 It's very easy to say that one of the major foundations of Jewish life is the Sabbath. It's the only ritual that's included in the Ten Commandments. Ten Commandments we can assume those two tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai, although they're not the only commandments in the Bible, they're 613, but there must be something special about those ten that were engraved on those tablets and the only ones that are really dealing with ritual is the Sabbath. And the Sabbath is mentioned many, many times in the Bible, not just once or twice, but it comes up repeatedly in the Bible. So there must be something very, very special and important about the Sabbath. Now when you go through the Torah, the Bible, there are two versions of the Ten Commandments. It first comes up in the book of Exodus chapter 20 and then it's repeated. There's a recapitulation of the Ten Commandments in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 5. And they're slightly different and it's interesting that in one of these, the Sabbath is connected to the idea of the creation story and in the other, the Sabbath is connected to the idea that God freed us from Egyptian slavery. So let's look at those two modalities to get a little bit of an insight into what Shabbat is. First of all, the Torah says that we are to remember that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. Now obviously when you're reading the creation story, these six days do not have to be 24-hour days. We know that a day is defined by the relationship of the earth and the sun, and there was no sun until the fourth day. So we don't know how long the first three days were, and it's quite possible that throughout the Bible, the word day can refer to an era, an epic. So for example, the Messianic age is called the day of the Lord. But the Bible describes God creating the world in these six days and then resting on the seventh. Obviously God was not resting because he was tired. He was not resting because he ran out of material to build things. There was a cessation of the creative process because in terms of what God was intending to accomplish, it was complete. What God wanted to do was essentially complete after the six days, and so on the seventh God rests. Now one of the most central principles, religious principles in the Bible is the first of the Ten Commandments, which is the commandment to believe in God, to have faith in God. And that is really the underlying spiritual principle of the entire Bible and all of Judaism, to center our entire life on a relationship with God, having a consciousness of God as we go through our life. One of the problems is how do we fulfill this commandment? How do you actually fulfill the commandment of believing in God? Are you supposed to run around once a day and scream to everybody? I believe! Is that how you do it? So one of the ways in which we actually express our faith in the fact that there's a God, not just that there's a God that exists, but a God that created every molecule in existence, and that God therefore owns is the master of everything in the world, including us, is that just like God worked for six days and then rested on the seventh, so we do the same thing. We have six days where we are active in the world, creating, taking the world and making things of the world, but in order to testify to our belief that there's a God who went through the creation process and then rested, stopped on the seventh day, we do the same thing. So our observance of the Sabbath is really a 25-hour meditation. It's a 25-hour experience where by going through the ritual of the Sabbath, we are actually testifying. We're living out, we're experiencing our conviction that there's a God that created the world and that controls the world, is the master of the world, and therefore we as well stop our creative activities on the seventh day to show that we are not the true masters of the world. There's a real Creator. That's the idea of the Sabbath being connected to the creation of the world, but then the Bible also connects the Sabbath to the fact that God freed us from the Egyptian slavery. How does that come into the Sabbath? So we all realize that we are very busy in our lives, and it's very easy for all of us to get caught up in the rat race. It's very easy for all of us to get caught up in the drive for making money, for accumulating physical things, more things, more toys, more possessions, and losing track of what is truly important in life. It isn't a person on the planet who at the end of their life would ever say, you know, I wish I had spent more time at the office. Almost everyone at the end of their life probably sighs and says, I wish I had spent more time doing the things that were really truly important in life, like spending time with my family, or becoming a more interesting person and growing as a person. And so, because it's so easy to get lost in the rat race of life, with all the so many intrusions that we have into our peace of mind and spiritual core, there are so many things that drag us into a world of materialism and a world of physicality. And it's so easy to get entangled in that world and entrapped in that world to a very unhealthy extent, especially now with all the technologies we've developed to make our lives easier. It's so easy for us to get captured and taken prisoner by the very technology we've designed to supposedly make our lives easier. We're basically slaves to our technology. We're not the masters of our technology. If we cannot drive in our car without answering a text, there's something very wrong. If we can't sit in our own house and have a conversation with our spouse without running to pick up the phone if it rings, there's something very wrong. And so on the Shabbat, we don't go to work. We don't even think about or discuss our business at all. All our projects that we're doing during the week are considered as if they're finished. We enter into the Shabbat and everything is finished as far as we're concerned. We don't have to think about it or worry about it. We enter into another dimension altogether. Our mundane and our routine activities are pushed aside and we have the ability to focus on our inner lives, on our spiritual aspirations. We often, during the week, don't have time for God or for ourselves or for our families. And at Shabbat, we have the day available to us for Torah study, for prayer, for our close relationships. We don't watch television. We don't listen to the radio. We don't have our computers on. We turn our cell phones off the entire Shabbat. They don't intrude on our day of peace, our day of calm. We don't need to check our email 20 times during the day. We don't need to check our Facebook postings. So when the Torah speaks about God taking us out of the slavery of Egypt, what Shabbat does in many ways is it takes us out of the slavery we have to the modern world and the workday world. We very easily become enslaved to it. So it's important to appreciate that the Sabbath is not primarily a day off so that we can become more productive during the six days. The Shabbat is not a day off so we can rest up and have more energy so we'll be able to work harder during the next six days. It's actually the other way around. We work for six days in order to be able to spend a Shabbat of peace and calm. The Shabbat is the focus of the week, not the other six days. Now the Torah speaks about the Shabbat in terms of two modalities. The Torah speaks about guarding the Shabbat and remembering the Shabbat. The Torah speaks about protecting the Sabbath and remembering it. One seems to be a negative, what we don't do, and remembering by doing positive things. So let's speak about those two modalities. First of all, what people normally assume about the Shabbat is that the Torah prohibits work. And the truth is that that's a misnomer. The Torah never says that we're not supposed to work on the Sabbath. Let's imagine for a moment that that's what the Torah said. Let's imagine the Torah said for the Shabbat day you're not supposed to do any work. The Hebrew word for work is avodah. An eved is a slave, avodah is work. Now