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The Month of Av: Mourning, Healing, and the Hidden Good
This Hebrew year we began a new column with Rabbi Charna Rosenholtz, who is offering a 12-part column exploring the spiritual and psychological wisdom of each Hebrew month. Drawing from Torah, Kabbalah, Mussar, and seasonal awareness, each installment will highlight core themes, practices, and reflections to help ground us in sacred time. Join us on this monthly journey through the Jewish calendar.
The Hebrew month of Av is a month of strong contrasts. It begins in mourning and moves toward celebration. Its first days lead us to Tisha b’Av, the ninth of Av, when we remember the destruction of the First and Second Temples, along with other moments of Jewish loss. Later in the month comes Tu b’Av, the fifteenth of Av, a day associated with love, renewal, and dancing.
Av does not ask us to choose between sorrow and joy. It asks us to learn how they live in relationship with each other.
According to Sefer Yetzirah, the ancient Book of Formation, each Hebrew month is connected with a Hebrew letter, a tribe of Israel, a zodiac sign, a sense, and a part of the body. Av is connected with the Hebrew letter Tet, the tribe of Shimon, the zodiac sign of Leo, the sense of hearing, and the left kidney. Each of these symbols gives us a way to enter the month more deeply. The letter Tet is often connected with hidden goodness. Its shape curls inward, like something held inside. It suggests pregnancy, concealment, and slow growth. The good of Tet is not obvious on the surface. It is not yet ready to be seen. It needs protection, patience, and time.
This is a powerful teaching for Av. Tisha b’Av takes us into the places where goodness is hidden under rubble. We remember what has been burned, broken, or lost. The Temples were physical buildings, but they also represented a spiritual center. When they were destroyed, the Jewish people had to ask: What remains when the center no longer holds? How do we continue when the structure we depended on is gone?
Many of us know something about destruction in our own lives. A relationship burns down. A plan collapses. A community breaks trust. A home is lost. A body changes. A sense of safety disappears. These losses are not abstractions. They live in the body. Av gives us permission to mourn what has been destroyed. It also asks us not to rush too quickly toward repair. Some things need to be named before they can be healed. Some grief needs witnesses. Some broken places need silence before rebuilding begins. This is where the sense of hearing matters. Av is not only about speaking our pain. It is about listening. We listen to the Book of Lamentations. We listen to history. We listen to those who suffer now. We listen to the parts of ourselves that are tired of pretending everything is fine.
The tribe connected with Av is Shimon, whose name comes from the Hebrew root meaning “to hear.” In Torah, Shimon also carries a difficult energy. He is associated with anger, aggression, and violence that has not yet been transformed. This, too, belongs to Av. The month does not only show us grief. It shows us what can happen when pain is not held with wisdom. Unprocessed pain can become cruelty. Grief can harden into blame. Anger can become a weapon. Av asks us to listen before we act. It asks us to notice the difference between necessary protest and destructive rage.
We live in a time when many people are grieving real losses. People are displaced. Communities are under threat. The earth itself carries burn scars. We do not honor our own mourning by ignoring the suffering of others. Jewish grief should make the heart more awake, not more narrow. The movement from Tisha b’Av to Tu b’Av is not a denial of sorrow. It is a teaching about transformation. On Tisha b’Av, we sit close to the ground and remember destruction. On Tu b’Av, tradition imagines young women going out in white garments to dance in the vineyards. The image is simple and profound. After devastation, life begins to move again. Bodies rise. People meet. Love becomes possible.
This does not happen all at once. The hidden good of Tet takes time. Like a seed underground, it cannot be forced open. Like new life in the womb, it grows in concealment before it can emerge. There are moments when the most faithful thing we can do is stay small, protect what is forming, and not expose it too soon.
Av teaches that rebuilding is not the same as replacing what was lost. The Second Temple was not the First Temple. Rabbinic Judaism was not Temple Judaism. After destruction, something new had to be born. It came through study, prayer, table fellowship, memory, and community. The Jewish people learned how to carry holiness without one central building. That may be one of Av’s most practical teachings. When something breaks, we can ask: What was destroyed? What still remains? What needs to be mourned? What can now be built differently?
For personal reflection during Av, we might ask:
What part of my own inner temple feels damaged or neglected?
What loss have I not fully allowed myself to name?
Where has pain become anger, and what would help transform it?
What hidden good may be growing quietly beneath the surface?
What can we rebuild together that we cannot rebuild alone?
Av is not an easy month. It is not meant to be. It brings us into the ashes and asks us to listen carefully. But it also reminds us that the story does not end with destruction. Beneath the surface, something may already be forming. The work is to mourn honestly, listen deeply, and protect the small beginning of what wants to live.
Chodesh Tov,
Rabbi Charna Rosenholtz
Check out Shulchan.net for more information about R’Charna’s offerings
Here is a list of Rabbi Charna’s monthly columns in the series:
