Berl Katznelson's list [29] sparked passionate debates, and according to an article he wrote in the newspaper Davar on the 14th of Av 1934, the critics tried to beat him with all kinds of whips and argued against him.
"How come the Shulchan Aruch does not prohibit going out to the camp on Tisha B'Av and you forbid it? And I say that it is possible that the Shulchan Aruch will be more stringent and a Jewish socialist will be stringent."
From this we learn how important it was for the secular Berl Katznelson, the symbol that symbolizes the day of mourning of Tisha B'Av from a national perspective.
This is also true, of course, with regard to the prohibition of the sale of pigs, the objection to which the sale and eating has become, as I mentioned above, a national symbol.
Chaim Arlozorov (1899-1933), one of the leaders of the workers in Palestine and a Zionist statesman, also referred to the national importance of Tisha B'Av in an article he wrote in 1930, an excerpt of which was published in the book "Yalkut Tisha B'Av", on page 138, saying:
"Tisha B'Av is the nation's greatest day of mourning. Is there anything more terrible in the world than an entire nation that loses its freedom, that it will lose the possibility of developing its independence, its culture, its traditions, and its ideals... If we do not succeed in uniting the body of Judaism in any way, then the people of the Bible will be doomed... Tisha B'Av is the day of the calamity of the people of Israel, a day of remembrance of the souls of their fate."
Asher Ginzburg, better known by his name Ahad Ha'am (1856-1927), a Zionist leader, publicist, and Hebrew philosopher, also referred to Tisha B'Av in his article "Shabbat and Zionism," published 101 years ago in Sivan 1898, in Ha-Hashlach as a national asset in the life of the Jewish people, and wrote, among other things, the following instructive words:
"We see people of renown, free scholars, who are far from faith, who openly admit that they themselves do not observe either the Sabbath or the other laws of religion, who nevertheless set out with all their might to defend the Sabbath as a historical institution of the entire nation, and without any shadow of the religious hypocrisy that used to occupy a great place in the past, such powers, only for national reasons, do not even agree to add a 'second Shabbat of the exiles': Do you have any greater evidence than this of the awakening of the national "Jewish feeling" among our brothers in the West even outside the Zionist camp?