July 16, 2026 / 2 Av 5786 / Shabbat Chazon — Rabbi Abby Stein

There is a Hasidic story from my childhood that has been on my mind over the past few weeks - and, well, years.

For centuries, there was an old Ashkenazi “custom,” or rather prank, on Tisha B’Av, the Jewish day of mourning coming up next Wednesday evening through Thursday. Kids would collect small fuzzy burrs and throw them at mourners at synagogue who got too deeply into crying. Early Hasidic communities - never great fans of sadness, given Hasidism’s emphasis on joy - leaned into it even more. The message was simple: yes, mourning has its place, but let’s not let it consume us.

One year, the students of a Hasidic Rebbe felt the children were going too far with their pranks and disruptions. A disciple asked: “Is this really the proper way to mark the saddest day of the year? Is this how Hashem wants us to mourn?”

The Rebbe responded: “Well, if Hashem isn’t happy with the way we mourn, they can feel free to take away this day of mourning from us.”

In other words: if you don’t like how we mourn, please feel free to remove the cause of our mourning.

We are now in “The Nine Days,” from Rosh Chodesh Av through Tisha B’Av, the ultimate day of mourning in the Jewish calendar. Like most Jewish fast days, Tisha B’Av holds generations of catastrophes within it.

The point is: we have a lot to mourn - historically, and today.

On Wednesday night, Jews around the world will read Megillat Eicha, the Book of Lamentations. One verse has been getting to me especially over the past few years, while watching the most televised genocide unfold in Gaza:

חֵטְא חָטְאָה יְרוּשָׁלַ͏ִם, עַל־כֵּן לְנִידָה הָיָתָה. כָּל־מְכַבְּדֶיהָ הִזִּילוּהָ, כִּי־רָאוּ עֶרְוָתָהּ׃

“Jerusalem has greatly sinned; therefore she has become a mockery. All who honored her despise her, for they have seen her disgraced.” (Eicha 1:8)

The Lamenter is speaking of sins from 2,600 years ago. Yet the sins of the people - and especially the government - occupying Jerusalem today feel ever-present as we approach Tisha B’Av.

Since the advent of Zionism, some have hijacked this day to further nationalist goals, alongside the displacement, ethnic cleansing, and now genocide of Palestinians. It is the same ideology used here at home against immigrants, LGBTQIA+ people, our transgender healthcare, reproductive rights, and anyone whose humanity is treated as conditional.

Growing up in an anti-Zionist religious community, Tisha B’Av was, among other things, a day when we mourned Zionism. For 2,000 years, we mourned while yearning for a just world: bread for all, and roses too; every person sitting peacefully beneath their vine and fig trees; a world with no war. To call a nation-state taking us further from that dream, the fulfillment of this yearning is frankly insulting to generations of our people who yearned for justice.

Yet as we approach mourning - and the work of building that world - it is easy to feel that we are missing the mark. Are we doing enough to fight crimes against humanity committed falsely in the name of our people? Are we doing enough to fight nationalism here at home?

Last week, I was in DC, for the third year in a row, with Interfaith Action for Palestine, pushing back against Christian Zionism and Christian Nationalism. The power and beauty of interfaith organizing was on full display. Together, we visited all 535 Congressional offices. We did work that I know will have an impact.

And yet, I couldn’t stop thinking: here we are, doing this again. The genocide is ongoing. Ethnic cleansing is accelerating.

Are we doing enough? Are we mourning enough? Are we doing this correctly?

Then I hear the Hasidic Rebbe’s voice: okay, maybe we aren’t doing this perfectly. We will keep doing our best. But if any power thinks we are mourning wrongly, feel free to take away our reasons for mourning. End nationalism, capitalism, and hatred of all kinds, and we will gladly give up the mourning.

In the words of Isaiah, concluding this week’s Haftarah:

צִיּוֹן בְּמִשְׁפָּט תִּפָּדֶה, וְשָׁבֶיהָ בִּצְדָקָה׃

“Zion will be redeemed through justice, and those who return to her through righteousness.” (Isaiah 1:27)

Our mourning might not be perfect, but our actions will keep going - with joy.

- Rabbi Abby Stein

July 9th, 2026 / 24 Tammuz 5786 - Chizuk from Al-Khalil by Rabbi Jason Klein

Hello from Israel-Palestine.

In the spring of 2023, I had the opportunity to live in Hebron for about a month, where I jumpstarted my spoken Arabic and made friendships that I anticipate will last a lifetime.

I was self-conscious approaching my trip because of the history of Jewish people coming to Hebron after 1967, not leaving, and displacing Palestinian people violently. So, my foremost intention was to be a good guest.

About halfway through my time here, I realized that I was living about a fifteen-minute walk from Be’er Haram Ar-Rameh. This archaeological site is venerated as the location of Abraham & Sarah’s tent whose biblical name “Mamre” in Genesis 18 persists on street signs in English and Arabic to this day. I had already felt privileged to be so warmly welcomed at every step of my experience—perhaps a romanticized experience of living in the city that is often regarded as a distillation of the Occupation because of the heavy militarized presence of a small number of Jews who have been abetted by Israel in making their homes here. 

