Tisha B’Av (the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av) is the most painful day of the Jew­ish year. Accord­ing to the sages of the Tal­mud sages, all the major cat­a­stro­phes of Jew­ish his­to­ry fell on that day. God decreed that the wilder­ness gen­er­a­tion would not enter the land of Israel; the first Tem­ple was destroyed by the Baby­lo­ni­ans, the sec­ond was destroyed by the Romans; and the list goes on. In com­mem­o­ra­tion of all these tragedies, we lim­it our rejoic­ing dur­ing the month of Av, and we fast and mourn on its ninth day. Chant­i­ng the book of Lamen­ta­tions (Eikhah), we ask God to ​“remem­ber what has befall­en us, [to] behold and see our dis­grace.” Tisha B’Av is an annu­al day of com­mu­nal shi­va, a moment of grief for all that we have lost.

But just a few days lat­er, the Jew­ish cal­en­dar makes a tru­ly dizzy­ing tran­si­tion. A promi­nent Tal­mu­dic sage declares that ​“there were no hap­pi­er days in Israel than the Tu B’Av (the fif­teenth day of Av) and the Day of Atone­ment (Yom Kip­pur).” Why? Because on those days, the Mish­nah explains, young women would go out and dance in the vine­yards. Women and men would meet and cou­ple off.

This is, to put it mild­ly, strange and sur­pris­ing tim­ing. The tra­di­tion­al sev­en days of mourn­ing since the destruc­tion of the Tem­ple – for Judaism, the very cen­ter of the uni­verse – have not even end­ed and already we are danc­ing with joy?

In my forth­com­ing book, Judaism Is About Love: Recov­er­ing the Heart of Jew­ish Life, I sug­gest that through this cal­en­dri­cal anom­aly the Jew­ish sages are mak­ing a stun­ning claim. In the wake of destruc­tion and dev­as­ta­tion, we should respond with… more love. Grief and mourn­ing assured­ly have their place – we would not be human with­out them – but they can­not be allowed to have the last word. When the world goes dark and all hope seems lost, the Jew­ish tra­di­tion teach­es: take com­fort and inspi­ra­tion in one anoth­er. Let love lead you out of the abyss.

This idea has been on my mind a lot in recent months. When the gal­leys of my book arrived on Octo­ber 14th, a mere week had passed since the night­mare of Octo­ber 7th. Like so many of us, I was over­whelmed with grief, bewil­der­ment, and rage. It took me sev­er­al days to even open the box of books; what I felt toward my own work, the cul­mi­na­tion of years of labor, was main­ly indif­fer­ence. In the midst of all that we are fac­ing, I thought, who on earth would want to talk about love?

So I was star­tled by people’s respons­es. When­ev­er I shared my feel­ings of apa­thy towards my own forth­com­ing book, peo­ple would tell me that I had it exact­ly back­wards. ​“Now,” they would say, ​“is pre­cise­ly when peo­ple – when I–want and need to talk about love.”

Slow­ly – and if I’m hon­est, some­what reluc­tant­ly – I began to see their point. 

It now seems to me that peo­ple who respond­ed in this way were uncon­scious­ly echo­ing one of Jew­ish tradition’s deep­est insights. Just when we are tempt­ed to give in to despair, when our hearts are wound­ed and our thoughts are ragged, when we fear we will col­lapse under all the grief we’re strug­gling to bear, we have an anti­dote to turn to: more love.

I don’t want to sound naive. Faced with destruc­tion, love is decid­ed­ly not the only response we need. We need to ensure our own safe­ty and the safe­ty of our loved ones, and to pre­vent ene­mies from doing us fur­ther harm. We need to rebuild what has been rav­aged. But love is an inte­gral part of the response, and if we want our hearts to remain soft and open, we can­not do with­out it. 

We have no choice but to grope for love even in the bleak­est of times.

Pre­cise­ly when we feel most deeply bereft, when we’re pulled between ago­niz­ing pain and dead­en­ing numb­ness, there can be some­thing pro­found­ly enliven­ing in turn­ing to love, kind­ness, and gen­eros­i­ty. Over the past few months we’ve seen Israelis – and Jews around the world – ral­ly behind one anoth­er, com­fort­ing the bereaved, tend­ing to the wound­ed, hous­ing the dis­placed, feed­ing the for­lorn. We’ve wit­nessed extra­or­di­nary (stag­ger­ing, breath­tak­ing) dis­plays of chesed (love man­i­fest­ed in acts of kind­ness). Some­times it feels like Octo­ber 7th just goes on and on, threat­en­ing to con­sume us. At moments like that it’s worth remem­ber­ing that love is still an option and an imperative.