?When the month of Av begins, we reduce our joy.?

Those are the words of Ta?anit, 26 in the Jewish holy book, the Talmud.

Last week, while Bermudians enjoyed Cup Match, Jews around the world celebrated suffering ? the suffering of Hebrew people throughout time ? a day known as Tisha B?Av.

Traditionally, the ninth day of Av, which fell on August 3 this year, commemorates the destruction of both the first temple by the Babylonians in 586 BC and the second temple by the Romans in 70 AD, which both occurred on the same day. It is the final day of a three-week period of mourning that begins on the 17th day of Tammuz (July 13 this year) and a fast, the day that the walls of Jerusalem were first breached in 586 BC.

The day varies from year to year as it follows the Jewish calendar.

Traditionally, Jews will refrain from eating meat or drinking wine during the three weeks leading up to Tisha B?Av, and will refrain from eating, drinking, washing, bathing, wearing leather and studying the Torah, among other things on the actual day, which begins at sunset the day prior. In synagogues, the ark where the Torah is kept is draped in black, mourning prayers are said and the book of Lamentations is read.

In preparation for the fast, at the end of the afternoon before Tisha B?Av, the Seudah Hamaf-seket meal is eaten, which consists of bread, water and a hard-boiled egg, the only food which gets harder the more it is cooked, dipped in ashes. It is typically eaten alone while sitting on the ground.

While originally set as a period of remembrance many centuries ago, the day has gained even more significance for Jews around the world as history has been particularly harsh to the people of Abraham.

Whether planned or by fate, in 1492, a year most significantly remembered for Columbus? discovery of the Americas, it was on the Ninth of Av that Spain ordered all Jews to leave the country.

A little more than 200 years before, in 1290, the same thing happened in England when King Edward I expelled the Jews from his country.

Again, anti-Semitism reared its ugly head in 1555 when Pope Paul IV forced all Jews to move into the ghettos. The First World War also began on this fateful day.

Finally, on the eve of Tisha B?Av in 1941 (July 31), Hermann Goring signed the first document that would lead to the implementation of ?the final solution?, and a year later, on Tisha B?Av (July 23), the first trainload of Jews arrived and were sent to the gas chambers at Treblinka where only 100 guards helped to murder more than 800,000 Jews, mostly from the Warsaw Ghetto.

Of course, this year has had added significance for many Jews with the current warfare between Israel and Hizbollah, whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, holds personal views on Israel and the Jews that have been well documented.

On October 22, 2002 at a graduation ceremony in Haret Hreik, he said: ?If they [Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.?

Ten years before, Hizbollah issued a statement which vowed: ?An open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.?

Nasrallah also denies the occurrence of the Holocaust.