Each year on Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, the Jewish people enter a sacred time of mourning. We remember the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, together with the tragedies and losses that have marked Jewish history.
Tisha B’Av is also a call to examine our own hearts. Jewish tradition connects the destruction of the Second Temple with sinat chinam—שנאת חינם—baseless hatred. We are therefore called to repent of the pride, division, and spiritual failure that brought destruction among us.
This call to repentance speaks directly to the vision of Toward Jerusalem Council II.
A Wider Call to Reconciliation
The first Jerusalem Council, described in Acts 15, addressed whether Gentiles could come to faith in Israel’s Messiah without converting to Judaism through circumcision.
Led by the Ruach HaKodesh, the Jewish apostles and elders affirmed that Gentiles were welcomed into G-d’s family through faith in Yeshua while retaining their distinct identity and calling. In later centuries, however, the institutional Church often required Jewish believers to abandon their Jewish way of life. Jewish believers in Yeshua were marginalized, the Jewish roots of the faith were rejected, and the Church came to see itself as having replaced Israel. These divisive church issues against Jewish believers created wounds of division and rejection that have remained in the Body of Messiah to this day.
TJCII seeks to address this historic separation and restore right relationships between Jewish and Gentile believers in Messiah.
Tisha B’Av also gives us space to remember Jews who were persecuted, expelled, forcibly converted, or murdered in lands that called themselves Christian. We grieve what the Body of Messiah lost when Jewish believers were made to feel that following Yeshua required them to distance themselves from their people and covenantal calling.
The Apostle Shaul warned Gentile believers:
“Do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, it is not you who support the root but the root supports you. — Romans 11:18, TLV
The nations were not called to replace Israel, but were graciously grafted into the covenant story that began with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
As the Jewish people examine our hearts on Tisha B’Av, the nations are invited to stand beside us with humility and to consider the ways Christian history has deepened Jewish suffering.
Repentance That Leads to Healing
True repentance is more than sorrow. It requires naming wrongdoing, accepting responsibility, listening to those who were wounded, and changing our actions.
For the Church, this includes confronting antisemitism, forced conversion, contempt for Jewish identity, and the belief that Israel has been replaced. It also means recognizing the right of Jewish believers in Yeshua to live openly and faithfully as Jews.
Jewish believers may also need to bring before G-d the pain and mistrust that make relationships with Gentile Christians difficult. Trust cannot be forced, and history cannot be erased. But when wounds are brought into the light with humility and patient love, G-d can restore fellowship.
At the first Jerusalem Council, Jewish leaders welcomed Gentile believers into the Body of Messiah without requiring them to become Jews. The call for a Second Jerusalem Council would invite leaders of the global Church to recognize and welcome Jewish believers in Yeshua as a living Jewish part of the Body of Messiah, without requiring them to give up their identity and way of life.
Such a council cannot undo the past, but it can affirm that G-d’s gifts and calling to Israel are irrevocable and that Jewish believers remain part of the Jewish people when they believe in Israel’s Messiah.
Hope Beyond Mourning
Tisha B’Av calls us to sit with grief and allow G-d to use the lessons of history to search our hearts. Yet grief is not the end of the story. The prophet Zechariah declared that the fast of the fifth month, which refers to the fast of Tisha B’Av, would become a time of joy and gladness for the house of Judah, adding:
“Therefore love truth and shalom!” — Zechariah 8:19, TLV
The promise is not that history will be forgotten, but that G-d can transform sorrow into joy.
This is also the hope of TJCII: that the separation between the Church and the Jewish people will no longer be accepted as normal, and that Jewish and Gentile believers will stand together without hostility, arrogance, or loss of identity.
As we observe Tisha B’Av, may HaShem expose the pride and division within us, heal the wounds between Jewish and Gentile believers, and lead us toward the fulfillment of Yeshua’s prayer:
“I pray not on behalf of these only, but also for those who believe in Me through their message, that they all may be one. Just as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You, so also may they be one in Us, so the world may believe that You sent Me.” – John 17:20-21