what would it mean if the Bible told us not to work? How would you define work? How was that defined? So if you were a physicist, you would define work as a force moving over a distance. So in terms of physics, if you pick up this camera and move it across the room, you've done work. Obviously that cannot be what is meant on the Sabbath. Because if you pick up a book to read it, you're doing work. You're picking up a book. That's work in the terms of physics. What if you want to define work as well on the Sabbath, you can't go to your job. You can't go to work. If you have a job that you normally work on Saturday, you can't go to work. That's what it means when the Torah says you can't work on the Sabbath. Well that would seem to mean that if you don't have a job and you're unemployed or you don't work, then the Sabbath has no meaning for you. Or let's say you had a job like being a teacher or a rabbi. A rabbi couldn't go to work on the Sabbath. So what does it mean that you can't do work on the Sabbath? We often define work as something that's burdensome or difficult. So I might say what the Bible, what the Torah doesn't want me to do is something that's difficult and burdensome and hard to do. Well, there are plenty of people that would say, you know what? I happen to enjoy construction. I love spending a day building a shed in my backyard. Other people would find that to be a burden. But the Bible takes Sabbath desecration very seriously. And the Torah says that violating the Sabbath is a capital crime. So what's supposed to happen? Is the court supposed to come to someone and say, you know, you're building a shed in the backyard, that's working on the Sabbath. And the person says, no, it's not work. I happen to enjoy it. I get my pleasure doing this. So the whole idea of not working would be irrelevant. It would be meaningless because there'd be no standard by which to evaluate it. So the truth is the Torah never says you can't do work on the Sabbath. What the Torah says is you cannot do melacha on the Sabbath. And the problem for us is that that is a word that doesn't have a simple, easy translation. Melacha is a very, very difficult word to translate. And so the question is, what does it mean? What is the Torah telling us when it says you cannot do melacha on the Sabbath? And the Torah says, and if you do, by the way, it's a capital crime. So it would seem to be very important to know what constitutes melacha. Now, there's one clue that we have. One of the places where the Torah prohibits melacha on the Sabbath is right next to a passage in the Torah that describes the building of the tabernacle in the desert. If you go to the book of Exodus chapter 31, you'll see that there's a description of the building of the tabernacle and how it was built. And then right after that it says you cannot do any melacha on the Sabbath. And what's interesting is that the Torah uses that very word melacha to describe the construction of the tabernacle. So based upon this, the oral traditions of Judaism, we learned about this on the first evening of our class, the oral Torah teaches us that this consecutive, contiguous nature of these two themes is a hint for the fact that if you want to know what is prohibited on the Sabbath, what's prohibited is any of the activities that were done in the construction of the tabernacle in the desert, those are the activities that are prohibited on the Sabbath. And according to our Torah, this includes 39 conceptual types of activity. It's interesting, by the way, that if you go through the Torah itself, in terms of the context of Shabbat, the word melacha appears 39 times in the Torah when it speaks about Shabbat. So these 39 conceptual activities usually involve some improvement of an object demonstrating our mastery of the physical world. Melacha is generally some activity demonstrating our intelligence, our use of our intelligence to show that we have control and mastery over the world. It doesn't have to involve heavy physical activity, but rather it's depending upon the use of our intelligence. Now the Sabbath ritual does not only prohibit the exact things that were done to build the tabernacle, but it prohibits anything that was similar. So let me give you a few examples of these 39. One of the things done to construct the tabernacle in the process was they needed dyes because the skins of the animals and different of the weavings that they had had to be dyed with certain designs. And in order to extract the dyes from plants, they had to plant things. So one of the activities done in the building of the tabernacle was planting. So what's prohibited is not just putting a seed into the ground, but any activity that promotes the growth of plants, anything. So it could be fertilizing a field, it could be plowing a field, it could be watering plants, it could be pruning a tree, it could be taking a potted plant and moving into the sunlight. Any activity that you do to promote the growth of plants is prohibited. One of the things done in the tabernacle for the sacrifices that were brought was they slaughtered animals. So for us, the taking of any sentient life is prohibited. So swatting and killing a fly, even though they didn't kill flies to work in the tabernacle, wasn't part of what they did. They actually slaughtered animals, but for us taking any life becomes prohibited. So we couldn't step on a cockroach or kill a fly. When they wanted to assemble the walls of the tabernacle, they had different planks. They were planks that were set up, and they had to know which plank was attached to which plank. So they would write, they would mark on the planks. We would, for example, write an A and a B. Maybe they wrote two other Hebrew letters, aleph and bet. So they were writing in order to build the tabernacle. So for us, any form of writing is prohibited. With a pen, with a crayon, on a tablet, painting, drawing, anything that we mark is prohibited. They would carry things in the construction of the tabernacle from a private to a public domain. So on the Shabbat, this is one of the most mysterious laws of the Shabbat, we're not allowed to carry anything from our private domain into the public domain or from the public domain into the private domain. So normally, for example, you couldn't take a book out of your house and go into the street as an example. Now, again, there are many, many law, I just shared with you four, I think, of these 39. So what happens with this comprehensive and elaborate system of restricted activities is that what happens to us is that we become very conscious of our activities on the Shabbat. It's so interesting how you can go through the day during the week and not really ever think about what you're doing. On the Shabbat, we come a little bit more, we have a heightened sensitivity, a heightened sense of awareness about what we're doing. But what it does is it transforms the Shabbat into a day with a very special and holy atmosphere. It is specifically the special restrictions on the Shabbat that creates, that's responsible for creating the incredibly holy and different kind of just atmosphere in our homes. Now, one of the effects of the Sabbath restrictions, one of the most important effects, is that they free us up, they free us. We tend to often look at the Sabbath as a day of restrictions. You can't do this and you can't do this and you can't do this. But on the contrary, one of the major purposes of this is that we now have the freedom, the space to be able to focus ourselves on more important things. So the Sabbath restrictions free us to be able to focus our attention on the positive aspects of the Sabbath. I mentioned the Sabbath speaks about guarding the Sabbath, but also remembering the Sabbath. And we'll see exactly what these positive aspects of the Sabbath are momentarily. Now, there are two reasons why in the practice and observance of the Sabbath, that we prepare for the Sabbath before it begins. We don't wait until sundown Friday night to begin thinking about the Sabbath. We prepare for the Sabbath before Friday night comes. For two reasons. Number one, there are many activities that are prohibited