Listen to the full reflection:

As we enter Tisha B'Av, the day the two Temples fell, we stand before a very solemn day, a day bound up with destruction, with what is not yet here on the collective level and in our own lives. And this year in particular, we are being called to become aware of where we truly stand, in our bodies, in our hearts, and in our minds.

We have been cracked open this year. By war, here in Israel and around the world. By political turmoil. By the rise of antisemitism. By watching the old structures break as something new pushes its way in. So I want to offer that this year the avoda of Tisha B'Av, the inner work of the day, is not to avoid, not to run, not to reach for the familiar band-aids we are so used to reaching for, the watching, the eating, the endless distraction. This year the work is to go inward.

Tisha B'Av offers us the deepest, rawest meeting, face to face with the place of destruction. And beneath that meeting is another one, face to face with Hashem, who was there, who is there, and who will always be there. It asks us to pay attention to what is quietly growing underneath, to what is sprouting where the eye cannot yet see.

This is not a day of depression or despair. There is no desperation here. It is a day of holding. Of holding space for ourselves, of letting the quick external fixes fall away so that we can become present to the true strength that lives underneath them.

We are taught that the foundations of the first and second Temple are still there on the Har HaBayit. And the third Beit HaMikdash, which descends from Heaven and at the same time rises from the earth, from everything planted across the generations, from Avraham, from David, from Shlomo, and from what we are building now, both together and each of us alone, is already completely intact. On the deepest level, there is no destruction. What we are living through is a phase that cannot hold, because Hashem is lifting us to a higher frequency, moving us beyond our old paradigms, as individuals and as a people.

Tisha B'Av gives us the resonance to be able to sit. Not to search for answers, but simply to sit with a collective pain that can feel unbearable, and a personal pain that can feel unbearable. And yet, what is unbearable? It is our perception that it cannot be borne. In truth, Hashem bears everything, and can bear anything. He is asking us to transcend our limited temple, our limited self, and to allow something far greater to come through.

This is why Tisha B'Av is, in truth, a holiday. It is destined to become the highest holiday of the year. Yirmiyahu calls it a mo'ed, a festival, "kara alai mo'ed." It is a day on which we do not say tachanun. It is the day on which Mashiach is born. At the very point of the destruction, the Talmud teaches, Mashiach has already been born.

So Tisha B'Av invites us into this space of sitting, not evading, and courageously allowing Hashem to work through His vision, and for His vision to become our vision. Destruction holds within it the seed of the greatest growth. That is why Mashiach is called tzemach, a sprout. It grows slowly, and then, in the blink of an eye, it can shoot up into a strong tree, its branches and leaves rustling in the wind.

And so too with our own tzemach, with the quiet sprouting on each of our individual paths. May we recognize that our growth is guided. And may this Tisha B'Av, and this whole year, reveal the greatest holiday the world has been waiting for, the greatest growth, the most beautiful Tree of Life, and the coming of Mashiach.

Wishing you joy, light, wholeness and peace.