Flying out in a week!

You heard it here...I fly back to the northeast on July 30th. I leave from Tel Aviv in the morning and from there it is a 12 hour flight. Fun.
I look forward to going back. It's been too long since I've seen my awesome family and friends who I miss and think about everyday.
There is one drawback though. [building suspense] July 30th on the Jewish Calendar is a holiday. Not a joyous holiday, but the day of Tish b'Av, the ninth of Av. In history, this day brings sadness. To list a couple of things that happened this day:
-Both of the Temples were destroyed that day (The Western Wall in Jerusalem is a wall of the second temple destroyed by the Babylonians led by Nebucheddnezzar)
-WWI began
-The cattle cars transporting the Jews began from the ghettos to Treblinka, the worst of the Camps
-(Biblically)The spies that went to scout out Israel brought back incorrect and slanderous reports that the people believe, and thus they were sentenced to wander in the wilderness for forty years until all the people that believed the report were dead (between the ages of 20 and 60)
-Rome seized Jerusalem and razed it in the following year (the Jerusalem today is built on top of those ruins. dig down 30 feet and you'll hit another city!)
-Jews were expelled from England 1290 and Spain in 1492 (check the records, Colombus had trouble getting out of port because of all the Jews fleeing)

So yea, I get to fly on this date. On this day, we fast for 24 hours. I have to now figure out how that's going to work considering I'm flying westward and thus "back in time." Hopefully I won't have a 36 hour fast. Ha. But once the Temple is rebuilt, the Jews will no longer have to continue doing this. The fast also serves as a reminder that the Jews have become to comfortable in the Diaspora (dispersion after the destruction of the 2nd Temple). As long as the Temple is not here, we are reminded that we are not doing our job. We are to be a "light unto the nations" and right now, we are kind of a joke. Assimilation is the greatest killer of the Jews that all the Holocausts and Pogroms combined. The kicker is, Assimilation is our choice. Jews are the fault behind that. So Tish B'Av is an important holiday to observe the situation and do all in our power so that we don't have to fast next year.