on the Sabbath. For example, we're not allowed to cook on the Sabbath. So all the cooking, everything we're going to eat has to be made already cooked before the Sabbath begins. But secondly, anything important in life requires preparation, like a wedding. You don't just wake up one day and just go to the wedding. A wedding requires preparation and planning. You don't just roll out of bed into your wedding day. And so you don't wait until the Sabbath begins to begin thinking about the Sabbath. So by preparing for the Sabbath beforehand, it shows that we value the Sabbath. We love the Sabbath. We respect the Sabbath. And that's why we prepare for it ahead of time. So the custom is that we clean our homes before the Sabbath. The home should look nice. We shower. We get dressed in nice clothing for the Sabbath, like we're going out on a nice date. We're going to meet some dignitary. If you were going to meet the Prime Minister, you wouldn't come in dressed so informally. You dress up. So the Sabbath we'll see in a moment is compared to a bride or to a queen. And so we get dressed up for the Sabbath. We put on very nice clothing. The table is set with our most beautiful tablecloth and nicest dishes and silverware. And it's all done before the Sabbath begins. And since electrical devices are not permitted to be used on the Sabbath, we can turn lights on and off on the Sabbath. So the lights that will be needed are turned on ahead of time. Some people will use timers, electric timers that will automatically turn lights on and off. But that has to all be prepared before the Shabbat begins. And just like you might light candles for romantic meal, the Shabbat in the home begins by lighting candles. Usually it's done by the woman of the household. If you're a single guy, you do it yourself. The candles are lit 18 minutes before the actual onset of the Sabbath. You can even light it before 18 minutes. But again, you don't want to wait until the very, very last minute to light candles. You want to show your love for the Shabbat by welcoming the Shabbat even a little bit earlier than it formally begins. A minimum of two candles are lit. But many women have the practice of lighting an additional candle for each of their children. A blessing is recited prior to lighting the candles. And many women will use this holy moment to pray for their families and for other people in their lives. Now, during the week, all days of the week, formal Jewish prayer, informal Jewish prayer takes place every, all the time. You can be praying as you walk to this class tonight. You can be praying, you know, as you're waiting for a bus to come. But formal Jewish prayer takes place normally three times a day. Morning, afternoon, and evening prayers. That's when people go to the synagogue. And so the Shabbat is no different. Friday afternoon before the Shabbat begins, people will assemble in the synagogue to say the last prayer of the day. Meaning that the afternoon prayer is really the last prayer of Friday because Friday night already begins Saturday. In the Jewish calendar, the day begins the night before. So the Shabbat does not begin Saturday morning. Shabbat begins Friday night. So Friday began Thursday night. Thursday night you said the evening prayers for Friday. Friday morning, the morning prayers for Friday. Friday late afternoon before Shabbat starts, we're going to say the afternoon prayers for Friday. And then normally during the week after the afternoon prayers would come the evening prayers. But on Shabbat we have an additional special service called Welcoming the Shabbat. And these are special psalms and poems that we say and sing to greet the Sabbath. It's a short service, but it's very beautiful because in our literature I mentioned that the Sabbath is compared to a bride and to a queen. So many of these songs pick up on this imagery of Welcoming the Bride on Friday night. After the Welcoming the Shabbat service, we do the evening service for Friday night, which is the first service on Shabbat. And afterwards people greet each other by saying Shabbat Shalom, which means a Shabbat of peace. Shalom also means wholeness, because on Shabbat we become whole people. Or people might say good Shabbat, which means good Shabbat. Shabbat is good and beautiful. After the service is Friday night, families and friends then assemble for the Friday night meal. The Shabbat experience is centered not just around the prayers in the synagogue. As we mentioned in previous classes, Jewish life is centered in the home. So the Shabbat experience is really centered around meals that are taken in the home. Friday night, people gather for the Friday night meal. The meal begins by singing a very beautiful song, Welcoming and greeting the special angels that are present with us when the Shabbat begins. After this song, there's a custom for men to sing the 31st chapter in the book of Proverbs to their wives and to other women. It's a song about the women of Valor. It has many symbolic meanings. It also speaks about the Torah. But the Shabbat meal begins with these holy songs. And then every Shabbat and festival meal begins by taking a cup of wine, a full cup of wine, or grape juice, and basically toasting the day. So the beginning of the meal proper begins. It's called Kiddush. Kiddush means holiness. And this is our way of basically declaring that Shabbat is a holy day. It's done over this cup of wine. I failed to mention, by the way, that before the taking of the cup of wine, right after the singing of the women of Valor, many families have the custom of the parents blessing their children. So the children will walk up to each parent. The parents will put their hands on their children's heads and give them a special personal blessing. Then the Kiddush is recited. The Kiddush, by the way, the text of this blessing speaks about both the creation of the world and the exodus, the freedom from slavery in Egypt. After this, everyone goes to wash their hands, not to get the hands clean. We assume the hands are already clean. This is a ritual washing of the hands to prepare spiritually for the meal. Also, just like in the temple, when the priests were about to do their service in the temple, the priests had their hands washed ritually. So in many ways, when we're sitting at our tables in our homes, our tables become like a holy altar. The table in our home is one of the most holy places in the universe. So at the table, the table becomes like an altar. We become like the priests. The food becomes like the sacrifices that were eaten. And so just like the priests would prepare for their service by washing their hands, we wash our hands before the meal. People remain silent after saying the blessing for washing their hands. There's no talking, because we want to connect the washing of the hands to the eating of bread. Now, the meal begins by taking two loaves of bread. They're whole pieces of bread. They're usually braided colchala. And there are reasons why we take two loaves of bread. When the Jews were in the desert for 40 years, they were fed by a miraculous food from heaven called manna. Every day, a certain amount of manna fell down in front of each person's tent if there were different kinds of people that would be further away from their tent. But we're told that on Shabbat, the manna did not fall. Did not fall on Shabbat. They didn't collect any manna on Shabbat. On Friday, a double portion fell. So in order to commemorate the double portion that fell, on Friday, we begin the Shabbat with these two loaves of bread. A blessing is said over the bread, which we do every time in the week. We're going to have bread as well. We thank God for bringing forth bread from the ground. And then the bread is dipped into salt. In the temple, all the sacrifices had salt placed on them. And then the bread is cut up and distributed to each person at the meal. The Shabbat meal is a long meal. Very easily it could take one, two, three, four, five hours. There's a lot of special singing, Shabbat songs, holy songs, discussing the weekly Torah portion. Every week, a different part of the Torah is read in the synagogue. That's one of