The Three Weeks

This week we’ve begun The Three Weeks — or ben ha-metzarim (literally, “between the narrow places).”

On most Shabbatot, the Torah narrative that is read in synagogue is followed by a thematically compatible passage from the prophets. During the Three Weeks, the thematic connection between the week’s Torah reading and the Prophetic text is broken and we read Haftorahs that are termed by our rabbis as pur’anut, prophecies of admonition or destruction. Painfully, they speak of the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem herself.

Along with these three Haftorahs, ast Sunday’s fast of the 17th of Tammuz, form the entrance into this somber time on the Jewish calendar that culminates in Tisha b’Av, the commemoration of our national tragedy of the Temple in Jerusalem burning, of the exile of our people from our land — and since then, of all the national Jewish tragedies that have befallen our people.

There can be a real dissonance in all of this. Here it is, summer time, the height of nature’s flowering and expansion. As nature peaks into its ultimate colorful beauty, we are contracting, meditating on sadness and destruction, minimizing the pleasure and ease of our lives, thinking of our destroyed Jerusalem. We are remembering past exile while nature blooms into her ultimate expression of beauty and warmth.

As birds chirp and hum, bringing this season’s auditory dimension of music, the Jewish soundtrack of the Three Weeks is the moving, haunting, melancholy tune of the exquisite and stirring book of Lamentations — “Eicha yashva badad ha’ir rabbati am” (how solitary she sits, the city once great with people). We internalize Jerusalem’s devastating loneliness and isolation.

For each Shabbat of The Three Weeks, a painful passage about past national destruction is read aloud. Yet, once the pain peaks on Tisha b’Av, for seven weeks following, textual recovery arrives. Seven Haftorahs, known as “sheva de-nechemta,” seven readings of comfort, replace the sad texts.

While the harsh narratives are three, the comforting ones are more than double that. Three to Seven.