Rabbi Neil Tow
This week’s Torah portion is Pinchas: Numbers 25:10 – 30:1
“On the ninth of Av it was decreed that our ancestors should not enter the land, the Temple was destroyed, the first and the second time, Betar was captured, and the city was plowed up. When Av enters, they limit their rejoicing.” (Mishnah Ta’anit 4:6)
This Shabbat we announce the coming month of Av, and next week will begin the nine days leading up to Tisha B’Av — our day of lament. In addition to the tragedies mentioned in the Mishnah, later Jewish tradition remembers many other events tied to the ninth of Av — expulsions from England and Spain, the start of World War I and the mass deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942.
Rabbi Yisrael Lipschitz in his commentary to the last part of the Mishnah explains that Av has been designated as a month of troubles for the Jewish people since the sin of the spies as mentioned in the first part of the Mishnah.
This characterization of a summer day like the ninth of Av does not fit in with our perception of an August summer day. Here in the Mid-Atlantic region, August is a time of camp and swimming pools, barbecues, vacations and a long school break. It is a lighthearted time of slower living and rainy afternoons.
In the Middle East, however, the summer is much different. Rabbi Arthur Waskow explains it this way: “[The summer is] hot as a furnace, dry as the tomb. A shower, a breeze are forgotten memories. The earth is panting in exhaustion. … And people are exhausted too. … The whole world is being put to the torch.”
These nearly two years since Oct. 7, 2023, have cast a shadow over our lives through all seasons and holidays. With hostages still being held, IDF soldiers still fighting and dying in the field, the barrages from Iran and terror attacks, the summer has not felt as carefree and joyful. The violence that occurred in Washington, D.C., in Colorado and elsewhere around the world has shown us that the dark shadows of violence and suffering are extending far beyond the furnace of the Middle Eastern summer.
How can we navigate these times? What can we do to help and support one another?
The Mishnah gives us hints.
The last sentence is written in the plural: “When Av enters, they limit their rejoicing. …”
First, this teaching is about all of us rather than each of us as individuals. All too often we forget we’re a people who are a family. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observes, “The Jewish people remains a family, often divided, always argumentative, but bound in a common bond of fate nonetheless.” Each of us does not have to carry the burdens of sorrow, nor of advocacy, alone.
Next, the Mishnah tells us to reduce our simcha, not to remove it completely from our lives. And so, let’s strengthen ourselves through an Av type simcha: through acts of loving kindness and more. Let’s walk together in our local “Run for Their Lives” gatherings; let’s support those who are traumatized by Oct. 7 and its aftermath; let’s continue to push back against anti-Jewish hate in all its forms; and let’s take some time each week to study the weekly Torah portion, the stories that have grounded and guided us for millennia.
And finally, may we strive for an existence in the spirit of Rebbe Nachman who teaches us it is a mitzvah to live in simcha always, whether the Av type of simcha that gets us through the dark times or the ebullient simcha of Adar that we pray we all, our whole Jewish family, can once again experience to its fullest degree.
Rabbi Neil Tow is the rabbi of Congregation Sha’are Shalom in Leesburg, Virginia.