the things that's discussed at the Shabbat table. Parents will get a chance to ask their children what they learned in school that week. And on Shabbat, they're focusing more on the spiritual things they learned and not their math problems. And there's a chance to bond at the table with family and with guests. Many families have a custom of trying to have guests at their Shabbat table. People that are either alone, people that are single, people that are lonely, people that just don't have a place to go. So many families will make it an effort to try to have guests at their Shabbat table. And after the meal, however long it takes, like all meals when bread is consumed, there is the reciting of the grace after meals, the berkatamazon. The next morning, the morning Shabbat service is longer than the weekday services during the rest of the weekdays. One of the reasons is that the Torah scroll is removed from the ark and we read the weekly Torah portion. The five books of Moses are divided up into about 52 different portions. Each week we read about a 50th, a 52nd of the entire five books of Moses. And that's part of what we do Shabbat morning. After the morning services, which usually take approximately one and a half to two and a half hours, some places it could take three hours if the rabbiah gives a long sermon. But afterwards, many synagogues have a light reception with light refreshments. And then people go home for the lunch, the second meal of the Sabbath. Lunch again is very similar to the Friday night dinner. It starts off with a cup of wine with kiddush with the two loaves of bread. And again, a long meal with a lot of singing, speaking about spiritual topics, discussing things as a family. And then after the meal, people might go for a short walk. They might study by themselves or in a group. They might meet with friends. They might go for a short nap. They might just relax. But no attention is given to their weekday concerns. They won't look at the stock quotes. They won't think about their meeting on Monday morning, their sales meeting. Basically, the day is spent trying to cultivate a holy atmosphere of peace and tranquility. In the afternoon, there's an afternoon prayer service. What happens there is they take out the Torah again and they read the first part of next week's Torah reading. So every time the Torah is read, it's divided into seven portions, seven parts. So each Saturday morning, seven people are called up to read a part. So on Saturday afternoon, they only read one part of the one that's going to be studied the following Shabbat. After the afternoon prayer services, there's a third Shabbat meal. And you might say to yourself, who in the world can have a third meal at this point? Because the meals are quite large. So it's not a seriously large meal, but it's a way of showing that the important part of this meal is not the food. But the collegiality, the fellowship, the singing, the Torah study that's done, it's considered to be the most spiritual part of Shabbat. The custom used to be to have very little lights on. Usually the sun was about to go down. Lights wouldn't be turned on. And people would spend the time of the third meal singing very, very deeply spiritual songs. After the third Shabbat meal, the Shabbat comes to a conclusion with reciting the evening prayers for Sunday. Again, Sunday begins Saturday night. And then there's a service called Havdallah, which means separation, which concludes the Sabbath. The Havdallah is recited both in the synagogue for the community that came to the synagogue, but everyone does it at home for their families. And what happens at Havdallah is that you take a cup of wine, just like the Shabbat began with a cup of wine. You take a cup of wine for Havdallah. You take a candle, put on Shabbat. The Shabbat began by lighting two separate candles. Havdallah is done with one candle where the two candles have become one. It's a torch where you have one candle but two wicks or at least two wicks, sometimes five or six or seven or eight. But what happens is the idea is on Shabbat, what happened over the Shabbat is things came together. There's different themes on Shabbat. The theme of the masculine, the theme of the feminine are Friday night and Shabbat morning. But then Shabbat afternoon is them coming together. So the whole theme of the Shabbat is to bring things together. We become closer to our souls, we become closer to our families, closer to God. So Shabbat concludes not with separate candles, but with one candle of intertwined wicks. And then we take spices because our soul is sad to see the Shabbat leave. So we smell spices to revive our soul. And Havdallah means distinction and separation because we're declaring that we sense there's a difference between the atmosphere of Shabbat and the atmosphere of the rest of the week. Many people have the custom of having an additional small meal on Saturday night, which means escorting the queen. We want to escort the queen as Shabbat leaves. It's a way basically of trying to keep the Shabbat spirit and keeping it a little bit longer to ourselves, hoping that it will stay with us a little bit longer and slowly easing back into the work days. Let's try to speak about in the time we have remaining the holidays in the Jewish calendar. In the Bible there were three pilgrim festivals. We call them pilgrim festivals because they were times when the Jewish people were supposed to go wherever they were living in Israel to Jerusalem. They had to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And the three pilgrim festivals were Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. We'll speak about them now. Passover marks probably the most important event, one of the most important events in Jewish history. We know that the 70 descendants of Abraham and Sarah went down to Egypt as a family. We went down to Egypt as a family of 70 people, but we became enslaved there for 210 years. And during that period of 210 years, we multiplied miraculously into not a family, but a nation of several million people. 3327 years ago, 3327 years ago, God redeemed us from the Egyptian slavery. That was the Exodus. And this redemption took place with incredibly dramatic supernatural miracles. Now why is Passover an incredibly important holiday? I'll share a number of reasons. Number one, it marks the birth of us as a nation. Passover is the birth of the Jewish people. Number two, it is the foundational source of our faith in God. When God spoke at Mount Sinai in the first of the Ten Commandments, he doesn't say, I am the Lord your God who created heaven and earth. No one witnessed God creating heaven and earth. He says, I'm the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt from the house of slavery. We witnessed all the incredible supernatural miracles that took place as God redeemed us in Egypt. We witnessed the Ten Plagues. We witnessed the splitting of the sea. And so Passover is critically important because it's the foundation, the source of our faith in a God who created the world and demonstrated his absolute control over nature. And that he is active in history. That God didn't just create the world and take off on a lifetime vacation in Bermuda. That God created the world and he's actively involved in the world. He intervenes in history by redeeming his people. Number three, Passover is the foundation of our faith and trust. In future redemptions, just as God redeemed us from Egypt, we always believe that God will redeem us from all of our difficulties. Number four, the Exodus from Egypt is foundational in terms of the Torah's ethical system. Because Torah ethics is often based upon the principle of empathy. The Torah repeats numerous times. Never forget that you were slaves in Egypt. Never forget how it feels to be mistreated, to be tortured, to be disempowered. And the Torah says, because you know how it feels, the Torah says, never do it to someone else. Never mistreat other people because you know how it feels to be mistreated. Number five, the word Egypt in Hebrew is Mitzrayim. Mitzrayim from the word Metsar means a narrow place of construction. On Passover, we're