Judaism’s national day of mourning, the fast of Tisha b’Av, begins tonight. Jenna Weissman Joselit examines its waning and waxing in the American Jewish consciousness:

By the 1880s, observers of American Jewish ritual behavior noted that the Ninth of Ab, as the fast was then commonly called in English-speaking circles, was all but “extinct,” a relic of the past, its evocation of sackcloth and ashes one for the books. Mourning the destruction of the ancient Temples was no longer practiced by Reform Jews—then the vast majority of American Jewry—for whom talk of “the temple” conjured up the majestic one on Main Street, not the one laid low in Jerusalem. They harbored no hopes for the restoration of Zion either, for they had already found theirs in the USA. American Jews, it was said, had “turned their backs” on the Ninth of Ab, letting it sink into “lazy oblivion.”

Still, when the day rolled around, Reform-oriented newspapers such as the American Israelite made sure to comment on the fast day’s fate. Accounting for as well as noting its absence became a form of commemoration in its own right—and, in some circles, cause for celebration rather than breast-beating.

Still, no amount of despair could have predicted the very next twist and surprising turn in Tisha b’Av’s history: its embrace in the 1920s by observant Jewish camping professionals and their young American charges, which permanently changed the fast day’s trajectory from oblivion to prominence. Had it to do with the Balfour Declaration? With heightened interest in the Middle East and its ancient Temples? With the devastation wrought by World War I? It’s hard to say: religious revivals, after all, work in strange ways.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.