There are seven weeks between Tisha b'Av and Rosh Hashanah. Forty-nine days between the spiritual low point of our year, and the newest of new beginnings.  

Reb Zalman z"l taught that these 49 days parallel the 49 days of the Omer between Pesach and Shavuot. And Rabbi David Markus this year gave me a way to see how the parallel extends too to the themes of those two great festivals, which we now recapitulate in reverse. In the spring we move from liberation (Pesach) to revelation (Shavuot). As summer prepares to turn, he writes:

Tisha b'Av focuses us on what's buried in darkness (revelation), and in seven weeks Rosh Hashanah will open wide the teshuvah gates of spiritual renewal (liberation). Our summer/fall journey is our spring journey in reverse: we return to our beginnings.

During the Omer count, many of us focus on seven qualities that we and God share. Sometimes we call these middot, character-qualities. Sometimes we call them the seven "lower" sefirot, the spheres or realms or channels through which divinity flows and is modulated into different forms. As white light is revealed through a prism to contain all of the colors of the rainbow, so God's Oneness is revealed through this prism to contain these seven colors, these seven qualities, in which we too partake. 

During the Omer count, we begin with a week of chesed, lovingkindness, and then work our way all the way to malchut (Shechinah, immanent divine Presence.) During this reverse count we begin with a week of Shechinah / malchut, and then work our way back "up the ladder" to chesed / love. (Here's a brief description of these seven qualities from R' Laura Duhan Kaplan, here's another way of thinking about them from Iyyun, and R' Simon Jacobson describes them in emotional terms.)

Tisha b'Av was Monday night and Tuesday. Now we've entered the first of the seven weeks between Tisha b'Av and the Days of Awe. This is our week of malchut: immanent, indwelling divine Presence. God with us, within us, among us. The divine feminine, the Shechinah. This is also the first of the seven weeks of consolation (see The Seven Weeks of Comfort.) After facing brokenness on Tisha b'Av, now we open ourselves to healing, to comfort, to balm for our wounded places as the Days of Awe approach.

Through a four-worlds lens, I'm asking myself: what do I need to do this week in order to begin preparing myself for Rosh Hashanah? What do I need to cultivate in my heart of hearts, what do I need to feel? What do I need to ruminate and reflect on? What would best feed my soul and uplift my spirit?What do I need -- what do you need; what do we all need -- to do and feel and think and be during these next 49 days in order to reach the new year with a whole and open heart, ready to be transformed?

Cross-posted to my congregational From the Rabbi blog.

WATER FROM THE SOURCE

No blessing is so fervent
as the one over water
fresh from the faucet

adorned with ice cubes
and a quarter of a lemon
at the end of Tisha b'Av.

The crunch of snap peas
cold from the fridge
and sweet as sugar

their texture, crisp
and bright against the tongue
almost brings me to tears.

A day immersed in trauma,
the fallen temple of justice
mothers wailing for their sons --

our fast can't bring
children back to life,
rebuild what is broken.

But it reminds me
people know this emptiness daily
and have nothing to eat.

And that other hunger
for an end to prejudice,
for a world redeemed...

God, rouse my thirst
for righteousness. Make me
care for this damaged world.

This poem's title comes from the Hebrew song וּשְׁאַבְתֶּם-מַיִם בְּשָׂשׂוֹן / ushavtem mayim b'sasson [here on YouTube], which is a setting of Isaiah 12:3.

(See also Amos 5:24, "Let justice flow like waters, righteousness like a mighty stream.")

It is traditional Jewish practice to fast from both food and water during Tisha b'Av, when we remember the two fallen Temples and mourn the brokenness of creation.

On "the fallen temple of justice" and "mothers wailing for their sons," see: George Zimmerman, Not Guilty: Blood on the Leaves by Jelani Cobb in the New Yorker and Trayvon Martin and the Irony of American Justice by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic.

Image credit: by gnuckx, licensed under Creative Commons.

