This beautiful saying, written by King Solomon the wisest of Kings, is recorded in the book of Kohelets (Ecclesiastes).
As the poem reads “There is a time for everything…”
The nine days before Tisha B’Av, beginning today, is a time to mourn for the destruction of the first and second Temples. It is proper to decrease in our joy.
There are a few things which we abstain ourselves from:
1. We don’t eat meat, chicken or drink wine during these days except on Shabbat or if it’s part of a meal to celebrate a mitzvah, such as a Brit Mila, Bar Mitzvah or the completion of a tractate of the Talmud.
2. We don’t do laundry ( this makes me crazy) and we don’t use fresh laundered clothes. We can put the clothes in the floor before wearing them so they loose their status of freshly laundered. We are allowed to wash baby’s clothes and underwear.
3.we abstain from swimming in pools or the ocean (these days we are careful of not doing things that can put us in danger)
We take showers for hygiene but not for pleasure. They should be quick and the water shouldn’t be so hot, also we wash by parts.
4.we don’t remodel or expand our homes.
5. Don’t buy new clothes unless they are in a very good sale and you could miss it . No sewing or fixing them unless it’s for the purpose of a Mitzvah, like for a bride or groom.
6.no planting trees for shade or fragrance, fruit trees are allowed.
7.no cutting nails after today.
All this prohibitions should be kept till the Hallachic mid day of the 10th of AV.
The last two weeks we have also abstained from listening to live music, we don’t perform weddings (but engagements are allowed),and cutting hair.
I know that for many of you all this might sound insane, how can it be that we still mourn for two edifices that have been gone for more than two thousand years. The truth is that you are right, but what we mourn is the lack of the Shechina of G-d in our mist and the reality that we don’t even know what we are missing anymore.
By mourning intensely these nine days we are telling G-d “Maybe we don’t know what to yearn for any more but the not knowing is reason enough to yearn for you.”
Shabbat Shalom
Live a little higher
