Stephen Wise Temple and Adat Ari El Erev Tisha B’Av Services

Saturday, Aug. 6, 2022 | 8 p.m. | Adat Ari El Temple

On Saturday, Aug. 6, Stephen Wise Temple Rabbi David Woznica and Cantorial Intern Andrew Paskil will participate in a shared Erev Tisha B’Av program with Jewish clergy from throughout the greater Los Angeles area.

Marking the end of The Three Weeks of Affliction, Tisha B’Av is a day of mourning and fasting commemorating the destruction of the first and second Temples. Our tradition holds that it marks the exact day the Romans destroyed the second Temple in 70 C.E.

Rabbi Leslie Alexander, a teacher at the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning at Wise, will direct the evening of study, reflection, and prayer. The program, co-sponsored by Adat Ari El, Stephen Wise Temple, and Valley Beth Shalom, will begin at 8 p.m. in Adat Ari El’s Labowe Outdoor Chapel. Those who choose to attend will receive yahrzeit candles to light and keep next to them, though the program will be livestreamed.

The theme for the evening is “Overcoming Sadness and Embracing the Joys of Life.” As Rabbi Alexander writes:

Everybody is sad sometimes, everybody mourns, we all experience difficult times when we just want to crawl into bed under the covers.

After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, with the anchor of their spiritual life a pile of rocks, with their whole community in tatters,  in insecurity, fear and loss of freedom, the people fell into a deep mourning. With their life as they knew it gone, they didn’t want to do anything that gave them pleasure before.

On this Tisha B’Av, in between reading chapters of Eicha, Lamentations, we will join together and learn a part of Talmud that confronts that inclination to mourn by shutting down and we will learn not only about how we fall into sadness, but how, despite trying life occurrences, we are called upon to experience the beauty of life every day.

The rabbis of the Talmud from centuries ago will be our guides in moving from pain to positivity, a Tisha B’Av learning that can bring us closer to the real people who lived that destruction. We can open our hearts to them as they convey a message through the generations of Jewish life to us.