Today is the first day of the Jewish month of Tammuz, also considered Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of the month. This month is typically known as a season for sorrow, corresponding to the dry months of summer that provided scant hope for our agrarian ancestors. The sages later designated the month as one of mourning, commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem’s city walls by the Romans in 69 C.E. through a fast observed on the 17th day of the month. The observance opens a three-week period of mourning and culminates in a fast observed on the Ninth of Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Holy Temple.

Mourning is a necessary component of Jewish life. It enables us to remember those who traveled alongside us and sustained us. It enables us to acknowledge and hold dear the losses we’ve suffered, both as individuals and as a people. And it enables us to make meaning, incorporating our precious memories of love and loss into our future lives.

For me, too, this is a season of mourning. Today, this nation—a nation I pledged my own life to defend on several occasions—is less free than it was last Thursday.

However, as I sat at Leo Baeck Temple this past Sunday night, listening to female clergy members from Reform temples across Los Angeles—including our own Rabbi Laufer—contextualize last week’s release of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, as well as the flurry of opportunistic state legislation that accompanied it, I remembered that mourning represents a vital part of the process. Through words of comfort, words of resolve, and words of song, our tradition’s leaders launched us toward making meaning of our losses and incorporating them into a new future, one we must fight for together.

Your clergy is here to help you mourn, and, as you begin to take the next steps, to incorporate grief into meaningful change. For more information on what you can do now to help women already put in harm’s way by Dobbs v. Jackson, or to help fight for religious and reproductive freedoms for all Americans, please visit the National Council of Jewish Women.

–Rabbi Josh Knobel​​​​​