Alzheimer‘s is perhaps the most de-vastating words a doctor can say to a patient, likened to a living death sen-tence. To lose your health is devastating; to lose your mind, insane. In sickness, you are still you, but you are in pain. When one's mind is lost, your body may be present, but the you that is known and loved by all has faded.

Next Tuesday we will celebrate the most underrated holiday in the Jewish year, Tisha Ba'av. Ask your friends if they have ever heard of it. More often than not, the answer is no. After all, Hallmark has no cards for the day, and so it is not listed on their calendar as a day of importance.

Tragically, for most Jews the day no longer has relevance to them. Most Jews have never even heard of the day, and even those who will fast, more often than not, their mind is more on passing the time than reflecting on the day‘s mes-sage. Are we, the Jewish People, suf-fering amnesia or, even worse, Alzhei-mer‘s? Have we forgotten our mission and our heritage as G-d‘s Chosen People and allowed ourselves to become intox-icated by the lure of "The Good Life," aka a life of comfort? Are we forcing G-d to choose between His children suffering from a self-imposed amnesia of identity or an affliction from the outside that pains our bodies but awakens our souls to who we really are as a nation? In the words of the Brisker Rav, "Either the Jew makes Kiddush — sanctifies himself — or the Non-Jew will make Havdalah and sepa-rate the Jew by force from forgetting his unique role."

The last few years have seen our people go from the heights of glory to challenges that we never imagined we would face yet again and so soon after the Holocaust.

Tisha Ba'av is the most underrated holiday, but it holds the secrets to the gnawing question "Why?" The Book of Lamentations opens with the word "Ei-chah" — how could it be — and the next five chapters seek to explain the inex-

plicable. Tisha Ba'av may be sad, terribly sad. It is a day of the pain of our people. As horrific as that pain may be, it is never as bad as the alternative of Alzheimer‘s, that of forgetting who we are. For pain, there may be a cure; for spiritual Alz-heimer‘s, there is not. Tisha Ba'av has extracted a horrible toll from our people, but it has also preserved us through the centuries. It is the source of our pain but also the secret to our eternity. Please don't let this Tisha Ba'av pass without joining us at the Shul or listening to the online programs offered at http://www.ou.org/ or elsewhere. Re-member, the greatest antidote to Alz-heimer‘s is using our brain to think. This Tisha Ba'av, let's stretch our Jewish souls and connect with our heritage, remember who we are and reconnect with our Father in Heaven.