How do we face Tisha B’Av in this fragile moment? Council Member Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum argues that the greatest truth about the Jewish people is that we are rebels of hope. In her view, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar becomes a moment of collective responsibility to re-establish the covenant of our destiny of where we are and what we are building. Above all, Tisha B’Av is a day for bringing hope and courageous goodness into the world.

We stand at a very fateful moment in Jewish and world history, and all of us are feeling the weight of everything unfolding around us. This Erev Tisha B’Av, the whole world is trembling. We are living in a time of fragility and trauma, and more than anything, I find myself looking at the importance of the relationships between us as people and between us and the world.

Because that is what our Jewish sages did when their world was trembling, and they taught us to do the same. Our sages discussed the centrality of faith, hope, and responsibility over and over again, often through one word that comes up repeatedly: Ayeka, where are you?! Which is the first question Hashem (God) asks Adam in the Garden of Eden, and since then, asks all of us. When Moses says, “Eicha esa levadi, how will I bear it alone?”, our teachers say he is actually asking us that same question…

Read the full piece in Voice of the People