As we move now into the seven weeks of consolation between Tisha b'Av and Rosh Hashanah, may our Tisha b'Av galvanize us to build a more healed and redeemed world.

Here's the d'var Torah I offered this morning at my shul.

נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ עַמִּי יֹאמַר אֱלֹהֵיכֶם -- Nachamu, nachamu ami, yomer eloheichem.

"Comfort, comfort My people, says your God."

Today is Shabbat Nachamu, named after the first word of today's haftarah portion, Isaiah 40:1-26. Nachamu is in the plural; it means "y'all offer comfort." Or, in the locution you might recognize from Handel, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people."

Last weekend brought Tisha b'Av, when we immerse deep in the realities of human suffering and the brokenness of our world. The fall of the first Temple, and our people becoming refugees in Babylon. The fall of the second Temple, which must have been even more heartbreaking than the first. And a dozen other tragedies and traumas throughout our history.

For some of us, Tisha b'Av is a time to remember the suffering of the Jewish people. For others, it offers a more generalized occasion for mourning: the starvation and cruelty and rape described in Lamentations sounds like every war in history, from the Rwandan genocide to what's happening now in Syria. For still others, Tisha b'Av is a time to mourn the suffering of our planet, which burns and suffers poisons when humanity chooses progress over sustainability.

Today we take a deep breath and let go of all of that sorrow. Today is Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat when we are instructed to bring comfort.

There are seven Shabbatot between Tisha b'Av and Rosh Hashanah. These are called, in our tradition, the Seven Weeks of Consolation. Having delved into the depths of human trauma and suffering on Tisha b'Av, now we are called to draw on what we learned there in order to propel us in teshuvah, repentance, re/turn, turning-toward-God.

As Rabbi Alan Lew writes, spiritual practice doesn't remove what hurts in the world. It doesn't take away our suffering, whether personal or national, chronic illness or the fall of the Twin Towers or death which comes too soon. But spiritual practice can allow us to see what happens more clearly, and to respond to it with compassion and with love.

One of my role models in this is a Unitarian minister named Kate Braestrup. Kate is author of a number of terrific books, including Here If You Need Me, in which she tells the story of how her husband Drew, a Maine State Trooper, was killed in a car accident, leaving Kate widowed with four young children. Here is a quote from that book, which I have returned to many times.

My children asked me, "Why did Dad die?"

I told them, "It was an accident. There are small accidents, like knocking over your milk at the dinner table. And there are large accidents, like the one your Dad was in. No one meant it to happen. It just happened. And his body was too badly damaged in the accident for his soul to stay in it any more, and so he died.

God does not spill milk. God did not bash the truck into your father's car. Nowhere in scripture does it say, 'God is car accident,' or 'God is death.' God is justice and kindess, mercy, and always - always - love. So if you want to know where God is in this or in anything, look for love."

Where do we find God when there is tragedy? For Reverend Braestrup, God is in the loving hands which prepare a casserole and deliver it to your door when something unimaginable has happened; God is in the loving arms which hold you as you weep.

Let me expand on that a little bit.

God is in the friend who offers to hold a newborn so its exhausted mother can take a shower and get some sleep. God is in those who gather for shiva so the mourner can say kaddish in the presence of a minyan. God is in the friend who makes a pasta salad and brings it to the home of a woman whose husband has slipped a disc and can't get out of bed. God is in the parent who rocks a croupy child in a steamy bathroom in the middle of the night. We find God in our acts of love for one another.

When you listen to someone pour out their worries, you are God's ears, listening. When you place a hand on someone's shoulderblade, or offer an embrace, you are God's hands, soothing. When you make meatloaf for Take and Eat, your hands are God's hands, providing sustenance. And when you offer comfort, you are God's presence, comforting.

This is how I understand נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ עַמִּי יֹאמַר אֱלֹהֵיכֶם -- Nachamu, nachamu ami, yomer eloheichem. "Y'all comfort -- really comfort -- My people, says Your God." It's our job to comfort one another. And when we do, we bring God's presence into the world and into our lives.