Nick Cannon. Photo: David Shankbone via Wikimedia Commons.

Media personality Nick Cannon shared on social media that he had observed the Tisha B’Av fast on Thursday, marking the saddest day on the Jewish calendar in which Jews mourn to remember the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.

The host of “The Masked Singer,” who caused a frenzy recently for making antisemitic remarks, wrote in a lengthy Instagram post early Friday morning that he had just emerged “after a full day of fasting, meditation, study and prayer honoring for the first time Tisha B’av.”

He then briefly noted the history of the Jewish fast day and how he is educating himself about combating antisemitism by reading “How to Fight Anti-Semitism” by Jewish journalist Bari Weiss, who recently resigned from The New York Times.

 

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As I rise after a full day of fasting, meditation, study and prayer honoring for the first time Tisha B’av. I have recently learned that this Jewish day of Mourning religiously recognizes the fall of both of Solomon’s Temples. The first to the Babylonian Empire and 700 years later the second by the Roman Empire on the same day. The day is often known as the saddest day in Judaism because many other travesties occurred on the 9th day of Av in the Hebrew calendar. Through fasting on this day the goal is to rid “Sinat Chinam” or baseless Hatred. Which is why it was put on my heart to deliver the book report on “How to Fight Anti-Semitism” by Bari Weiss. A strong progressive approach at erasing the baseless hate that we all now modernly know as Anti-Semitism. The author, who just days ago resigned from the New York Times for many reasons, one specifically being bullied on Twitter. Ironically I became aware of her from one of her retweets on July 12 of a harsh name calling article about myself with a thread that referred to me as a racist pig, brainwashed, ignorant and even a Nazi, and many other disrespectful things about me and my family. So I dove in her book immediately. In this insightful read, the words that stood out to me were “Anti-Semitism is fueled by the malicious but often feeds on the ignorance of the well-intentioned.” Asking myself, is she talking about me? Knowing that my intentions have never been hateful but recently I had fallen into the same category that the author despises and writes about like Henry Ford, Charles Coughlin, and more recently the abhorrent American Terrorist Robert Bowers, who on Oct. 27, 2018 murdered 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the author’s home neighborhood in Pittsburgh, which ultimately inspired her to write this book. Weiss blames the Left and the Right, Intersectionality, and the lack of historical education for the cause of the baseless hate and I would have to strongly agree. She states “A Jew is whatever the anti-Semite needs him to be; a grand unified theory of everything” Our society “turns Jews into the symbol of whatever a given civilization defines as its most sinister….” (continued below)

A post shared by NICK CANNON (@nickcannon) on Jul 31, 2020 at 3:43am PDT