A reflection on return, memory, and the strength that prepares us for Tisha B’Av

As the days move closer to Tisha B’Av, we enter a season when Jewish memory becomes a moral discipline. Other civilizations bury their defeats, erase their losses, and rewrite their tragedies. Jews do the opposite. We sanctify memory. We sit on the floor, we fast, we chant Lamentations, and we confront the ruins of our past with open eyes. This is not a fixation on suffering. It is the Jewish refusal to let catastrophe define us, even as we refuse to forget it. As Jeremiah wrote, “Let us search and examine our ways, and return to G‑d” (Lamentations 3:40). Memory becomes the first step toward return.

This paradox, remembering destruction while refusing to be destroyed, is the heartbeat of Jewish resilience. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote that Jewish history is a narrative of hope in the face of suffering. Rambam taught that the survival of the Jewish people is itself a form of divine testimony, a living proof of covenantal endurance. Rabbi Meir Soloveichik often notes that Jewish endurance is not merely historical. It is theological. We remember destruction because memory is the foundation of rebuilding. We confront loss because loss is the soil from which Jewish renewal grows.

El Nora Alila: The Pivot of Mercy

At the final breath of Yom Kippur, when the gates of heaven tremble, Sephardic Jews rise to sing El Nora Alila. It is urgent, ancient, and electrifying, a plea that G‑d open the gates of mercy before the day ends. Its author, Rabbi Moshe ibn Ezra, lived in 11th and 12th century Granada, one of the great poets of the Andalusian Golden Age. Writing during........

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