The very idea of observing the fast of Tisha B'Av amid the ruins of the Roman Empire conjures up a mystical, almost esoteric feeling. This is exactly what I did on August 9, 1948.

I had begun my three-year stint as Chief Emigration Officer of the AJDC (American Joint Distribution Committee) in Rome. I was no longer an army chaplain. No one referred to me as "rabbi." (In a future column I will discuss my AJDC work in Italy which focused on helping Jews' quest to be united with their families in countries around the world.)

It was my fourth year in Europe, but my feelings of distress at the suffering of the Holocaust survivors had in no way abated.

At each of my visits to the DP (Displaced Person) Camp in Naples or in meetings with individual families who were beseeching us to assist in their emigration, I felt their pain, their distress.

The words of Isaiah, "The head is sick: the heart is faint" (Isaiah 1:5) -- chanted on the Sabbath preceding Tisha B'Av -- became real.

That Sabbath afternoon, the Shabbat before the fast, I decided to visit the ruins of ancient Rome, perhaps to escape the real suffering of the world around me. No, it was not an escape. It was Jeremiah's Book of Lamentation (commonly known as Eicha, which is read on Tisha B'Av) which drew me to the Roman Ruins. At the end of Chapter 4, Jeremiah turns to Edom, which is a sobriquet for Rome, with a warning:  "Your iniquity, Fair Edom, He will note; He will uncover your sins."

At the Foro Romano, the sight of the Colosseum is a tourist dream.This imposing edifice, viewed from the outside with its elaborate arches and towering columns, bespeak the ancient glory of Rome. But the view from inside the arena, with its long winding passages marking the remains of subterranean prison cells, is quite different. Rome's war captives were kept in these cells, awaiting their death in a useless fight with a hungry beast, all for entertainment of Rome's nobility. The Colosseum, therefore, bespeaks the utter cruelty of Titus to whom the Colosseum was dedicated.

Sitting on a slab in one of the pits, a shudder passed through me. I thought of the Jewish captives taken by Titus as he sacked Jerusalem and burned the Temple. How many Jewish captives had sat here, on this very slab, waiting for their torturous death? With trembling lips, I sighed, reading the eighteenth verse in the first chapter of the Book of Lamentations (Eicha):

"Behold my pain! My maidens and my young men are gone into captivity." (Lam. 1:18)

I looked up, and I could see at the far end of the Colosseum the preserved marble seats where the nobles would sit reveling at the slaughter of my people. I had escaped from the DP Camps but my distress increased.

The sun was beginning to set as I left the amphitheater. A cold wind blew through the large stone arcades as though the fiery heat of the Colosseum's violence had not cooled in twenty centuries. With these thoughts I made my way to the Great Synagogue of Rome to chant Eicha with those who survived the Holocaust.

I went to its small chapel, a synagogue reserved for Sephardi Jews, where about thirty Jews were mournfully swaying to the Sephardic chant of the Book of Lamentations. Their faces, lighted by flickering candles, seemed long and grim. On the walls, huge dancing shadows, cast by the candle light, seemed to dwarf the mourners. The weak, plaintive chant of the Hazzan -- with a number tattooed on his arm -- merged with these grotesque figures as he cried out:

"My eyes shed streams of water,
Over the destruction of my poor people,
My eyes shall flow without cease...
My foes have snared me like a bird
They have ended my life in a pit... (Lam 2:47-8)

And, in unison the entire congregation, as if in a choral response, loudly chanted and wept as they recited:

"Our heritage has passed to aliens,
Our homes to strangers,
Fatherless orphans are we;
Our mothers are like widows. (Lam 5:3)

The Jews around me were mourning the Destruction. Which destruction? I wondered.

Were these not the remnant from the most recent Destruction? Could it be that their mourning was not only over the Destruction of Jerusalem but that they were lamenting the total destruction of Jews and Jewish communities throughout the continent?

When the services were over my questions were answered as I greeted the Hazzan who, without my asking and without looking directly at me, said: "The description of sufferings and destruction in Eicha fits well our case but its setting is too limited...We had many Jerusalems destroyed..."

The following morning, I took several survivors who worked in my AJDC office and returned with them to the Palatine Hill to sit at the ruins of Ancient Rome. At one end of this area stands the Arch of Titus, dedicated to the Roman hero who sacked Jerusalem and burned its Temple -- the emperor Titus. The very imposing sight of this structure, the Arch of Titus, made Jeremiah's lament even more significant:

"All your enemies jeer at you;
They hiss and gnash their teeth
As they shout: "We've ruined her!"

That is the impression I got when I looked up at the towering Arch with its emblazoned inscription: SENATUS POULUSQUE ROMANUS DIVO TITO .

Despite the tradition among Roman Jewry not to walk under the Arch, something within me forced me to sit under it and read Eicha with my group.

Inside the Arch, to our right, the Tyrant Titus appears in bas relief, proudly standing in his chariot. On the opposite side of the wall facing Titus, in another bas relief, is the representation of the Roman Legions bearing the spoils of the Bet Hamikdash (The Holy Temple). I could feel the pain of Jeremiah who cried out (in Eicha) "The adversary had spread his hand upon all our treasure. Woe onto us. Our splendor had fallen into unclean hands."

The treasure. There it was, clearly reproduced in the sculptor's rendering: the Menorah, the Altar, the table, even the gold trumpets which once adorned the Temple all are being carried into captivity.

The Arch under which we were sitting was assuredly the very gate through which the mighty Roman rulers too many times passed through, arrogantly marching their chained captives before the wildly cheering Roman citizenry who would eagerly return to witness the captives' hanging on crosses at the gates of Rome.

"O Lord, look at our disgrace. Look at our shame" (Lam 5:1)

Shame? I asked myself. I urged my group to scan upon the Palatine Hill and gaze upon the ruins -- the Rome of the mighty Caesars -- with its temples and palaces, its Forums and triumphal arches. There they were at our feet, lying in ruins. The sight of those fallen stones lying in the dust for decades of centuries proclaimed the complete destruction of tyrannical Rome.

I closed my Bible and, once again, I gazed at the Arch under which we were sitting for most of that Tisha B'Av day. We were about to leave when we saw smudged writings on the lower part of the Arch. The writing was in Hebrew and, although most of the lettering was difficult to read, I managed to decipher the final three words: Am Yisrael Chai.

History had reversed itself: The victorious tyrants are vanquished. The defeated Judeans have triumphed. Ancient Rome is in ruins, ancient Jerusalem has come back to life. The State of Israel, established only three months earlier, has taken on the mantel of King David's glory.

An apt conclusion for this most memorable Tisha B'Av was the appearance, out of nowhere, of the Hazzan of Rome's Great Synagogue. He greeted us chanting the closing words of Jeremiah's Lamentation:

"Restore us O Lord and we shall return,
Renew our days as of old."

Finally, I close this column with a unique greeting which many Jews exchange at the conclusion of the Fast of Tish'a B'Av:

May this be the last Tish'a B'Av we celebrate.

Rabbi Abramowitz can be reached via e-mail at ibbar@aol.com.