given, each person is given a gift of freedom, of personal freedom. It's not just the holiday of the liberation of a nation. It's a holiday where each person is given a certain spiritual gift of freedom from those things that constrict them and hold them back in their personal lives. So if people are struggling with an addiction problem, they can be freed from that through the energy, the spiritual energy of Passover. Now the idea of the holidays in Judaism is that we don't just read an article or a book about important spiritual ideas. When God wanted us to educate our children, God didn't say, have your kids read chapters 33 and 34 in the book of Exodus. That's not how God instructed us to instruct our children. The way we teach our descendants in the Torah is by not having them read texts so much, although Torah study is important, but by having us experience important ideas, living them, not reading, but experiencing, living them, putting them into action. We re-experience our history. We don't just remember what happened 3,000 years ago. The Torah says, you're supposed to see yourself now as if you now are coming out of Egypt. So what we do on Passover is we try to relive the experience, to get in touch with it on a very deep level. Now in the Torah, Passover is a seven-day festival. In the Bible itself, Passover is for seven days. The first day is a full holiday with restrictions of work similar to Shabbat, except for two things. You're allowed to cook on a holiday. You're allowed to carry things out of your house on a holiday. Otherwise, the restrictions are very similar to Shabbat. The same thing for the last day. So it's a seven-day holiday, biblically. The first of these seven days, the last of these seven days, are full holidays. The days in between are semi-holidays, where the restrictions are much more relaxed. But outside of Israel, it's not a seven-day holiday. It's an eight-day holiday. Now why is that? So we know that the biblical months were lunar months. A lunar month can be either 29 days or 30 days. Now in the times of the Bible, what would they do? So the great Supreme Court in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin, would receive witnesses. If witnesses came, they might say, we saw the new moon on the 29th day. And then they would declare that the next day was the beginning of the next month. Or they would determine that, no, the month was not a 29-day month. The previous month was a 30-day month. And so the 31st day would be declared the beginning of the next month. But it could be one of those two days. And it was determined by witnesses coming and testifying. Now if you lived in Jerusalem, you would know pretty quickly when the new moon was declared. The word would spread very quickly. If you lived outside of Jerusalem, what they would do is they would signal people through the use of bonfires. So they would go to the top of a mountain, light a big fire, and then people would see that probably for many miles. And they would light another fire. And through these signals of the fires, people could be pretty much aware of when the new moon was declared almost immediately. It was a pretty good system of communication. The problem was that at a certain point in Jewish history, there was a group of people that were opposing normative Judaism, called the Samaritans, the Shomronim. And the Shomronim, in order to sabotage this whole system, they decided to light fires all the time on top of mountains. So it made the whole lighting of fires useless. So they had to resort to the next best thing, which was sending messages on horseback. Now think about this for a minute. Passover begins its 15th day of the first month. Passover takes place in the first month of the Hebrew calendar on the 15th day. So if you were living, let's say in the southern part of Israel, you wouldn't be able to see any bonfires anymore, but a person on a horse could get down to you within two weeks. So you would know within two weeks, oh, the new moon was declared on such and such a day, so I count 15 days. I know when Passover is. But what if you were living outside of Israel? There was Jewish communities, because of the first dispersion, they went to Babylon. Jewish people were living in Babylonia, which was many, many miles away. Horseback riders couldn't get there within two weeks. So what would you do if you were living in Babylon and you wanted to know when to celebrate Passover? You wouldn't know if the previous month was 29 or 30 days. So in order to make sure that you wouldn't begin celebrating Passover on the wrong day, the custom became to celebrate two days of Passover. Instead of having one day as the holiday, they celebrated both possibilities, and that way we wouldn't get it wrong. Passover has several names. Passover comes from the 10th plague. The 10th of the plagues in Egypt was the killing of the firstborn. God, after nine plagues, threatened the Egyptians by saying, if you don't free the Jewish people, all of the firstborn of Egypt are going to die. It could have been the firstborn of anyone in Egypt. So the Jews were commanded to take a lamb. By the way, the lamb was the deity of the Egyptians. Tie it to their beds four days before Passover. And then on the eve of Passover, they were supposed to slaughter this lamb and eat it together as a family. And they were supposed to take the blood from that lamb and put it on the doorpost in the lentils of their houses. When the angel would see the blood on those doorposts, the angel would know it was a Jewish family, the angel of death would pass over those Jewish homes, and the Jews would be spared. Hence the name of the holiday Passover. The holiday is also called Chag HaMatzot, the festival of Matzah. Matzah is unleavened bread. Bread that is not risen. Now, what is Matzah at the end of the day? Both bread, regular normal bread like a hamburger bun or a piece of rye bread. And Matzah are made from the same ingredients. They're made from flour, which comes from one of five grains. Wheat, barley, rye, oats are spelt. So it's flour that's mixed with water. And if it's left alone, if it's just allowed to sit there, what will happen is a chemical reaction will take place producing carbon dioxide, and that will cause the dough to rise. And that's called fermentation or leavening. This is bread. Matzah is made basically by not allowing the flour and the water to sit there and ferment. You don't allow it just to sit there and ferment. What happens is it's continuously and vigorously needed so that the CO2 cannot escape and cause the dough to rise. And then what happens is the dough is very quickly rolled flat and it's perforated with holes so that more carbon dioxide can escape. And it's placed very quickly into a very, very hot oven. And this heat also stops the leavening process from taking place and then we have these flat breads that are called Matzah. The major preparation for Passover is cleaning our homes of all leavened products. All bread, all bread products. Any product that might have leavened or leavened products as part of them, even a trace of hummets of this leavened product cannot be anywhere in our home. We can't eat it. We can't even own it. Now, this is not so easy to do to clean out your whole house. Imagine kids running around a house with cookies all year round. So these crumbs can go up all over the place. But that's the preparation for Passover. Usually we'll start two weeks, three weeks, some people a month before Passover start cleaning their homes, making sure that after a room is cleaned, no one brings any food into it under pain of death. And it's quite a process to clean a home for Passover. Not only are we again forbidden to eat hummets, we can't even own it during Passover. Now, what is hummets? Hummets is this dough that's risen. It symbolizes ego, arrogance, being puffed up. And so when we check our homes for hummets, also we're supposed to be checking ourselves for our own arrogance, for our own ego that sometimes gets overblown. Passover preparation should be a time also of spiritual preparation. Pots and pans and utensils that are used during the year are put away