Further Insights on the Three Weeks

As discussed above, the days between the 17th of Tamuz and Tisha B’Av are called the “Three Weeks.” These days represent the collective tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people over the ages, especially the destruction of both Temples which occurred during this time period. As with all other holidays or auspicious occasions, it behooves us to look deeper into the teachings these days have for each individual and for the Jewish people as a whole.
There are 22 days during this time period, the same number as Hebrew letters. This span of time thus represents a complete cycle – from alef to tav. Significantly, there is another time period in the Jewish calendar which also has a 22-day cycle – Rosh Hashanah through Simchat Torah (in the land of Israel), implying that this cycle of multiple holidays actually comprises a single unit or process. Tellingly, the two days of Rosh Hashanah are referred to as “one long day,” further alluding to the integral connection of days when considered within a meaningful construct of time. In fact, the entire holiday cycle beginning on Rosh Hashanah, continuing through the Ten Days of Teshuvah and Yom Kippur, and culminating in Sukkot, Hoshanah Rabbah and finally Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, are in fact one continuously unfolding spiritual cycle; “one long day.”
The Slonimer Rebbe creates a beautiful image by comparing the 22 days of the “Three Weeks” to drawing the outline of a picture, which is then filled in with a full array of color and detail during the 22-day period of Rosh Hashanah through Simchat Torah. In this paradigm, the “Three Weeks” represent contraction and the bare outline, while Rosh Hashanah and the subsequent holidays symbolize creation and the color of creativity.
The emotional constriction one feels when contemplating the suffering and calamities of Jewish history during the Three Weeks, augmented by some of the customs of mourning we adopt during these days, mirrors the primordial tzimtzum, or contraction, which occurred according to Kabbalah, before the creation of the world could come into being. Contraction creates the outline or the “place” of the world, which Creation then fills in with light and color. Like a heart beating with consecutive palpitations of constriction and expansion, so too do all generative processes mirror this primordial flow of energy and process of manifestation.
For an individual, this entails going deep within, stripping away all extraneous emotional and egotistical baggage in order to identify one’s essential inner being and thereby identify one’s true place in the world. For the Jewish people, it means coming to terms with our essential purpose and mission in history. That we must follow this alternating order of contraction and then expansion is the secret of the ongoing cycles of exile and redemption that are repeated in the Torah numerous times, and which create the outline of all Jewish history to this very day.
Just as a woman must first experience the breaking of the waters and the contractions of labor before giving birth, so too, does each individual in their creative strivings experience this process. The Jewish people, as well, represent this allegory through our ongoing trials and dynamic history. Moses breaking the tablets on the 17th of Tamuz after the worshipping of the Golden Calf in retrospect is seen as a necessary, or even inevitable, occurrence. Once again, in this case we see a certain breaking needed to occur before the second tablets, which Moses brought down on Yom Kippur, could be received and integrated properly by the people.
In relation to this movement from rupture to rapture, the Torah repeatedly reminds us to remember that we were once slaves in Egypt. The slavery and oppression we experienced as individuals provide the contractive “outlines” of our becoming a people, the rest of history is then dedicated to filling in these skeletal lines with living colors. In a deeper sense, all of human experience is framed by Adam and Eve being traumatically thrust out of the garden of Eden, and all subsequent history is motivated by our trying “to get back to the Garden,” so to speak, a redemptive process which requires numerous rectifications and reconciliations between us and our deeper selves, between individuals in conflict, between warring nations, between us and the earth who was cursed as a result of our misguided eating, and ultimately between us and God who we not only disobeyed, but then, even worse, hid from in shame and tried to pass blame.
Therefore, though these days are filled with sad and painful memories, they give us the outline and parameters within which we can understand all of Jewish and world history on a much deeper level. From these reflections during the twenty-two days of the Three Weeks, we begin to prepare for a New Year and consider the colors we’d like to use to fill in our own picture of life. By deeply feeling the brokenness of the world we live in, we actually acquire the compassion and tools to rectify the world and ourselves, the best way we can, thereby fulfilling our crucial mission as individuals and as Jews. We can now understand the tradition that Mashiach is born on Tisha B’Av – from the collective birth contractions of the Jewish people will be born our own redemption.
Especially in these times, when once again dark and heavy clouds cover our collective skies, we need to focus deeply on fundamental Jewish teachings that strengthen our connection to tradition and the land of Israel. By allowing ourselves to feel the pain of the present moment, we become motivated to take action in order to improve the situation in whatever small way we can.
As it says so poetically in the Psalms: “Those who sow with tears will reap with joy” (Psalms 126:5). May this ancient statement be fulfilled for all of Israel and the entire world speedily in our days.