Posts from July 2024

Three weeks of mourning

The 17th of Tammuz and the Coming Three Week Annual Mourning Period…

There are Three Weeks that are an annual mourning period that falls out in the summer. The Three Weeks or Bein ha-Metzarim (Hebrew: בין המצרים, “Between the Straits”) (cf “dire straits”) is a period of mourning commemorating the destruction of the first and second Jewish Temples.  This is when we mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple and our launch into a still-ongoing exile. The period…

The History and Symbolism of the Red Heifer

Overview and Background of Hashem’s instruction about the Red Heifer in Parashah Chukat On the 1st of Nissan, The mishkan’s last inauguration day, Hashem revealed to Moshe the laws regarding impure people who are expelled from the camp, and the purity laws of the kohanim priests. Hashem taught him how purification from the different types…