because they have hummets on them or they've absorbed hummets' flavor. And special Passover utensils are used. The main ritual of Passover is a long meal called the Seder. Seder in Hebrew means order. It has 15 parts of it. So because it is based upon 15 parts, it's called a Seder, an order. We use a special book called the Haggadah. Haggadah means the telling because we're telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The meal itself is structured around four cups of wine. These four cups of wine are drunk at various parts of the Seder. And there's a huge focus during this meal of engaging children and keeping the proceedings focused on the children. The goal to a great extent is to help convey the message and the story of the Exodus to children. The main highlights of the Passover Seder are children asking for questions because unless you have questions, you don't have education. Without questions, you have brainwashing or indoctrination. So for real learning to be taking place, people need to be curious. They need to ask questions. One part of the Seder is provoking children and others to ask questions. The Seder is not really supposed to be a meal where you recurgitate back the text of the Haggadah. The Seder is supposed to be the experience of open and free dialogue, question and answer, people asking the real serious questions they have about what it means to be a Jew and the important parts of Judaism. So we ask questions. The Seder does not begin without questions being asked. In order to again re-experience the Passover story, we eat bitter herbs because we had a bitter exile in Egypt. We recount the slavery in Egypt, we recount the 10 plagues in Egypt, we recount the Exodus story, we have lots of songs that the Seder is centered around. We recline when drinking the wine and eating the matzah because reclining is a symbol of freedom. Wealthy people would sort of sit back on a couch while they were eating back then. We want to be like fancy free people tonight on the Seder night. Outside of Israel, there are two Seder again because outside of Israel there are two holiday days at the beginning of the festival. In Israel, just one Seder. The Seder's begin after nightfall on the first night, which in Toronto will be about 9 o'clock this year, and the Seder can go until midnight, sometimes 2 o'clock. Some families will go to 4 o'clock in the morning and beyond. Seven weeks after Passover, seven weeks after leaving Egypt, the Israelites arrived at Mount Sinai and God revealed the Torah to them. They actually heard God speak the first two of the Ten Commandments to Moses. That's why when you read the Ten Commandments, you'll see the first two of them are in the first person. I am the Lord your God. Have no other gods before me. And then it switches to the third person. Don't take the name of the Lord your God in vain. And what our Sages tell us, and the Bible also shows this, that the revelation experienced hearing the voice of God was so overwhelming for the Jewish people, they just couldn't tolerate it. They said to Moses, this is too much for us. Let God speak to you and you can let us know what he said. But all the people heard the first two of the Ten Commandments. So the second of the Pilgrim festivals is called Shavuot, which means weeks, because it takes place seven weeks after Passover. It also coincided with the harvest season in Israel. So it's also called the Festival of First Fruits. It's just a one day festival in Israel outside of Israel to two day festival. And what's interesting is there are no special ceremonies, rituals, or commandments associated with this holiday of Shavuot. There are many customs though associated with Shavuot. Number one, there's a custom to stay up all night on the eve of Shavuot, studying Torah. One of the reasons is, because according to the Midrash, when the Torah was about to be given, the Jewish people fell asleep the night before the Torah was revealed. And so in order to show that we are actually anxious and anticipating the revelation of the Torah, we show that anxiousness and excitement by staying up all night the night before. There's a custom to have dairy foods on Passover. Many reasons for this. One of them is dairy is the food of children, of infants. And this was the period of our infancy in Jewish history. And then we read the story of Ruth. In the Bible, Ruth was a very famous convert to Judaism. And just like we accepted the Torah and Mount Sinai, we read the book of Ruth where she accepted the Torah in order to convert to Judaism. Ruth, by the way, became the ancestor of King David, who was the ancestor of the future Messiah. The third pilgrim festival is called Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles. This comes out in the middle of the seventh month in the Hebrew calendar, usually in the autumn here around October sometime. Now the Feast of Sukkot, or Tabernacles, or Booths comes out. It occurs in the 15th day, the seventh month, right after the High Holidays. We'll be discussing the High Holidays in a few minutes. In Israel, Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, Tabernacles is an eight-day festival. Outside of Israel, it's a nine-day festival. And again, when this happens, the first two days will be full holidays. The last two days, full holidays, with the restrictions of a holiday. The middle days are a semi-holiday. Now what does Sukkot commemorate? It commemorates the Hutts, or Booths, that our ancestors dwelled in during the 40 years they wandered in the desert after coming out of Egypt. They lived a totally supernatural existence in the desert. There were no water supplies in the desert, but there was a well that traveled around with them. It was called the Well of Miriam, and it produced water for them. They had clouds that covered them. They had pillar of fire that led them. They had manna, the supernatural food that fed them. We're told there were many, many miracles that took place in the desert. So we build booths for this holiday of Sukkot to commemorate the booths that we lived in during those 40 years. And the custom is to take all of our meals in the Sukkot. So during the festival of Sukkot, the festival of Tabernacles, we eat all our meals in the Sukkot. Many people have the custom, if they can, to actually sleep in the Sukkot. You're supposed to do normally in the Sukkot anything you would do in your home. In this part of the world where it gets very, very cold in October, late October, so people often will not sleep in their Sukkot. In Israel it's very common for people to sleep in the Sukkot. Sukkot falls out, as I mentioned, five days after Yom Kippur began, after Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. And many people begin building their Sukkot right after Yom Kippur ends. The Sukkot has to have at least two and a half walls and a roof that's made out of organic material, like bamboo poles or thin wooden slats or evergreen branches. It has to provide more shade than sun. But the main idea on Sukkot is to leave our permanent dwelling and go out into a temporary dwelling where you can see the stars through the roof of the Sukkot. Sukkot falls during the harvest season in Israel, the fall harvest season. And we're making a big statement, therefore. When the harvest season comes, it's a time where people could get very focused on what they produced. Look at all my crops, look at everything I've made this year. Let me count all my investments, how much they paid off. What truly makes us wealthy is not our material possessions and our nice homes. That's not what makes someone wealthy. The Talmud says the wealthy person is the person that's satisfied with what they have. And being able to be satisfied with something very simple, like going out into a simple hut, a simple booth, is a sign that what's truly important in life are not the material things. What makes us secure is not a big home with a sturdy lock. What makes us secure is our relationship with God. And that's why the Torah calls Sukkot the season of our rejoicing. It's one of the happiest times of the year. Because we get in touch with the fact that what's truly important