Shabbat Shalom ~ Devarim 2025

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On Saturday night September 13th WJC will host Mijal Bitton, spiritual leader, scholar, and community advocate. Learn more about Mijal here and about our moving and spiritual Leil Selichot program and service here.

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Shalom WJC Family,

It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful and simple the world looks from the top of a mountain – calm, serene, simple, and whole. Over the last few weeks I was able to get that perspective from several peaks in Vermont and Maine and Upstate NY. I want to once again express my gratitude for this time in the summer to travel and reset my mind and spirit. I feel grateful for the experience and grateful to be back with you again.

Of course, once you come back down to earth (or sea-level), all the confusion, contradictions, complexity, and brokenness of everyday life come pouring back in. It almost feels appropriate to be returning just in time for Tisha B’Av, which starts Saturday night. Tisha B’Av is the saddest day on the Hebrew calendar and a day full of contradictions all its own. On Tish B’Av we mourn the destruction of the First and Second Temples 2,611 years ago and 1,955 years ago, respectively. So broken up are we about these tragedies, the senseless loss of life, the symbolic rupture of our relationship with God, that we fast all day, forgo leather shoes, and recite poems of woe and hardship from throughout our history.

Here’s the thing. I don’t know too many people who actually want the Temple back again. Animal sacrifice is an unappealing form of worship and with all due respect to our beloved Kohanim, I prefer the leadership of the rabbis (What, me biased?). So, what exactly are we mourning on Tish B’Av? What are we longing to recreate if not the Temple?

I think it is the destruction of the ability of Jews to live in community. Community is the ability to live constructively with others even when we disagree or hold very different beliefs. It is not the same as tribalism – gathering with those who are the same. Community takes respect, and love, and patience, and of course, communication. There are many stories in the Talmud about why the Second Temple was destroyed and at the root of many of them is the inability for Jews to live in community. It is something I think about a lot as I look at the Jewish community today, not to mention the larger communities in which we live.

As rabbi of WJC, I see my role primarily as a creator of community. It is why I try to avoid telling others what to think or what to do, but rather try to cultivate an environment that becomes a catalyst for communal creativity and a safe space to be challenged by and to learn from one another. Communal destruction is the saddest thing Judaism can imagine.

Our Tisha B’Av commemoration will begin with the customary pre-fast meal on Saturday evening at 7pm in the Activity Center. After dinner we will move to the chapel where, in honor of the topic above, I will be teaching one of the Talmudic stories about destruction of the Second Temple and we will explore what it can teach us about our communities today, particularly in these broken times, and even how to avoid the same fate.

Services will continue with the chanting of the Book of Lamentations and the reciting of a few Kinot, those poems about tragedies of our past. The custom is to fast until Sunday night, this year until 8:39pm. We also refrain from wearing leather shoes (when Shabbat goes right into Tisha B’Av the custom is to leave appropriate shoes at the synagogue before Shabbat starts) and bathing.

On Sunday morning we do the morning service without wearing tefillin – we put them on for the afternoon service which will be at a special time, 1:30pm. We do not reconvene for the evening, maariv, service on Tisha B’Av night.

Of course, prior to all of that we will have another beautiful summer Shabbat in the chapel, including Dr. Mark Russ presenting the Dvar Torah, “Dissent and Hope: The Spy Story Revisited.”

See you in shul!

RJA