Nine Readings in the Month of Av

“… an important contribution to the global Jewish cultural field, enriching the ongoing conversation that is our Jewish heritage with Jews around the world, and offering unique and comforting insight to everyone who struggles with making meaning out of suffering”.

Isaac Herzog, President of the State of Israel

Nine Readings in the Month of Av collects nine encounters of dialogue and havruta study with distinguished members of Israeli society who are actively engaged in the arts, humanities, and the attempt to build a better and more hopeful society. The dialogues seek to decipher the profound insights embedded in the legends of the Ḥurban, the destruction of the Temple, while interpreting them from a personal and contemporary perspective. The Ḥurban narratives are read here as a response to the challenges of our generation, as an interpretive gesture to the ancient authors, and as an effort to find contemporary social meanings that parallel past events.

Nine Reading in the Month of Av is a book that is independent of a specific date in the calendar. It follows the Jewish-Israeli calendar, in which the memory of the Ḥurban is recalled over and over in the context of painful social failures. Returning to ancient stories filled with wisdom, which resonate with human and national hardships, can illuminate the challenges of our own era and suggest paths for social and moral repair.