This Year is Different

This year,
we just can’t…
approach Tisha BAv the same.

Not after Hamas
Not after Gaza
Not after Iran
Not after the sirens
Not after the shivas
Not after the quiet funerals with no family left.
Not after Yarden returned to
no home, no wife, no children.
Not after Eli and Avida returned from captivity to
silence and emptiness.

Destruction is no longer a
Roman, Greek, Persian, Pogrom, or Holocaust story
But an anguish we endure daily
At war
In the news
On the street
In our communities
Businesses
Families
Basically everywhere

No.
This year we don't need to curate sadness with online pre-recorded programs
Or through familiar rituals that wrap our mourning in performance.

This year, not only the walls of the
Beit HaMikdash lay in ruins,
but the walls around our shattered hearts
Lay crumbled beneath us
Where we sit, vulnerable, shaken, exhausted
As a people
For whom Mourning is no longer a concept
Whose souls are united daily through abundant, fresh tears.
No.
Mourning is no longer a concept for this tired people

Tired from the reality of disconnection
From each other and You.
From being pushed to the edge of our capacity for pain
from prolonged mourning
and endless tears.

Not tears of tradition,
but a raw wailing that splits open the heavens
And breaks vessels.
Screams from the innards,
A shofar blast from the heart.

“Enough!!!!
Hashem.
We can’t do this anymore.”

No more programs.
No more reenactments.
No more softly lit panels to make us feel.

You woke us up.
Remember?
To witness and survive missiles
and direct hits.
Injuries and
death.
Protests and
falling governments.
Endless miluim and
failing businesses.
Fires
and displacement
Terror and destruction.

Night and day after night and day.
A constant running and returning
that announces a new reality
Every time we stumble into our safe rooms,
Shaken from sleep
But awake

As exquisitely broken vessels
From different tribes and different tracks
Like migrating birds in formation
Flying across the open sky
Separate yet together in divine choreography.
Every movement reflecting our souls’ yearning for redemption
L’maan Shmo, for His sake.

We beseech a cosmic reset
of our individual and collective selves.
Not to erase our pain
But to highlight it
with gold-filled cracks.

Not to hide the damage,
but to bear it.
Like a medal.
We don’t pretend we aren’t broken, because we are.
And it’s the most beautiful part.

Hashem,
Do You wants us,
Your flawed people,
To shine through our scars?

You did not create us pristine.
But holy.
And holiness doesn’t hide the cracks—
It fills them with Shechinah.

This is the 9 Days.

When we can’t ignore our wounds.
But sit with them.
And let them shimmer.

And we cry out
Enough!

Maybe this is transition.
A nation in labor.
The pelvis vessel—our yesod, our foundation—
is opening.
And the cries are rising.

Not all labor is loud.
Sometimes the deepest contractions
come with silence and breath.
Sometimes the geulah is meditative—
not pushing, just allowing.
A holy surrender.
A widening.
A roar.

But if this is the last year
we sit on the floor—
If this is the final Tisha B’Av before rebuilding—
then let our cries be true.
Let them smash the illusions.
Let them say, with one voice:

Enough!
Hashem, we’ve had enough.

We are a family that fights, yes—
And a family that loves.
That comes home when there’s nowhere left to go.
That opens our doors for the father who has lost everything.

We don’t need more tears.
We need connection,
attunement with each other’s hearts.
We need unity—
not by agreement,
but by alignment.

Each of us pressing our part of the reset combination.
Each soul, uniquely vital to the awakening.
All of us pushing at once—
not to force,
but to birth.
Together.

Av.
We are the Lion—
Rising and changing shape.
From quiet saturation
to fierce return.
Through awe.
Through love.

This year,
Our pain roars
And turns our cracks into gold.
This year,
we ache like mothers
birthing a new world.
Begging Hashem to turn our tears into
Our Bait HaMikdash.

Every one of our tears
From our individual place of
Enough.

And may the final cry be not of sorrow,
but of song—
roaring through the gates,
as we rise, broken and whole
Separate and aligned
From the shadows
Blackened and aglow
into the light.

Because simply,
We’ve had enough.
And more simply,
We yearn only for You.


-Liba Markson & Rachel Leah Weiman
5 Av 5785