in life and what truly can give us satisfaction are spiritual things and a closeness with God. The second major ritual of Sukkot is taking together four species. The Bible speaks about taking four special species of plant life on Sukkot and waving them in all directions during parts of the Sukkot prayers. These species are the palm leaves, palm branches, myrtle branches, myrtle leaves, willow leaves, and a citron. Citron looks like a lemon. There's a lot of symbolism in these four species, tremendous amount of symbolism. One is they represent parts of the human body, our spine, our heart, our lips, our eyes. And so we take them all together to show how we use all of our body to serve God. Other interpretations say that these four species represent four kinds of people. Some have smell, some have taste, some have one, some have the other, some have both. And so there are people that have good deeds, but not a lot of knowledge. Some people have a lot of knowledge, but not a lot of good deeds. Some people have both, some have neither. But what we're stating on Sukkot is we have to take them all together because as a people, we have to all come together. No matter how we are, no matter how different we are, we all come together. We dwell together in what we call the Sukkot Shalom, the tabernacle of peace. Ultimately, to be at peace, we have to all be together, despite our differences. In Israel, the last day of this holiday, in Israel, it's an eight-day holiday. The last day is called Shminyatzaret, the eighth day of holding back because really Sukkot is over already. But there's a sense that I don't want to let it go. We just had this whole month of holidays. Earlier in the month we had the Jewish New Year and then the day of Atonement. And now the eight days of Sukkot. So there's a chance to say, I want to just stay with you one day longer, God. And because in Israel on this last day, we also celebrate the completion of reading the Torah over the course of the year. That day is also called Simcha Torah, the rejoicing of the Torah. We celebrate the completion of the cycle of reading the Torah over the course of a year. Outside of Israel, these two holidays are two separate days. It's the eighth and ninth day. The eighth day being Shminyatzaret, the ninth day being Simcha Torah. Earlier in the month, we have what we call the high holidays, the days of Or. Rosh Hashanah is the first two days of the month of Tishray, the seventh month of the calendar. And there you have two days even in Israel. It's interesting. Usually the idea of having an extra day was only outside of Israel. But even in Israel, Rosh Hashanah is a two day holiday because it takes place on the first day of the month. So because it's the first day of the month, even in Israel, there's a little bit of a confusion as to when it's going to be. Are the witnesses going to come on the 29th day? What if they don't show up? Are they going to come on the 30th day? What happens on the 29th day? So because of the potential confusion, even inside of Israel, there was no time. They doubled up the holiday in Israel as two days as well. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, commemorates the creation of Adam and Eve. That's the historical event. It doesn't mark an event in Jewish history. It marks the creation of humanity. And therefore, it's the anniversary of our creation. So when Jewish thought Rosh Hashanah is the day of judgment. On the day that God created us, God evaluates us. So the themes of Rosh Hashanah are introspection and repentance, chuvah. Chuvah is the process of returning to God after we strayed from God. Of correcting the mistakes we've made in life. That's the major theme of this time during the year. And because it's such a difficult process, you can't do this in one day. The theme is taken for the 30 days before Rosh Hashanah. For the entire month, before the seventh month, the sixth month of Elul. We spend that whole month preparing for the high holidays. The main commandment on Rosh Hashanah is to blow a shofar. To sound a shofar. The custom is to blow the shofar 100 times during the course of the day. What was the shofar? Many things. One thing it was a wake-up call, an alarm. The purpose of hearing the shofar was to wake up people that we also easily fall asleep during the year. We forget about why we're even in this world. So the shofar has different sounds. I'll talk about the sounds in a moment. This might be a typical sequence that's blown in the synagogue. Aside from being an alarm and a wake-up call, the shofar is a coronation. We're coronating God as king. One of the major themes of Rosh Hashanah is we're saying we are placing God at the center of our lives. We want to make God king of our lives and king of the world. Now the notes have different sounds. If you remember what I just sounded, it started with a very even sound. A smooth sound. And then it became a series of broken sounds. But then it concludes with a straight sound at the end. Because the truth is the world was whole. When the world was created, the world was a world that was whole. But then the world became broken. And we look forward to, as we've discussed in the first class, the future messianic age where the world will get repaired. And the same process takes place in each of our individual lives. Each person is created whole, pure, straight. But then we let our own lives fall apart. We let our lives get broken. We make mistakes. And so the goal of the high holiday season is to repair ourselves and to become whole and straight again. Like all holidays, Rosh Hashanah has similar work restrictions you are allowed to cook, though, and carry. And even though it's a day of judgment, it's a holiday with festive meals. Because we're confident that God will be merciful and kind in judging us. And also, we think that it's an amazing blessing that God is even judging us. It tells us that God cares about us. For God to sit and judge any person is an indication that God has hopes for people and cares about them. And so we see Rosh Hashanah as a great day of celebration. The synagogue services are longer than usual on Rosh Hashanah. The theme on Rosh Hashanah, though, even though it's a day of judgment, is not to think about our shortcomings. That's not the theme of the day. The theme of the day, if you look through the prayer service, is recognizing God as the king of the world. And one day God will be recognized by the entire world as the creator and the king. And so we spend our time on Rosh Hashanah, not contemplating how much we messed up during the past year, but thinking about and imagining what could in more ideal life look like for ourselves personally and for the world. Ten days after Rosh Hashanah, on the 10th day of the month, is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It's a one-day festival both in Israel and outside of Israel. And even though it's a day spent fasting, no eating, no drinking, and we're immersed in prayers and confessing our sins throughout the entire day, it is very far from a sad day. It's considered actually to be the most joyous day of the year. Why? Because Yom Kippur is a day of forgiveness, of purification, of renewal, of reconciliation, of cleansing. We walk away after Yom Kippur feeling clean. We have a clean slate and a new lease on life. That is empowering. That's an incredibly strong, powerful, positive feeling. The fasting of Yom Kippur is not a fasting of mourning. We're not mourning anything, but it's a way of helping us to get in touch with the fact that we are much more spiritual than physical. And so the fasting of Yom Kippur is a way of demonstrating to ourselves how much spiritual potential we actually have. And so it's a day of incredible positive feeling and positive energy. Yom Kippur, by the way, only has the power to atone for transgressions between the individual and God. For any harm we've done to other people, we have to make amends to them and to seek their forgiveness personally and directly. The prayers of Yom Kippur are very long. Often in most synagogues they last just about the entire day. Some synagogues will have a break that goes