Media personality Avri Gilad published an appeal on his Facebook account today (Wednesday) to the Tel Aviv restaurant owners who decided to defiantly open their businesses on Tisha B'Av, "as a sign of protest" against the government.
""Dear Tel Aviv restaurateur," Gilad wrote. "When you open your business tonight defiantly, you are no different from that Haredi who you usually sneer at when you see him not standing at the horn. You know what, you are even worse, because he may be reciting verses of Tehillim as is his custom, and not observing things that in his eyes are Gentile customs, while you simply ignore this day, as if it were just a day that the religious fast for fun.".
He notes that "Tisha B'Av is not a religious holiday. It is a national celebration. On this date, we were defeated as a people and exiled from our land. On this date, such acute pain was created that it can be said that each of us carries remnants of it to this day. I imagine what my ancestors felt in Jerusalem 1950 years ago on this day, what horror they went through, and then the road to Rome, and slavery, and rape, and murder, and the loss of home for generations.".
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""How much of all this grief passed on to me in its raw form and affects my soul to this day? I can only estimate.".
Gilad turned to the restaurateurs: "Friend, do you honor Holocaust Remembrance Day? Why? It wasn't in your day either. So Tisha B'Av is like Holocaust Remembrance Day but longer ago. What is the range that you do specify and what you don't? And your children, what will happen when they want to open the restaurant they inherited from you on Holocaust Remembrance Day? Will you oppose it? Will you encourage it?
""Understand, you are not a hydroponic plant that is served as an appetizer at your restaurant. You have roots in this soil, and they are ancient, and they have seen terrible destruction and you have come to detach yourself from them. Do you think that as a plant you benefit from this detachment? In my eyes, you only become weaker, easier to uproot. Uprooted.".
Gilad emphasizes: "I'm not a religious person at all. I don't fast. Fasts don't speak to me. But minimal mourning customs do, and respect for my heritage certainly does. And whose eye are you poking when you open the evening? For yourself. Have fun.".
