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A Shabbat Message 

07/29/2025 12:45:32 PM

Jul29

Rabbi Max Edwards

Shabbat Shalom,

I’m coming to you a few days early with an important announcement: 

The High Holidays begin this Saturday night. 

Okay, I will be a little more precise. The High Holiday season begins this Saturday night. Saturday night brings in the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, Tisha b’av. On Tisha b’av, we commemorate the numerous tragedies that have befallen our people since the destruction of the first Temple some 2,500 years ago. The day is filled with a number of mourning practices, a full 25 hour fast, and is treated liturgically like a shiva, a day for nothing other than grief and mourning.  

So why does Tisha b’av coronate the High Holiday season? Yeridah l’tzorech aliyah. Descent for the sake of ascent. Our Sages teach that in order to ascend to spiritual heights, we must first descend with a purpose. We must internalize the grief and pain of Jewish history as well as our own shortcomings as Jews in order to rise above it.

In other words, what goes down must go up. 

The seven Shabbatot following Tisha b’av are each filled with a special “Haftarah of consolation,” a special haftarah each week meant to comfort us in our spiritual ascent. Seven is a special number in Jewish life: Seven days of creation, seven weeks from Passover to Shavuot, the seven circles under the chuppah, the seven branches of the menorah in the Temple. Seven is fullness, completeness, perfection. And just a few days following that seventh haftarah, we reach Rosh Hashanah, ideally in a state of wholeness, ready to bring in the holidays.  

The Jewish calendar is a remarkable work of art. Meticulously laid out and crafted in order to nudge us to feel, and to participate in the rhythms of the Jewish year. To experience the coals of Tisha b’av and the blaze of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. 

Our Tisha b’av service and commemoration is this Saturday night from 8:00-9:00pm in the Conservatory. It is a unique feature of the Jewish year and I hope you’ll join us to help make our minyan (you may be our 10th) and be a part of this hour of reflection. 

Like the holidays themselves, Tisha b’av is as much about what happened to us throughout history as it is about our own actions, our successes, and more directly, our fallibility. We begin that process of cheshbon hanefesh, the accounting of our souls, this Saturday night.

Shabbat Shalom & Shanah Tovah,

Max

 

 

 

Wed, August 13 2025 19 Av 5785