Dear all,
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?
Wishing you joy in the journey —
Rabbi Rachel
