The three Shabbatot leading up to Tisha B’Av are known as the Three Weeks of Affliction, with the haftarot (prophetic readings) filled with messages of rebuke and admonition. This Shabbat sets off a 7 week climb to Rosh Hashanah—known as the 7 weeks of consolation; we are given messages of God’s nearness, God’s return, and the endless possibilities of teshuvah, repentance. This Shabbat, in particular, is known as Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of Comfort, taken from the first lines of the haftarah, where the prophet Isaiah cries out: Nachamu, nachamu ami—comfort, comfort My people. There is a tradition in our sacred texts. For all of the pain and anger and destruction, the rabbis believe deeply in the notion of a nechemta, the notion that we do not end a reading or a teaching on a note of despair. For this reason, we finish our reading of the Book of Lamentations not with its final verse, but with [...]

If you have never heard it chanted—hearing Eicha (the Book of Lamentations, read on Tisha B’Av) is a beautiful and deeply moving experience. Better than any stage direction, Eicha itself is a guide to the experience—the shifting voices, the different perspectives, the deep and personal pain of loss. Each year, I find myself closing my eyes, and over the course of the five chapters, I allow my focus to drift from the painful words and images, and just let the sounds wash over me. Each year, I find myself centering on one or two verses, the image or the poetry that stays with me. Yeshev badad v’yidom.ulai yesh tikvah. Let him sit alone and be patient…There may yet be hope. We are, despite it all—or perhaps because of it all—well acquainted with hope. It is the anthem of our homeland; it is the message of our Torah, it is the [...]

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 [...]

In normal times, summer is the quiet season—school is out, we are travelling, relaxing, enjoy a slowed-down rhythm of long days and warm nights. Now, of course, we have been living off-rhythm for months, stripped of our regular routines and timelines. Summer feels different, just as everything feels different. And yet, while it has none of the “big” days of our tradition, summer isn’t actually quiet in "Jewish time." Summer—these months of Tammuz, Av, and Elul—is a 10-week journey from destruction to despair to hope, an inexorable march from the 17th of Tammuz to Rosh Hashanah. It is 3 weeks of rebuke, and 7 of consolation. Each day of those three weeks brings us closer to the precipice; each day of the seven carries us up and forward. Just days away from Tisha B’Av, we descend, knowing that there is nowhere to go but ahead, no way to go but [...]

Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes — The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries, And daub their natural faces unaware… — Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh Each and every morning, our tradition guides us through the Nissim B’Chol Yom, the miracles of every day. These blessings encourage us to see, and acknowledge, the miracle of waking up, taking our first breath, moving our body—all of the small acts that start our day, and often go unnoticed (or sometimes, met with a groan). Browning’s famous verse guides us to the same conclusion—miracles abound, even in—and maybe especially in—this scary time. But it is too easy to walk by, rush through, or simply ignore the possibilities. I only take issue with one verse; after a morning of berry picking with my kids, I want to suggest that plucking the berry, [...]