HOPE WILL FIND YOU
Joy Krinsky
Remember Shabbat. Remember the mitzvot. Remember our ancestors, Sarah, Avraham, Rivka and Itzhak. Remember redemption. Remember Sinai. And the miracles in days of old. Zachor. So we are frequently reminded in Jewish life and in Jewish time and space. Much of our observance is centered on remembering. Woven into remembering are lessons and instructions and expectations, modeling how to act, how to live and how to be.
These threads of remembering also weave the future and there resides hope. So while remembering looks back, hope looks forward. They are of one cloth.
Mourning, that human outward expression of grief, dwells between the two: between remembering and hope, between the past and the future. And in fact, grief often dwells outside of time. While the prescribed Jewish rituals and practice around mourning are set in time and calendar, grief does not abide by those rules. It ebbs and flows and expands and contracts.
So too does the observance of Tisha B’ Av, which is ironic, since the name of this holy day is in fact the date itself – the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. Beyond the destruction of the first Temple, Tisha B’ Av’ s significance has expanded to include the many apocalyptic events and expulsions and pogroms and ghetto liquidations throughout generations and centuries and epochs. All have been ascribed to this singular holy date.
My first encounter with Tisha B’ Av was as an adult and as the newest member of my synagogue’ s ritual committee. At the very first committee meeting I attended I was tasked with organizing a community observance for Tisha B’ Av. So I studied, and planned, and consulted, and recruited, and
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