17 Tammuz
Prison walls are meant to be broken. Holy city walls are meant to be reinforced.
The walls are breached and the destruction has begun. It is a fast day and thus begins the saddest three-week period of the year. How does one reinforce the holy walls of a holy city? Look to see what broke it: the hammers of hate and the axes of falsity; the battering rams of shallow coarseness and the ladders of foreign substances. Thus, the torches of love and the bricks of truth, the innocence of purity and the faith in the One shall build it back up. Amen.
The Intimate Estrangement
Linking G-d’s bond with the Jews as a marriage with the ten haftarot called “the Three of Rebuke and the Seven of Consolation” in explaining the galut/exile.
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Pinchas: The Best Way to Commemorate September 11
As we begin to commemorate the tragic events of September 11, we are also entering an important period of Jewish mourning: The beginning of the Three Weeks.
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The Seven Weeks of Comfort
Learn about the Seven Weeks of Comfort that follow the Three Weeks of Affliction. In these weeks we are comforted over the destruction and loss of the Holy Temple, and they prepare us for rebirth and renewal in the upcoming New Year.
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The 120-Day Version of the Human Story
We have three forty-day periods: the First Tablets, the Broken Tablets, and the Second Tablets. Learn the spiritual meaning of the broken tablets.
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The Five Roots of Trauma
The three weeks between the first attack on the Holy Temple and the final destruction are a time concentrate on healing by addressing the root of the issue.
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Three Weeks of Pain, Seven of Comfort, & Two of Return
Cracks in our systems shake us up; but a crack also exposes what lies within. We can be demoralized by the cracks or we can attempt to look between the cracks and see an emerging larger picture.
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The Crack In Your Psyche: When Was Dissonance Born?
Is your life fragmented and splintered, with various voices and demands tugging you in different directions? Do you often feel like damaged goods? What can we do about it?
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Back to the USSR: Dispatch from Moscow
How does Russian history affect our Jewish lives today?
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