Av: Making Space for What Must End
And how to be present with the grief
The month of Av arrives with heavy footsteps. It does not come to lift us up. It asks us to sit down amidst the rubble, to look honestly at what's been broken, and to acknowledge what can no longer be saved. I’ve been wondering a lot about whether our democracy can be saved. Whether Israel can be redeemed. Whether the world will let Israel be redeemed. Whether either of these things are worth redeeming. I’ve never been a big fan of nation states and borders and flags but I have also had the privilege of living in the US where I have been allowed to resist and to criticize. Winston Churchill said “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Now that “democracy” is being undermined and has been so decimated over these last six months, I find myself wondering how we “build back better” and when the re-building can actually start. It’s clear that it is not done being broken yet. Though the world is an endless turning of cycles, of empires rising and falling, the current power hungry sycophants filled with greed, hand dripping with blood are still stoking the war machines and stripping protections from the most vulnerable. And we the people are just trying to get by. Same as it ever was. It’s just a lot more obvious and impacting more people more obviously and those rocks of hard won freedoms are rolling backwards. In the meantime, I go about my business in my little corner of the world, practicing gratitude and seeking beauty and wondering whether I need to buy another jar of peanut butter “for the apocalypse.”
In a world unraveling at so many seams — climate disasters, wars, social fragmentation, the energy of Av feels, what? Heavy, maybe. Hot and fraught and painful, maybe. And scary. There are so many days of mourning and the memories of so much loss in Av. So much history that reminds us that not everything that exists endures. Not every structure can be patched up. Empires rise and fall. That’s fine in theory but living through it is another thing altogether.
At a fabulous double adult b’ mitzvah last week we played a game based on Pirkei Avot, known as the Ethics of our Fathers. One of the questions was “What is one thing you know to be true?” My answer was that the earth will endure. I have always believed that. Not sure humans will make it but the earth will be OK eventually. Always felt with some trepidation that we are living in a time of decline and it’s gotten more real and feels closer.
Here’s a beautiful cry to the heavens from Gayanne Geurin about the earth enduring.
Out of Fire, New Growth
So, Av. It’s uncomfortable terrain: endings, collapses, grief. Summer is also when forest fires rage across the country - dry winds fanning the parched lands to terrible conflagration. Over the years we remember fires that consumed the Temple, but also more recently, forests, neighborhoods, and cities. Each fire brings an unraveling of dreams along with the destruction of homes and the loss of worlds many thought would last forever.
And yet, though trite, it does help me to remember that fire does not only destroy. It also clears and creates space. It cracks open the earth for something new to emerge. Fire was friend to the indigenous people of the Americas. Before colonial laws criminalized it, indigenous communities engaged in intentional burning, setting small controlled fires to steward the land.
They knew that some forests require fire in order to regenerate. In the deep south where I live are the long leaf pines that Janisse Ray writes about so eloquently. Their seeds only sprout after the heat has split them open.
But the kind of destruction we are seeing today is not the “friendly” fires of the past. Both the floods and fires are of biblical proportion and it is scary. I am afraid.
And in my times of fear, I turn to the gifts of my tradition: Av teaches us that destruction is not the end. It is part of the cycle of life. It strips away what is no longer working so that something essential, something waiting beneath the surface, can finally grow. It may be the end - and is the end - for some things, some people and we are all part of a larger whole. Butterfly consciousness. Oak leaves. Tidal ebbs and flows. My body may not make it but every body dies at some point. I find that comforting. I don’t find enduring destruction comforting at all though. I would much prefer a different ending.
As I write, one of the great thinkers and writers of our time, Joanna Macy, has just breathed her last. Releasing her body from life with the same courage, grace and presence that she brought to all aspects of her life. Would that we could all go so gracefully. Andrea Gibson departed in a similar way - aware and present and releasing the ideas of fighting or winning into beingness and presence.
As a whole, the US is a culture that avoids endings, that flees from grief, and prefers the fiction of perpetual growth. In fact, it’s pursuit of perpetual growth that has brought us to where we are today! But life teaches us differently: birth, flourishing, decay, death, and — in time — new growth. Av reminds us that it's sacred work to name what must go, to mourn without rushing, and to create space for something new to one day take root.
So how do we hold each other through uncertainty and destruction?