Little did I realize that the origin story of our mitzvah of hachnasat orchim, welcoming guests, was a three-minute taxi ride from my doorstep—the place where Abraham sat recovering from his circumcision, the place where both Sarah and Abraham laughed when three visitors announced there would be a second child—in their old age. Three years later, and several trips back, I kept feeling drawn to the site and wanted to share it with you in these weeks as Tisha B’av approaches.

The Talmud famously relates the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza (B.T. Gittin, 55b) the latter of whom was mistakenly invited to a party in place of his friend-with-a-similar-name. In a display of sinat chinam, baseless hatred, rather than quietly resolving the matter, even after Bar Kamtza offered to pay for the party, the host publicly embarrassed Bar Kamtza, an incident that our sages link to the destruction of the Second Temple.

The reason I came to Hebron to learn Arabic three years ago was because I wanted to be able to carefully listen to people’s stories and share those stories—after all, my spoken Hebrew had been proficient for a long time. And as an American Jew, I have been able to enjoy a unique freedom of movement in the land of which I thought I could take advantage to contribute some small degree to the people in the land where Israel has created so many barriers and walls. My time here sometimes inspires me to frame the Occupation through the lens of egregious violations of hospitality person by person by person rather than through the lens of political power on the international stage. It has helped me understand why, both ancient Greek and Jewish traditions have imagined the Procrustean Bed/Bed of Sodom along the way to a society’s ultimate corruption.

But just as there can be baseless hatred, there can be baseless love, love for its own sake. And just as a society can become corrupt when people neglect to be good guests or good hosts, transformative experiences are possible when people offer hospitality without condition. Witness the powerful stories of welcoming thousands of “strangers” into communities in Newfoundland on September 11, 2001, as recounted in Come From Away. 

From whistles on key chains to petitioning for policy change, from creating alliances to watching at courtroom doors, the End Deportation movement to which so JFREJers have dedicated our time and resources is at its heart an amplification of the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim that originated right here in Hebron over my shoulders. Our progenitors in Sarah and Abraham taught us from this tent to eschew xenophobia, to eschew a mentality of scarcity. 

There is enough for everyone. There is enough land. There is enough to eat. There is enough possibility. I know that the echoes of that hospitality that have never left this besieged city thousands of years later and that this call to hospitality also echoes across sea and ocean as we dream and act to deliver on our highest aspirations for America. May you always have the experience to feel welcome, just as you have shown people that they are welcome.

- Rabbi Jason Klein

July 2, 2026 / 17 Tammuz 5786 - Rabbi Lexie Botzum

What are the Three Weeks or Bein HaMetzarim? 

Today, the 17th of Tammuz, is a minor fast in the Jewish tradition, meaning we don’t eat or drink from dawn until shortly after dusk. It, along with our other fast days not connected to a holiday, commemorates a watershed moment in the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem and the people’s subsequent exile. The 17th of Tammuz is when the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Romans. However, it’s common in Jewish tradition to layer tragedies–to trace a thread between generations and imbue particular dates with grief not for just one catastrophe, but for many. The Mishnah in Tractate Ta’anit says that on the 17th of Tammuz, five things happened: the tablets were broken by Moses, the daily offering could no longer be sacrificed during the siege of Jerusalem, the walls of Jerusalem were breached, the Greek general Apostomos burned a Torah scroll, and an idol was placed in the temple sanctuary.

While this might feel a bit heavy-handed, tying all these tragedies to one date allows us to experience a grief that’s multi-generational; it allows us to mourn not just this discrete moment, but all the moments of rupture that led to it, and that our ancestors experienced. It reminds us that we can hold multiple griefs at once.

Fast days are moments of more acute mourning, where we refrain from eating or drinking and recite special prayers, but the 17th of Tammuz also kicks off a period of more extended mourning, referred to as the Three Weeks or Bein HaMetzarim (between the straits). During the three weeks between the 17th of Tammuz and Tisha B’Av–our day of greatest mourning, marking the destruction of both temples and other disasters–we take on various traditional mourning practices: no weddings, parties, or celebrations; no haircutting or shaving; no listening to music with instruments; and no purchasing new clothes or other recreational items. Starting on Rosh Chodesh Av, in the nine days leading up to Tisha B’Av, these limitations intensify: no pleasurable bathing; no consuming wine or meat (outside of Shabbos); no laundering, or wearing freshly laundered clothes.

The Three Weeks, and the fast days capping them off at either end, function as a model of how to materially grieve catastrophe in a way that still carries us through our lives. The fast days constitute our moments of most acute grief–when the horrors of our broken world demand our full attention, insisting that sometimes in the face of grief life as normal should grind to a halt. The Three Weeks, and the Nine Days, show us how to continue living our lives without dismissing or avoiding that sorrow. This time bein hametzarim, between the straits, is one of restriction, where we work and eat and gather, but we limit our joy, our luxuriating, our excess. This mourning manifests in both our bodies, and our communal formations.

And at the same time, while the horror of present and past catastrophes never dissipates, the Three Weeks are a delimited time. We cannot spend the whole year carrying on life as usual, but we also cannot spend all our time without joy, without celebration. In providing this tiered timeline of mourning, the Jewish calendar allows us to materially reflect different ways of incorporating grief into our lives, while insisting they must continue. 

- Rabbi Lexie Botzum