Tisha b'Av posting

Posted by Rabbi Goldie Milgram |

1. From Destruction to Renewal mp3 guided healing visualization by Rabbi Joyce Reinitz
2. Centering Exercise from "Can We Invite God In Again? Hashpa'ah after the Shoah" by Carola de Vries Robles
3. Pilgrimage to Rivesaltes
4. The Power of Lamentations
5. Tisha b'Av as a Time of Supportive, Experiential Community (From Rebbe on the Road 2006, ALEPH Kallah)
6. The Hard Knocks of History

Additionally, Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz just shared this lovely piece by R'Eliyahu Dessler with a rabbinic list in which I participate. I believe it was in relation to Carola de Vries Robles' piece above.

"What does it mean when we speak of “the Shekhina resting upon Israel”? It is finding God in our innermost heart. Thus our teachers of blessed memory taught us concerning  and I shall dwell within them.”  Even when a person is experiencing a great eclipse of the soul, which we call the condition of tum’ah, nevertheless the innermost holy spark latent within every heart of Israel is not extinguished. . . But when we behave poorly and get comfortable in the state of tum’ah, we forge an iron wall that separates our self from the holy point which is alive in the heart. We cause the holy spark to fall into tum’ah and make it useless in illuminating the soul. This is the meaning of “the Shekhina in exile”—that the innermost point of the human is not revealed and illuminated, but is hidden and darkened.

There is the “exile of the Shekhina” of the individual, and there is the “exile of the Shekhina” of the group, when the nation as a whole pushes aside its holy spark through gross materiality and ignorance. This is the worst condition that a person can be found in, when the thread of one’s spiritual life and attachment to holiness is almost severed, approaching total loss. This condition, when spread into the community, we call the condition of Churban (destruction of the Temple). If one neither feels nor is pained by this, that itself is a sign that Churban has overtaken. But one who feels the “exile of the Shekhina” within and feels the pain, even to the point of tears, because of the inability to connect with the Essence of Holiness, this itself is a healing, a tikkun, of the exile of the Shekhina of the heart . . . This is why we continue to weep, generation after generation (for the destruction of the Temple). Through this pain lies the road to tikkun, to repair.  We feel the pain for the spiritual destruction within the heart, and this is the path of redemption." --from Mikhtav M’Eliyahu,  R. Eliyah Dessler)