Themes of Featured Ascent Lights

We await Mashiach with certain faith that he could materialize at any moment, weeping for the sorry state of our reality without him, and yet also find a way to embrace our present moment (despite his no-show) with unconditional acceptance, knowing that "everything G-d does is for good."

Some people know there was once a Temple; it was the place where G-d's indwelling resided, where one could see miracles and connect with G-d in a tangible way. The Temple will be rebuilt, please G-d, very soon, but its loss is a tragedy that we must live with every day.

G-d did not eradicate the Jewish people because Pinchas avenged His honor. The Shelah reminds us that when we see an act that desecrates the name of G-d or the Torah, we should be zealous to stop it.

Every descent is for the sake of the ascent that will surely follow. The tragic events we annually mourn for at this time of year are for the purpose of the great elevation that will come from them, the rebuilding of the final and everlasting Temple, may this be fulfilled soon!

The customs of mourning we adopt during these days mirror the primordial contraction occuring before the creation of the world that created the outline or the "place" of the world.

By feeling deeply the broken world we live in, we acquire the compassion and tools to rectify the world and ourselves, thereby fulfilling our crucial mission as individuals and as Jews.

The Fifteenth of Av, today a relatively minor event in our experience of the yearly cycle, is the Jewish Holiday that among all holidays most captures the essence of its Full Moon component. We mark the day merely with omitting certain petitionary sections of the weekday prayers and no Dancing Daughters dressed in white, for the luminance of 15 Av has yet to shine forth. We are still in galut, still in the dark stretch of this cycle, still climbing out of the descent into which we have been plunged by the events of 17 Tammuz—9 Av.