Thinking about Tisha B’Av, which begins tonight, my colleague Rabbi Lisa Hochberg-Miller wrote
We can respond both personally and collectively. The personal asks us to look back at the destructive moments, the earth-shaking moments in our own lives, when we weren’t sure we had the ability, the direction, the drive to go on…but then did. It is the time to remind ourselves of our resiliency, our own ability to overcome, move forward, learn and adapt. The collective asks us to hold dearly a 5,000 year history—challenged by times of expansion, and haunted by times of calamity.
The days leading up to Tisha B’Av, in our liturgy and tradition, are meant to be days of vulnerability, of uncertainty, of tension and anxiety. It feels like we have been living this preparation for months now; perhaps we do not need the reminder.
But these days are also supposed to be days of marshaling resilience, gathering strength, and imagining a future. Throughout our history, from our catastrophes have come great creativity, even creation. For ours is a tradition that says that on the day the Temple was destroyed, the Messiah was born. So too, must we imagine rebirth and new possibility—out of our vulnerability, our uncertainty, our tension, and our anxiety.
— Rabbi Sari Laufer