I was still fasting for Tisha B’Av (the 9th of the month of Av, according to the Hebrew Calendar) when the excitement began to travel around the office. It was July 27th, 2004 and a speech had been made. I didn’t know the content of the speech, and I’d never heard of the speaker, but I could recognize from the mood that history had been made. And it worried me. When history is made on the night after Tisha B’Av, it rarely turns out well. The speaker was Barack Obama. Roughly four years later, America elected him president. And seven years after that — during The Three Weeks — he signed a deal for peace in our time with the Islamic Republic.

From the destruction of the First Temple, to the Declaration of Crusades, to the beginning of the First World War, and from the Deportations to the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto, Tisha B’Av has marked almost every national catastrophe suffered by the Jewish people. While Tisha B’av 2004 may yet be added to the list, we must recognize that the vast majority of Tisha B’Avs have passed without triggering catastrophe. Perhaps Obama’s entry into global politics will prove to be only a hiccup and not a prelude to another round of massive Jewish destruction and loss.

Nonetheless, these Three Weeks, I find myself fundamentally fearing for my people and for my family. In my lifetime, the future has never been so frightening and uncertain. The most basic of decisions — like where to live and why — have never seemed so fraught with danger and uncertainty. From nuclear weapons to a massively enriched and active terrorist state, the world — and we Israelis, in particular — face fundamental risks. The Jewish people will survive. They always have. But not all of our people survive, and that is the core of our fear.