Like many Jews, I have used the words “synagogue” and “temple” interchangeably. That all changed a number of years ago when a close friend of mine corrected my usage. He told me, in a light but serious way, that our Temple was destroyed 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem. We were members of a synagogue.

At the time this was not news to me, but what he said did ring painfully true. “Temple” was not merely another word for synagogue. It represented something that was missing.

I never again made the mistake of calling my synagogue, my temple. I also came away with a deeper appreciation and understanding of “the saddest day of the Jewish year,” Tisha B’Av—the ninth day of the month of Av on the Hebrew calendar, the day on which the First Temple fell to the Babylonians (586 BCE) and the Second Temple to the Romans (70 CE).

Tisha B’Av, which was last Friday on the Gregorian calendar, is like a criminal rap sheet bearing witness to Jewish pain at the hands of non-Jews. The date itself seems to carry a record of Jewish suffering.

Besides the destruction of the First and Second Temples, Betar, the final stronghold of the Bar Kokhba revolt, fell to the Romans on Tisha B’Av. King Edward I issued an Edict of Expulsion for all English Jews on Tisha B’Av in 1290 CE. And the final day by which the Jews were required to leave Spain, thanks to Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492? The deadline for departure: Tisha B’Av.

But the destruction of the Second Temple stands out to me as the most painful. It resulted in the deaths and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Jews, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the beginning of the long exile that would define Jewish history for 2,000 years. Need proof? Just check out the Arch of Titus in Rome.

One of my takeaways from Tisha B’Av is that it’s not easy being Jewish and, to our chagrin, it’s not going to change any time soon.

During Tish B’Av, Jews are expected, among other things, to read Lamentations. During my soulful reading of Lamentations this past Tisha B’Av, I noticed that the first English word in my Tanakh was “Alas.” Interestingly, I discovered that many translations instead begin with “How.” The opening Hebrew word in Lamentations, Eikhah, can function as an interjection expressing profound grief and lament—making “Alas” an entirely fitting translation.

When I think of “Alas,” I can’t help but think of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.”

Hamlet’s words are not only about the decaying, lifeless skull he holds in his hand. They are about suddenly confronting the physical remains of someone he remembers as alive. He tells his friend Horatio:

“I knew him.”

Yes, as Hamlet mournfully gazed at the skull of Yorick and recalled the many fine moments they had shared more than 20 years earlier, so too did the author of Lamentations painfully recall the former greatness of Jerusalem.

Only Hamlet mourned a single man’s death. The author of Lamentations mourned the loss of the entirety of Jerusalem—and everything that city represented to the Jewish people.

Pray it never happens again.