The three weeks before Tisha B’Av are known as ben hamtzarim, translated literally as, “Between the narrow straits.” The letters of metzarim are the same letters as mitzrayim, Egypt, which represents our deepest troubles in our history: generations enslaved.
It is during this time that we read three haftarot of admonition, the prophet Jeremiah begging the people to find God in their lives again. Jeremiah tells us, “I brought you to this farmland, do not defile it.”
It is too often when we are in dire straits that we being to recognize the gifts before us. The three weeks before Tisha B’Av can be seen as a time of concealed goodness. When it is almost impossible to see what good can come out of these most difficult situations, Jeremiah reminds us at the conclusion of the haftorah, “Do not waver, stay close to me.”
Tomorrow, Sinai Temple is proud to host Maziar Bahari, the Newsweek journalist jailed in Iran in 2009 at the Evin prison. He will share his story of sharing truth and the project that he is now partnering with the United States Holocaust Museum, the Sardari Project, which creates Persian language multimedia content to counteract Iranian state-sponsored Holocaust denial and antisemitism rhetoric.
Maziar is not Jewish, and yet from his experience in the the narrow straits, he has made it his mission to find goodness as an ally of the Jewish people.
This is a message of the Three Weeks that must be heard.
Join us tomorrow to welcome Maziar Bahari to our Sinai Temple community.
