On the 9^th of Av, we remember four main events:

1. In the desert, at the time of Moses, it was decreed that that generation of the people of Israel would not enter the Land of Israel, due to the bad report of the ten spies, who distorted the information to avoid losing their power and for fear of the inhabitants of that land.

2. The Babylonians, led by General Nebuchadnezzar, destroyed the first Great Temple of Jerusalem in 423 BCE. According to tradition, the causes of the moral denigration of the Hebrews that caused God not to protect them were idolatry, promiscuity and bloodshed.

3. The Romans, led by general Titus Flavius Vespasianus, destroyed the second Great Temple of Jerusalem in 68 CE. According to tradition, the main cause of the moral denigration of the Hebrews that caused God not to protect them was the gratuitous hatred (that is, without sense or cause) among the Jews themselves, which divided society.

4. The Romans, led by Caesar Traianus Hadrianus, captured and completely destroyed the city of Betar, razing it and all its inhabitants, in 135 CE. Thus was suppressed the Bar Kokhba rebellion, the last attempt at political independence of the Jewish people until the modern State of Israel.

All these terrible catastrophes have a common pattern: the corruption of the leaders and the passivity of the people in the face of corruption. If good people do not act, then hate and injustice prevail.

We should stop focusing on personal good and start building a society based on the common good. The reconstruction of the social fabric comes from unifying ourselves under the search for the common good. This will make solidarity – the basic concept that sustains all humanity- prevail.

When we are aware that no one can live alone and that we all need the other, we will strengthen social ties and generate a new paradigm that corrects the errors that led to the tragedies that we commemorate on the 9th of Av.