The 10th of Av: Hope, Comfort, and Responsibility
Friday July 23, 2026 – י׳ אָב תשפ”ו
Returning from Israel on the eve of Tisha B’Av was a surreal experience. Over the last few days (and beyond, of course), the country pulsed with life. On ordinary weeknights, cafés spilled onto sidewalks, bars buzzed with conversation and laughter, and restaurants were filled late into the evening. Crowds gathered in public squares to watch the World Cup, cheering and grimacing long after sunset, while streets and kiosks were plastered with posters advertising an extraordinary range of Tisha B’Av programs, study sessions, concerts, dialogues, and communal gatherings. There was unmistakable energy. A society very much alive, arguing, celebrating, learning, and searching together.
And yet, beneath that vibrancy lay the quiet awareness that Tisha B’Av was approaching. Every year, this day asks us to sit with loss. We dim the lights, chant Eicha (the Scroll of Lamentations), and remember not only the destruction of the First and Second Temples, but a long history of Jewish suffering and our people’s often lachrymose past. Yet Judaism never intended for us to remain in mourning. The genius of the Jewish calendar is that it refuses to let grief become our final destination. The day after Tisha B’Av insists that we begin a different journey, one that leads from lament toward consolation, from memory toward responsibility, and ultimately from despair toward hope.
This year, that transition feels especially urgent.
We are living in an age unlike any our ancestors knew. We are no longer merely a people remembering Jerusalem; we are a people responsible for Jerusalem. We are no longer powerless witnesses to history. We are participants in it.
In a recent conversation on The Pluralist Podcast, Rabbi Michael Marmur challenges us to rethink what Tisha B’Av means in an era of Jewish sovereignty. The destruction we mourn was not simply the loss of buildings or political independence. It was the collapse of a moral and spiritual vision. A society unable to sustain itself because it lost its internal cohesion, humility, and sense of shared purpose. The question after Tisha B’Av, therefore, is not simply “What happened to us?” but “What kind of society are we building now?” Our unprecedented Jewish power carries unprecedented Jewish responsibility.
That question echoes painfully through Israeli society today with an ever-growing public conversation that has become increasingly polarized. Recent protests this week – including the aspirationally named “March of the Thousands” to Gaza marking 21 years since Israel’s 2005 evacuation of its Gush Katif settlement bloc inside the Gaza Strip drew leading politicians from the religious Zionist camp, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, as well as politicians from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. In a very significant showing, 28 ministers and coalition lawmakers attended the event, demonstrating support from more mainstream elements of the Israeli right. This event demonstrates that many in this political camp are deeply committed to the idea that the massacres of October 7 and the ensuing war are in fact the catalysts to reverse the disastrous disengagement in which the Jewish settlements in Gaza were removed, and their residents relocated.
In the same week, the left-wing Zionist party HaDemokratim ran its primaries with an impressive turnout. HaDemokratim is the evolution of the merger of the Meretz and Labor parties, with new additions and dozens of passionate potential politicians who threw their hats in the ring. We take great pride that MK Rabbi Gilad Kariv, as the sole Reform rabbi in the Knesset, came in 3rd, with over 83,000 party members listing him on their rosters.
Whatever one’s political commitments, Tisha B’Av reminds us that the greatest danger has never been disagreement itself. Judaism has always celebrated argument. The danger comes when ideological certainty replaces mutual responsibility, when we cease seeing one another as members of the same covenantal family.
Rabbi Marmur suggests that Jewish power should not make us triumphalist. Rather, it should make us more humble. For nearly two thousand years, Jews prayed for sovereignty without knowing what it would require. Now we know. Having a Jewish state does not exempt us from the moral demands of Jewish tradition; it intensifies them. Every policy, every protest, every political victory or defeat ultimately asks whether we are creating a society worthy of the dreams that sustained generations of exile.
That is a difficult truth. But it is also a hopeful one.
Because if human choices contributed to destruction, human choices can also bring healing and renewal.
The rabbis famously taught that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam—baseless hatred. Rav Kook later taught that it would be rebuilt through ahavat chinam—boundless love. That love is not sentimentality. It is the disciplined decision to remain connected to one another even across profound disagreement.
I witnessed a glimpse of that possibility this summer.
More than two hundred North American Reform Jewish teenagers participated in the Yallah! Israel summer experience. They came from different backgrounds, different political perspectives, and with different questions about Israel. They did not avoid difficult conversations; rather, they leaned into them.
They hiked the land, met Israelis across the political spectrum, volunteered, learned history, wrestled with moral complexity, laughed together, cried together, and built friendships that refused simplistic narratives. They demonstrated something many adults struggle to remember: that curiosity is stronger than certainty, that relationships are more transformative than slogans, and that love for Israel does not require uniformity of opinion.
Watching these young people engage with Israel honestly and lovingly gave me tremendous hope.
Hope is not optimism that everything will work out. Hope is choosing to invest in the next generation because we believe they can carry the Jewish story further than we have.
The prophet Isaiah opens the seven weeks of consolation that follow Tisha B’Av in this week’s Haftarah with the words:
“ נַחֲמ֥וּ נַחֲמ֖וּ עַמִּ֑י– Nachamu, nachamu ami“—”Comfort, comfort My people.”
The repetition is striking, and perhaps comfort comes in two forms?
The first comfort is knowing that despite everything our people have endured, we are still here. We survived slavery, exiles in Babylon and Rome, expulsions, pogroms, the Holocaust, and October 7. Jewish history has been marked by remarkable suffering and remarkable resilience.
The second comfort is knowing that the future is still unwritten.
Every generation receives Judaism not as a museum artifact but as an unfinished project.
This is our shared project, and it belongs to us all now.
The day after Tisha B’Av calls us to reject despair without denying reality. It calls us to mourn honestly while refusing cynicism. It calls us to exercise Jewish power with humility, Jewish disagreement with dignity, and Jewish hope with courage.
The Temple, the rabbis taught, was not destroyed in a single day. Nor will the society we aspire to build emerge in a single day.
It is built conversation by conversation, act of kindness by act of kindness, and generation by generation.
As we leave Tisha B’Av behind and enter the season of consolation, may we accept both the comfort and the responsibility our tradition offers. May we learn from our past without becoming imprisoned by it. May we strengthen the bonds that hold our people together even when we disagree. And may we look to the remarkable young people of Yallah! Israel, as living reminders that the Jewish future is still being written by hearts willing to listen, to learn, and to love, and to help them find their way back-to-back to communities welcoming them with open arms, and back to Israel!
That is not only our hope. It is our responsibility.
Shabbat Shalom.