Babylonians and, centuries later, the Romans), but what the state of Israel has done to Palestinians since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.

“Today in 2026, we weave into this day of lamentation the ongoing destruction of Palestinian life by Israel,” said Rabbi Salem Pearce, a Durham-based rabbi who is a member of Rabbis for Ceasefire, a nonprofit group founded in 2023 to protest Israel’s retaliation in Gaza.

“A history of destruction and tragedy leads…