Judaism isn’t a solitary practice. At its core, it is communal. We need a minyan to say Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. We gather to mourn together and to hold each other when individual strength falters. Judaism reminds us that grief is not meant to be carried alone.
In mourning, we pray, chant, and weep in the presence of others. We share meals not because they erase sorrow, but because the body still needs tending. These are old, wise practices. And perhaps they are also a blueprint for how we survive endings in these uncertain times. One of the things I love about Judaism is the way it provides a framework for grief. Not to contain or minimize it, but to help us live through it without getting lost. Grief is honored as a necessary part of life, but also as something that moves, shifts, and evolves.
In a world that often urges us to "move on," "stay positive," or "get over it and buck up!" Judaism gives us something different: a framework for creating ways to be with grief.
We can draw on the wisdom of grief practices, not just as a ritual after death, but as a model for tending to the confusion of these chaotic times. Both birth and death are transitions that needs tending to and we are currently in a large unstable transition where death is definitely happening and hopefully something new is being birthed. Some days I am hopeful that that is true. Some days I am not. Some days I want to look away. Most days I don’t know what to do. Some days I am fierce and active. Underneath it all is a vast grief that can suck me down if I am not careful. And I know I am not alone in this.
Whether we name it collapse, apocalypse, or simply change beyond what we can control, we are living through layers of loss — environmental, political, social, spiritual. If we are to endure, we need ways to grieve and ways to keep moving.
Judaism teaches:
Rest first. Mourn first. Stop and feel it fully.
Then, slowly, begin again. A little at a time.
Don’t do it alone. Let the community hold you.
Grief will change you. That’s okay. You’re meant to change.
These cycles remind us that survival isn’t about stoic endurance or pretending not to feel. It’s about honoring the pain, making space for it, and also knowing that life continues. We keep going. Not untouched, not unscarred, but alive. Some days the only truth that someone in grief may have to offer is the truth of their existence. Those are the days when maybe you can’t get out of bed or off the floor. But eventually, most of us do get out of bed again.
To survive the apocalypse — or any great change — we have to keep going. (Link to cool song from the Bengsons) We have to rebuild. We have to plant gardens in burned soil. We have to imagine new ways of living. And we can’t do that if we are frozen in grief. The structure of mourning gives us time to fall apart and a path to come back.
Stopping to grieve
Drawing on the wisdom of the week of sitting shiva, here are some steps for allowing yourself to stop and mourn in community. This is not meant to be a party though it may turn into one. It’s meant to be a place to hold grief and thus those that come should know fully what is happening. And in a structure for grieving, there has to be a way to make sure everyone is ready to move back into the world:
Make it a small, intentional gathering where grief is allowed and witnessed. Create a space where no one is asked to perform strength, where tears, silence, or simply being present are all that is asked. Start with a song, an intention and allow what comes to come.
Places where it's okay not to have answers. In Judaism, we don't go to a house of mourning to fix someone's grief. We go to sit beside it, to bear witness. This can be a powerful model for how we show up in times of upheaval. This is a space to just move with what emerges.
Create rituals that acknowledge endings and honor grief without rushing to silver linings. Light candles, recite psalms, write prayers, make art and create space to name what is being or has been lost.
Food! After a ritual of grieving, hug, wipe your tears and eat and drink to help ground the body.
Practices of mutual aid, where we tend to one another's immediate needs as a form of communal care. Perhaps after whatever ritual or gathering, you can begin to think about next steps. Sharing meals. Sharing resources. Swapping practical, concrete gestures of support recognizing and honoring interdependence. There are a lot of great models for this.
When I am afraid, I look to my teachers - human, bird, tree, rock, air and I remember that the only way through is through. One breath. Small actions. Big awareness. Communal tending.
It’s not a comfortable place. It requires sitting with grief, with uncertainty, with the ache of not knowing what comes next. It requires trusting processes that you and I cannot fully see. It requires community — people who can hold space for us in the in-between. Av says: Do not skip over the pain. But do not carry it alone. (Another cool song link - this from Alexandra "Ahlay" Blakely) This month, may we find the strength to hold one another through grief. And may we trust, even in the darkest places, that new life is waiting beneath the surface.
Chodesh Tov. May this month lead us toward tending to each other.
You are a beautiful writer xoxoxo