The Three Weeks is an annual mourning period that falls out in the summer. This is when we mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple and our launch into a still-ongoing exile.
The period begins on the 17th of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, a fast day that marks the day when the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Romans in 69 CE. It reaches its climax and concludes with the fast of the 9th of Av, the date when both Holy Temples were set aflame. This is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, and it is also the date that many other tragedies befell our people .
The Kotel is called the Wailing Wall because of all the tears that Jews have shed over the centuries in front of this holy place. Tears of prayer, pain, hope and joy. There has been so much crying at the Wall that some say the stones themselves look like they are crying...
Again some working with
stones such as building and creatingspaces during the month of Av, to keep in mind the stones of the Temple, the stones that can rebuilt, the stones of the Kotel.
In Solomon’s Temple, there were two places reserved for the Holy Ark: One in the Chamber of the Holy of Holies, and one hidden deep beneath that chamber. There are two places to find G‑d’s presence in all its glory.
One is in the most holy of chambers, beyond the place of light and heavenly incense. There G‑d Himself could be found by the most perfect of mortals on the most sublime day of the year.
Today, we cannot enter that place. But there is another place, beyond catacombs and convoluted mazes, deep within the bowels of the earth—and yet always accessible to those who will make the journey.
There, those whose faces are charred with the ashes of failure, their hands bloody from scraping through dirt and stone, their clothes torn from falling again and again, and their hearts ripped by bitter tears—there, in that subterranean darkness, they are blinded by the light of the hidden things of G‑d . . .
. . . until that Presence will shine for all of us, forever.
Likkutei Sichot, vol. 26, pp. 156ff
The period begins on the 17th of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, a fast day that marks the day when the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Romans in 69 CE. It reaches its climax and concludes with the fast of the 9th of Av, the date when both Holy Temples were set aflame. This is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, and it is also the date that many other tragedies befell our people .
The Kotel is called the Wailing Wall because of all the tears that Jews have shed over the centuries in front of this holy place. Tears of prayer, pain, hope and joy. There has been so much crying at the Wall that some say the stones themselves look like they are crying...
In Solomon’s Temple, there were two places reserved for the Holy Ark: One in the Chamber of the Holy of Holies, and one hidden deep beneath that chamber. There are two places to find G‑d’s presence in all its glory.
One is in the most holy of chambers, beyond the place of light and heavenly incense. There G‑d Himself could be found by the most perfect of mortals on the most sublime day of the year.
Today, we cannot enter that place. But there is another place, beyond catacombs and convoluted mazes, deep within the bowels of the earth—and yet always accessible to those who will make the journey.
There, those whose faces are charred with the ashes of failure, their hands bloody from scraping through dirt and stone, their clothes torn from falling again and again, and their hearts ripped by bitter tears—there, in that subterranean darkness, they are blinded by the light of the hidden things of G‑d . . .
. . . until that Presence will shine for all of us, forever.
Likkutei Sichot, vol. 26, pp. 156ff
