By the Rivers of Babylon ....

Today is Tisha B'Av ....  A day of Tears & Lamentations for Jewish losses,  the Saddest Day of the Jewish year.  It follows an intense three week period of mourning & is a day of Fasting & Mourning for all of  the Tragedies that have befallen us on 9th day of Av,  most especially the Destruction of our Temple in Jerusalem.  Twice!!  

On that same date that the spies returned and spoke evil about the Land of Israel, the First Temple was destroyed. It was on that same day, the ninth of Av, that the Second Temple was also destroyed. On the ninth of Av, the Romans destroyed Betar and massacred thousands of Jews. As the prophet Yirmiyahu predicted, Jerusalem was ploughed over ~ All on the ninth of Av!

On the 9th of Av 1492,  the Jews were expelled from Spain. On the 9th of Av 1914 ~ The First World War began. The insubstantial peace that concluded this war was one of the causes of the Second World War and the Slide to the Shoah,  in which the six million Jews perished. The 9th of Av 1942 ~ The first killings started at Treblinka.  

As Tisha B'Av remembers Tragedy ... it looks forward to Joy too.  It is on this date of 9th Av that Moshiach will be born & we are told that those who weep with Jerusalem in it's Sorrows will be there for to share it's joys ..... Hazorim b'Dimah, b'Rina Yiktzoru!!!

Tehillim ~ Chapter 137 ~

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yes, we wept, when we remembered Tziyon.
We hung up our kinnorot upon the willows in the midst thereof.
 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a shir,  
And they that tormented us required of us simchah, saying,  Sing us one of the Shir Tziyon.
 How shall we sing Shir Ha'Shem in an admat nekhar.

 If I forget thee, O Y'rushalayim, let my yamin forget.
 If I do not remember thee, let my leshon cleave to the roof of my mouth,
If I prefer not Yerushalayim above my rosh simchah.
Remember, Ha'Shem, the B'nei Edom in the Yom Yerushalayim, who said, Raze it, raze it, even to the yesod thereof.

  O Bat Bavel,  who art to be destroyed,  Ashrei shall he be, that repayeth thee the gemul thou hast done to us.
Ashrei shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy olalim against the sela.