from about two to three hours. But basically the entire day is spent in the synagogue praying. And there is a long list of personal indiscretions that is recited. It's called the vidui, the confessional. A long list in alphabetical order of things that we mess up during the year. And we say that about ten times during the day of Yom Kippur. We also read the book of Jonah, the entire book of Jonah on Yom Kippur, in the afternoon before the end of Yom Kippur to teach mainly two lessons. Number one, like Jonah discovered you can't run away from God. And number two, like Jonah learned at the end of the book, that if you repent of your transgressions you'll be forgiven. At the end of Yom Kippur the shofar is blown once. And then the fast is over. Many people will then immediately break into singing and dancing. Then we have two minor holidays during the calendar year. Actually there's more than two minor holidays but two that I'll focus on tonight. Hanukkah is a holiday that took place commemorating the time when the Syrian Greek Hellenists took control of Israel around 200 BCE. And they waged an effort to stamp out Judaism. There was an incredible persecution of Judaism. There was no interest in killing Jews. This was a war against Judaism. They banned many Jewish practices. They took over our temple. They polluted the temple. And so eventually the Jews revolted. And a small tiny army of Jews was able to defeat the Syrian Greek Hellenists. They recaptured the temple on the 25th day of Kieslave in the year 164 BCE. That's the first day of Hanukkah. It comes out usually in December in our calendars. And it marks two miracles. It marks the miracle of the menorah. In the temple in Jerusalem, one of the things that was done every day was there was a seven branch menorah that was lit every day in the temple. When they recaptured the temple, they weren't able to find any oil that was pure. All the oil was defiled. All they ended up finding was one tiny vase, one tiny jar of oil that was pure. They only last one day. And in order to get new oil, they had to travel four days. But then four days back. So basically they'd be without oil for seven days. The miracle was they lit this one day of supply of oil and it lasted for eight days. So Hanukkah for us is an eight-day holiday which commemorates, number one, the amazing military victory of a small tiny Jewish army against a huge professional army of Syrian Greeks. And it celebrates the amazing miracle of the oil lasting for eight days. What we do is we light candles each night of Hanukkah. We light one the first night, two the second night, three the third night, etc. And there are special prayers of thanksgiving that are recited each day of Hanukkah. Finally, the last minor holiday we'll speak about is Purim. Purim took place around the year 500 BCE when the Jews were in exile from Israel in Persia. And there it wasn't an attack against the Jews spiritually. There it was an attack against the Jews physically. There was a Jew-hating official of the empire named Haman Haman who had it in for the Jews and he planned genocide. His idea was that on a certain date he would launch a genocide where the local people would kill all the Jews in their communities. And what he did was he cast lots. He cast lots to determine on what day the genocide would take place. It turned out that the lots came out in the middle of the month of Adar. Adar is the last month in the Hebrew calendar. So it's about a month before Passover. If Passover occurs in the middle of the first month, so the middle of the twelfth month is a month before Passover. And what happened in the face of that potential genocide was that a Jewish woman had previously won a beauty contest to replace the deposed queen of the kingdom. The king Achashverosh had basically become upset with his wife Vashti. She was executed and then they were looking for a new queen. They had a beauty contest all over the entire kingdom. It was a huge kingdom. And this Jewish woman named Esther won. She did not reveal her identity that she was a Jew. But when her uncle Mordechai found out about this plot, the genocide plot to kill all the Jews, he said to Esther, look, you were obviously put into this position in order to save your people. And so he urged her to prevail upon the king to save her people. And she invited the king to a banquet where she had wine. She invited Haman as well. It's a very complicated story. But at the end of the story, the tables were turned on Haman. He was killed. The Jews were given permission to defend themselves. And they destroyed their enemies during these days in Adar. And so we celebrate Purim to commemorate the salvation of the Jews from this genocide. On Purim we read the book of Esther. It's a book in the Bible where interestingly God's name does not appear in this book. One of the reasons is because it seems that God's presence is hidden from the story. There are no supernatural miracles. It seems to be that the Jews were saved due to political intrigue and serendipity and things just working out at the right moment. And the message is that no, even though God seems hidden, he was actually manipulating everything from behind the scenes. So on this holiday of Purim we read the book of Esther. We have a festive meal with wine just like Esther had for the king and for Haman. We give gifts to the poor and we send food gifts to our friends. Now I'm going to end tonight not discussing a Jewish holiday, but just mentioning the national Jewish day of mourning. In the fifth month of the Jewish calendar, it's the month of Av, usually takes place in our summertime, July or August. The ninth day of this month commemorates many national tragedies in the Jewish history. The major tragedy was that our first and second temples in Jerusalem were destroyed on this day. The first temple, according to some in the year 586 BCE, according to traditional Jewish dating about 423 BCE, and the second temple in the year 70 of the common era, both temples were destroyed as well as many other terrible tragedies in Jewish history. So this day is celebrated as a day of mourning. It's a day where there's no eating or no drinking for the 25 hours. We don't bathe. We don't wear leather shoes. We sit on low stools. There's no sexual relations between married couples. We don't study Torah, which is normally a very joyous thing to do. It's a day spent like anyone who's lost a close relative during those first seven days of mourning. We read in the synagogue the Book of Lamentations, which was written by the prophet Jeremiah that describes the horrible scenes that took place in the destruction of the first temple of Jerusalem. We recite many dirges and poems that describe the tragedies taking place on those days. And we focus on Tisha Ba'av on this day on the causes of these tragedies, which were mainly our sins are turning away from God and most significantly are not getting along with each other. The Talmud says that one of the main causes of destruction are that Jews do not get along with each other. They bicker. They fight. They're separated from each other. The Talmud calls it sinachinam baseless hatred. Because it's so difficult just to throw yourself into this day of mourning, Tisha Ba'av is preceded by three weeks of semi-morning, where for the first period of these three weeks, there's no weddings, no parties. We don't get haircuts. And during the last nine days before the Tisha Ba'av comes, we don't eat meat or drink wine. But it's almost the reverse process of someone that actually is in mourning, someone that's lost a close relative. The mourning decreases. The intense mourning is the seven days. It's less intense during the 30 days. It's less intense during the whole year after that. But as we build up the Tisha Ba'av, it starts off slower. There's the three-week period, and then the nine days before, and then the day itself of Tisha Ba'av, where the mourning gets increasingly strong. But it's a day where it's very crucial for us to be able to just identify with the fact that horrible things have happened to us as a people. Often we brought about them through our own negative behavior.