There is a mystical idea which suggests that hidden within every fire of destruction, is the spark of redemption. Such, for example, was the case on August 3rd, 1492, which was also the Ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, the anniversary of the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem. On that day in 1492, one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the Jewish people came to a head, as two hundred and fifty thousand Jews, faced with the impossible choice of baptism or death, were expelled from Spain. Thus began a series of expulsions and inquisitions that would force the Jewish people to wander from country to country, culminating in the unspeakable horror of the Holocaust five hundred years later.
Many do not realize that on that fateful August morning in 1492, the very day eighty thousand Jews followed Don Yitzchak Abarbanel across the border into Portugal, and thousands of boats filled the harbor, setting sail with the better part of the Jewish community, there were three boats, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, sailing out of the harbor to discover a new world, which would one day save the remnants of the Jewish people in that very same Holocaust.
And just as the fire destruction hides within it the spark of redemption, so too, the fertile fields of victory hide within them the potential dust of defeat. Thus, it was the mood created by Israel