Interesting Tisha B’av story: honored Rabbi Leopold Greenwald meets the hero of his youth, Jewish scholar Isaac Judah Goldziher, who tells him of his encounters with Christian Franz Delitzsch during one Tisha B’av.
We studied Talmud and Codes at the yeshiva because we often had to debate the meaning of talmudic passages with the very learned Christian scholar, Professor Franz Delitzsch. Indeed, we studied with great diligence in order to be able to answer him. Professor Delitzsch would frequently visit our quarters carrying an over-sized tome of the Talmud, sometimes several tomes. Often we simply had to laugh when we saw this Christian struggling along with several volumes of the Talmud under his arm in order to engage us in debate. While a devout Christian, Delitzsch was also a philo-Semite in the fullest sense of the term. I learned much from him; I learned especially from him how to properly commemorate Tisha’ah be-Av…
Read the full translation here.
Hat tip to Aaron Eby.