RJ Blog

By Rabbi Stacey Blank What can Tisha B’Av mean today? Tisha B’Av is not a day ordained by G-d in the Torah, but rather it is an observance that was created by people in reaction to an event: The destruction of the First Temple.  This was a tragic and traumatic time for the Jewish people and the leaders felt a need to create a new ritual – to help people recover from the trauma, to integrate the experience in order to move on, and  later on, to commemorate the experience to preserve the memory.

By P.J. Schwartz The ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av has come to symbolize a day of tragedy for the Jewish people. Tradition tells us that both the First and Second Temples were destroyed on Tisha B’Av, and history has shown that other prominent events resulting in catastrophe for the Jews occurred on or close to this day as well: the Jewish expulsions from England and Spain, the declaration of war on Germany leading to World War II and the Holocaust, and the mass extermination at Treblinka of Jewish deportees from the Warsaw Ghetto. As a result, the [...]

by Rabbi Lisa Edwards Rabbi Oren Hayon teaches: “Reading Deuteronomy is a very different experience from reading the rest of Torah. Here, the omniscient narrator of the earlier books has vanished, replaced abruptly by Moses’s subjective voice. Deuteronomy, as its Greek name indicates, is a second telling: Moses’s own reiteration of earlier events. In this book, we experience the Jewish past only through Moses’s narrow perspective, which frustrates and disorients us at times. And yet it is this particular characteristic of Deuteronomy that makes it deeply relevant and meaningful for the formation of spirituality in a postbiblical diaspora.” Rabbi Hayon [...]

By Rabbi Jordi Schuster Battis When you have come into the land that the Eternal your God is giving to you as a heritage, and you have possessed it and settled there, you shall take from among all the first fruits of the ground that you bring forth from your land— which the Eternal your God has given you— and you shall put them in the basket and go to the place that the Eternal your God will choose to make God’s name dwell. – Deuteronomy 26:1-2

Rabbi Norman KochTemple Sholom, New Milford, CT During the summer months the Torah’s calendar contains no holidays save the weekly blessing of Shabbat. However, post biblical historical realities bring us a most significant commemoration on Tishah B’Av, the Ninth of Av. It was on this date in the heat of summer in the year 586 B.C.E. that the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. On the same date some six and a half centuries later, in the year 70 C.E., the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem.Twice in our long, unbroken journey through history we found our national sovereignty [...]

by Yehudit Werchow “And I will bring them, and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God in truth and in righteousness.” (Zechariah 8:8). There are few versions in Jewish Literature that narrate the mysterious accounts of R’ Shimon Ben Yochai while he was hiding from the Romans. According to the version that appears in the Babylonian Talmud1, after the Romans heard his harsh critique on them and their actions, R’ Shimon Ben Yochai and his son had to go into hiding. While hiding both were engaged in [...]

by Jordan HelfmanOriginally posted in Ten Minutes of Torah At our URJ summer camps, we think of what the Aims and Objectives should be for scheduled moment of our camper’s lives while they are in our care. Liturgy is no different.  For each prayer experience that we offer, we think about how we want our campers to be transformed by that experience, be it through a jam-session morning worship service that wakes up campers for an exciting day or a meditative Sh’ma vocalized by a bunk at bedtime. As a ‘Camp Rabbi’ or a t’filah director on a Union for [...]

My first summer at URJ Camp Harlam I was given the task of leading a service for Tisha B’Av. I grabbed a Gates of Prayer out of the camp sifriyah (library) and simply followed its lead. I had trouble relating in my heart to the ninth of Av as one of sorrow and destitute, even though I knew at a cognitive level that Tisha B’Av marked the destruction of The Temples which once stood in Jerusalem.  For me, the Kotel (also referred to as the Western Wall, the only remaining wall from the once mighty and majestic Temple built by King Solomon) was a [...]

by Rabbi Dan MoskowitzTemple Judea, Tarzana CASermon given on July 16, 2010. Also available as a podcast on iTunes. Tomorrow we will read Parshat D’varim the beginning of the last book of the Torah when Moses gathers the Israelites around him and shares with them his final words of advice before he dies. In that moment Moses reflects on how he did it, how he managed to lead 600,000 Israelites through the desert without them killing him or each other. And then he remember the critical moment when he asked God for guidance. He asked “Aicha – How can I [...]

by Rabbi Daniel R. AllenExecutive Director of ARZA In just a couple of hours Jerusalem will be filled with the readings of Lamentations. You have your choice of our congregations, dozens of readings at the Tayelet overlooking the Old City, the Windmill just off King David Street. You can hear Eichah with any accent- Morrocan, Yemenite, Traditional Ashkenaz, and American from the many, many NFTY, USY and Ramah groups that are here. It is actually quite a social evening after the readings as folks run into each other as they discover who is visiting, or friends who live here whom [...]

I will hear Parshat D’varim on Shabbat and Lamentations on Tuesday in Jerusalem. I am here to participate in the effort to stop the Rotem Conversion Bill from passing in the Knesset. How ironic it is that the bill was voted out of committee on the first of Av and will be brought for first reading just after Tisha b’Av (the 9th of Av), the fast day on which the Jewish world commemorates the loss of the two ancient Temples. One of the reasons our ancient Rabbis gave for their destruction was sinat chinam - the internal arguing of one Jew with another. Rabbi David [...]

by Phyllis Sommer(Originally posted on Ima On and Off the Bima) the month beginsAv*aleph then bet sadness and joydestruction and painrememberedheld ontofelt but there is hope.yes, hope. will Change begin in Av? we begin with aleph-betit is the start of it all. so too does hope and joy come out of the ashesout of the desire forrepairof theworld