Shabbat Pinchas

Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Intern Aliza Schwartz calls us to lean into a season of sadness as we approach Tisha B’Av, knowing that a cycle of joy is coming.

“With the safety and surety of knowing that everything—not just pain, but everything—is temporary, that we’re in the midst of a cycle, that we have three weeks of sadness, and then seven weeks of comfort, that in 10 minutes the timer will go off, that leaning into the sadness can be over… [I invite us into] the risk of leaning into it, to feeling the emotion.”

She continues, encouraging “doing it together, to crying out on an individual level, on a communal level as Jews, on a national level. Leaning into grief is an important part of the emotional arc, and I think our calendar, again with the safety of the container and the edges which contain it, [allows us to do that].”

Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Intern Aliza Schwartz delivered this drashah at Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday, 7 July, 2023 / 19 Tamuz 5783.

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