Tisha b’Av
“The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments... Judaism is a religion of time, aiming at the sanctification of time.”
-Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Jewish Time is like a slinky.
Each year is a cycle, where we return to the same points of time - to each holiday - year after year, yet each year we climb higher and higher. We return to the point of Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, Channukah, Purim, Pesach, Shevuos, Tisha B’av, etc, and then we begin again, another year.We return to these points, each holidays is a nexus in time, which marks a historical biblical or rabbinic event. Yet instead of simply remembering or commemorating a past event, we return to each holiday - with an invitation to explore or relive the energy or theme of the time, in the present moment.The holidays bring us each year to explore universal themes, which related to our current lived human experience. They act as a spiritual technology, which invites us to attune to the inner work of the time. The calendar thus becomes the gift of guidance as we reflect, grow, heal. The calendar becomes an ancient compass for our lives lived. It is our guide, our practice, our medicine, our healing art. And so Heschel described Judaism as the “art of significant forms in time, as architecture of time”. We each go through the yearly journey individually, guided in our personal lives, and more importantly, we go through is together, collectively as a community. Generations have been guided by the Jewish Calendar, by sacred time.
So where are we now?
We are entering Tisha Be’av, 9av. A day known as a time of destruction, of sadness, of mourning the loss of our temples, crying over Jerusalem.I didn’t personally feel the loss of our holy temples until spending time in temples in India. Completely blown away by the power of the service and devotion, I stood in one of the temples and I wept. Missing the embodied practice that once defined our Jewish faith. Missing the physical feeling of concentrated holiness, which was smashed and burnt and destroyed. Feeling, for the first time, a sense of exile.Yet, even if the loss of the temples feels abstract or inaccessible, this holiday is inviting us to attune, tenderly, to whatever precious part of our own lives that feels lost, broken, destroyed.Invited by generations of weeping, the Talmud teaches us that this is a time of humbling or lowering our own Joy (or a chassidic reading of this passage, to lower ourselves, with Joy). On one hand, we mourn historical or national tragedies of our collective traumas- from the biblical story of the spies in the desert, to tears for the loss of our holy temples, the Spanish Inquisition, or from the world wars, and so on.Yet more personally, we are invited now to cry tears from whatever it is that moves us personally to mourn. Be it the political, the ecological, the relational, the familial, the spiritual. Whatever it is in your life that breaks your heart - take the time to be with that. To let it in, even just a little. To cry about dreams that feel lost, dignity that feels crushed, love that we yearn for, company that we miss. Slowly, with love, and in ritual with our community - we face our pain, instead of hiding, denying, or numbing ourselves.
This is the teaching of our calendar for this time. This is our container for growth.
And, it is through this sensitivity and mourning, this care and process, that we can touch the preciousness of life itself. Our tears water our encounter with life, reminding us what we hold dear, releasing what is no longer, gently nourishing our vitality and resilience. As we encounter loss, we expand ourselves to contain the experience. We affirm life, in all of its qualities. We care for ourselves and for each other in the pain. And so we expand our humanness. And so we birth ourselves anew and grow more whole, more integrated, fuller.My dear friend Hadar Cohen described it well, “to sit. to mourn. to cry. to scream. to love through it all. that is what av asks of us. there is no where for us to go other than towards this intimate relation with our own pain - individual and collective. spirituality comes from this courage to confront what we seek to avoid. in facing our pain, we face God... We do not know what is on other side of grief. but we do know that without sinking into the hold of grief, we spiral around numbness, ignorance, and repression... God provides us a choice always - do we let grief rock us?”
And Psalms (126:5) reminds us, הַזֹּרְעִ֥ים בְּדִמְעָ֗ה בְּרִנָּ֥ה יִקְצֹֽרוּ׃ what is sown in tears, is reaped in joy.
Thus our sages teach that our holiday of mourning one day will become a celebration. Redemption is born out of this process. Mourning blossoms Life. We create space for the new. Alchemy.The art piece that I have shared here was made together in collaboration with artist Jessica Tamar Deutsch from New York. This piece combines delicate clay vessels, sprouting plants, photography and handwritten teachings from Jerusalem. It elaborates on the roots and wisdom of this time, and it invites us to attune and to journey together. I’m delighted to be sharing art, teachings, and embodied practice as part of The Art of Living Jewishly. Stay tuned as we journey together, twice a month, with sacred time as our guide.In blessing, Rabbi Bluth.