The Nine Days

The Nine Days. Even the name sounds heavy. These are the days from the beginning of the Hebrew month of Av until Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av, the fast day that marks the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem. It’s a time carved out in the Jewish calendar to sit in sadness. Weddings are postponed. Music is silenced. We refrain from joy. The Talmud puts it simply: Mi’shenichnas Av, mema’atin b’simcha:“When the month of Av enters, we diminish joy.”

But why? Don’t we already have enough pain in the world? Why lean into it?

The answer is deeply Jewish: because sitting in sadness is not weakness. It’s strength. It’s the first step toward healing.

All year long, we’re flooded by loss and heartbreak, some of it personal, some national, some so overwhelming we can’t even name it. We feel it in hospital rooms and headlines, in strained relationships, in loneliness, in war. But we rarely stop to feel it. We move on. We distract. We avoid. The Nine Days tell us: Don’t move on yet. Sit with it. Let the sadness rise. Not to wallow, but to recognize that our sorrow has a source, and that the brokenness of the world is not random.

In Jewish thought, all suffering is ultimately linked to one core truth: we are still in exile. We are not yet whole. The Temple has not been rebuilt. God’s presence, Shechinah, is still hidden. And somehow, unbelievably, God grieves too.

This may be one of the most daring ideas in all of Jewish theology – that God is not watching from a distance, unmoved. The sages teach that when the Temple was destroyed, God declared, “Woe is to Me that I destroyed My House and burned My Sanctuary” (Midrash Eichah Rabbah). God suffers with us. And when we sit in mourning during the Nine Days, we are not just grieving our own pain. We are joining in the sorrow of God’s Presence. It is a sacred act of solidarity.

The Bible gives us a powerful example of someone who refuses to skip past grief: King David. When his rebellious son Avshalom is killed, David’s response is raw and devastating:

His generals try to pull him together. The nation needs him. There’s strategy to manage, a kingdom to rule. But David will not be rushed. His grief is real, and he lets it wash over him.

He weeps. Not because he’s weak, but because he loved. His crying is not a distraction from his leadership. Rather it is the heart of it. A leader who cannot cry is a leader who cannot heal.

The Nine Days invite us to be like David. To stop pretending everything is fine. To face the sadness we usually bury. To mourn not just what has been lost, but what still hasn’t been found. Our redemption, our clarity, our closeness with God.

And the purpose of this sorrow is not despair. In fact, it’s the opposite. The prophet Zechariah promises that one day:

These very days of mourning will one day be days of celebration. But not because we skipped over the pain. Because we went through it, and let it change us.

Sadness is not the enemy of joy. It’s the soil that joy grows from if we let it. When we allow ourselves to feel what is broken, we begin to long for what could be rebuilt. And that longing, that ache, is what drives repentance, return, real change.

In the Nine Days, we do something radical: we pause to feel. Not just for ourselves, but for our people. For our world. And for the God who weeps with us. We sit in sadness, not to drown in it, but to give it room. So that when the time comes, we’ll be ready to rise.