"The Nine Days." That's what this period is called. From the beginning of the month of Av that started yesterday until the Ninth of Av.
"When Av enters, we diminish joy,” it is written in the Talmud, and these are days when we "lower" - without weddings and celebrations, without festive purchases, and other laws and customs that express sorrow and mourning.
Why? Why add prohibitions and depression? Don't we have enough sorrow as it is?
Our sages explain: All year long there is sorrow, tragedies, many types of conflict, loss and brokenness. This is the time to gather it all together and understand that all the disasters, difficulties and sorrow - have a source and reason: our world is lacking. It is not repaired. We have no Temple, no redemption, no wholeness. Everything is connected. All the sadness, all the challenges and crises. We are still not in our right place, don't know who we are and what our role in the world is.
Our sages ask, especially during these days: connect your personal sorrow, your personal struggles, to the sorrow of the nation, and even - to the sorrow of the Shechina, of God Himself. He too grieves over the destruction of the Temple, over all the difficult things that happened to us, that are happening to us now.
The goal, of course, is not to remain with the sorrow but that this sorrow should be an engine for repair, for change, for repentance. Only thus can we also transform these days - as it is said in our sources - into days of joy and happiness.
