Thread by @Delafina777

So last Friday was Rosh Chodesh Av, the new moon (and thus, start) of the Jewish month of Av. The month is best known for the fast day of Tisha B'Av, the 9th of Av, on which (supposedly) both Temples were destroyed, in 586 BCE and 70 CE.

It's also the day of the year on which numerous other tragedies are said to have befallen the Jewish people. A no-good, very bad day.

In contemporary non-Orthodox Judaism, it has become a day to mourn all disasters caused by failures of human compassion.

The three weeks between the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av are known as bein hametzarim, "between the narrow places." The name for Egypt in Hebrew is Mitzrayim, the narrow place, or the place of constriction (or the place of bondage, basically).

And, of course, Egypt figures in the Jewish imagination as the slavery from which the people were freed--the essential foundation story of the Jewish people. So while in practice, Tisha B'Av evokes Yom Kippur, it also echoes Passover as a dark mirror. We're still not free.

We're back in the narrow place, hedged in on all sides by catastrophes, tragedies, destruction.

And here in high summer, when the light is brightest, we can't drape tragedy and constriction and destruction in comforting shadows. There's a legend about a demon called Keteb-Meriri who walks around during this time of year.

The sages advised staying out of direct sunlight and direct moonlight to avoid attracting his notice. Yet they said (Lamentations Rabbah 3:29) that the demon himself doesn't walk in the sun or the shade, but stalks the border between shadow and light.

What strange advice, then! To tell us that a demon stalks the liminal places, yet warn us to avoid the stable ones. Somehow, to be safe from him, we have to walk the same borders he does.

And if we're going to be safe from demons, especially the noonday demon of torpor and inattention, isn't the sunlight exactly where we should be? Shouldn't we be there in the light of self-awareness and self-examination?

But maybe it's that Yom Kippur is for turning the light of awareness inward and looking at our own failings. Tisha B'Av is about focusing outward, looking at the world selflessly.

And in fact, even that name is *between* the narrow places, not in them. We might be between a rock and a hard place, but we're *moving.* Grief might be cyclical, but it's also transitional. It marks changes.

Perhaps it's that if we stay in the stable place, we're stalked by the demon of torpor, of lassitude. Instead we're called to the borders, to stalk him.

To look at our broken world, clear and sharp in the harsh light of the high summer sun, and the root out that in us which says that there's nothing we can do. To leave room to grieve, and know that grieving isn't enough.