Reflection for this season of rupture, reckoning, and return.
The Mishnah tells us:
נִשְׁתַּבְּרוּ הַלּוּחוֹת
“The tablets were shattered”
(Ta’anit 4:6)
One of five tragedies on the 17th of Tamuz.
The walls of Jerusalem gave way.
The descent began.
Tamuz doesn’t offer comfort.
It doesn’t resolve.
It marks the moment the center cannot hold.
And asks us to stay present anyway.
We don’t leap to repair.
Tisha B’Av is still ahead.
We sit in the unraveling,
in the silence after the shattering.
But the pendulum of Jewish time keeps moving.
It swings downward through grief—
and then, it rises.
Shabbat Nakhamu: comfort.
Tu B’Av: love and renewal.
Elul: reflection and return.
Yamim Nora’im: awe and awakening.
Sukkot: z’man simkhateinu, the season of our joy.
The cycle does not end in sorrow.
It carries us forward.
Even brokenness is holy.
As it was written:
As it was written:
שִׁבְרֵי לֻחוֹת מֻנָּחִים בָאָרוֹן
“The shattered tablets were placed in the ark.”
(Berakhot 8b)
We carry what broke.
We remember what mattered.
The breaches are real.
Not just in ancient walls,
but in the world around us.
Families torn apart at borders.
Bombs falling on civilians.
Books pulled from shelves.
Voices silenced by fear.
Power clinging tighter.
We are still living among the ruins.
And still—
the pendulum stirs.
People marched and cried no kings.
A ceasefire is holding, at least so far.
Ranked choice ballots were
filled with intention—
a refusal to be boxed in.
Not everything changed.
But something shifted.
A reminder: the story isn’t over.
The arc of the universe doesn’t bend on its own.
But it can bend.
When we act.
When we stay soft in a world that hardens.
When we turn grief into movement.
When we push the pendulum, together.
Let Tamuz be what it is—
a month of rupture,
a season of truth-telling.
May we mourn what’s broken.
May we carry what matters.
May we help the pendulum swing.
May we bend the arc
toward justice,
toward compassion,
toward the world we still believe is possible.
כֵּן יְהִי רָצוֹן
Ken yehi ratzon.
May it be so.
