When Mother Has No Home: The Spiritual Message of the Three Weeks

If there is one thing that seems to contradict the very essence of womanhood, it is the idea of wandering. A woman is, by nature, a home. Long, exhausting journeys stand in stark contrast to her deepest instinct.

This week's Torah portion, Masei, recounts the forty two arduous journeys the Jewish people traveled through the wilderness: they set out, they camped, they set out again, and they camped again. The Three Weeks between the Seventeenth of Tammuz and Tisha B'Av contain their own forty two journeys: twenty one days and twenty one nights.

There is yet another heartbreaking journey that takes place during this season. Our Sages teach that the Divine Presence departed in ten stages during the destruction of the Temple. The Shechinah did not leave all at once. She moved slowly, almost reluctantly, from one place to another: from cherub to cherub, from the cherubim to the Temple threshold, then back again to the cherubim, as though unable to say goodbye. She embraced the Menorah. She lingered by the altar. She wept. As she departed, she knew she was leaving her home, beginning a journey whose end lay far in the future.

The Child Hidden Within Every Woman

Why is this journey so difficult for us?

Because inside every woman lives a little girl.

Women are, at heart, little girls who long to sit beside their mother and receive comfort, guidance, and reassurance. Then suddenly, that mother herself no longer has a home.

The Three Weeks are therefore days of profound emotional constriction. Mother has no home.

The words "narrowness" and "Jerusalem" seem to contradict one another. Jerusalem is the ultimate mother, expansive beyond measure. Our Sages famously declared that no one ever complained, "There was not enough room for me to stay overnight in Jerusalem." During the pilgrimage festivals, she welcomed hundreds of thousands of worshippers. Scripture describes Jerusalem overflowing like sacred flocks filling every corner of the city. She embraced every one of her children and seemed to say, "Come. Stay another day. There is always room for you."

How, then, did Jerusalem become so narrow?

When a mother has a home, she delights in filling it with her children. But during the destruction of the Temple, the Mother herself becomes homeless.

There comes a stage in life for which no one can truly prepare. Suddenly, your mother no longer has a place of her own, and now she is the one who needs your care. It is a profound reversal that reshapes the way we understand life itself.

How painful it is to see the Queen Mother, Rachel, weeping for her children. To see the mistress of a palace suddenly without shelter. She has no place for herself, nor does she have one for us. It is painful to witness our Father and Mother in such a state. No longer is it, "As one whom his mother comforts." This is why the days of the Three Weeks weigh so heavily upon us.

For a woman especially, it is difficult to grasp that suddenly Mother needs you, while the home you once returned to no longer feels large enough to contain either of you.

When Home Becomes Too Small

What do we do when there is no room left for Mother?

Then comes the month of Av. The very word Av means "father." It is as though the month whispers, "Father is coming."

When you feel like a little girl with no home to return to, when you find yourself trying to care for both father and mother while feeling completely helpless yourself, that is when the month of Av arrives.

Your Father in Heaven says, "Know this. When you feel most powerless, when you feel diminished and have nowhere left to turn, that is precisely when I enter your life."

Our Sages teach, "When Av enters, joy is diminished."

When does the Father come closest? Precisely when your joy has become so small.

When you stand before the enormous, frightening journey of life wondering, "How will I possibly manage now?" that very smallness creates room for your Father to enter your life in a deeper way than ever before.

The God Who Comes to Your Door

During the month of Av, especially in these difficult and painful days, God's presence can be felt with extraordinary intensity.

Notice something remarkable.

God does not come into your home during Adar, when joy is abundant and life is overflowing. Nor does He enter during Elul, when the King is in the field and we go out to greet Him.

There is only one month each year when you feel utterly alone, when no one seems able to comfort you, and yet you must somehow continue giving strength to everyone else.

It is during that month that the Father Himself comes to your home.

His appearance can feel overwhelming. This is, after all, the month whose heavenly sign is the lion. His presence inspires awe. Yet it is also magnificent.

Children do not rush to the petting zoo. They want to see the lion. He is intimidating, but there is something breathtaking about encountering such strength.

So too, during Av, from the very place of limitation and vulnerability, we experience God most intensely.

He knocks upon the door and says, "Open for Me, My sister, My beloved, My dove, My perfect one. I have come because I no longer have a home. My Father's house has been destroyed. Let Me come in. Surely you will not leave Me standing outside with My head drenched in the dew."

The Midrash explains that this "dew" is the dew of your tears.

"My daughter," He says, "you have cried so much. I have come to you."

"How Can I Open the Door?"

Yet we hesitate.

God knocks at the precise moment when our homes are the most chaotic and our lives feel the most broken.

From behind the door we answer, "I have taken off my garment. How can I put it on again?"

The Hebrew word eichachah, "How can I?", is even more devastating than Eichah, the opening word of Lamentations.

It expresses complete inability.

"I cannot do it, Master of the Universe. I cannot bear for You to see me like this. I have already washed my feet. I am not even trying to go out searching for salvation anymore. How can I possibly rise and open the door?"

These are days of rebuke. The destruction is immense, the brokenness profound. The deepest question is not simply what happened, but how we could ever have caused such pain to our Father.

Yet the greatest moments of rebuke are often the moments of greatest closeness.

Precisely when Jerusalem sits lonely and desolate, God's presence is nearest. When you no longer feel that you even have a mother before whom you can pour out your heart, God Himself arrives in all His greatness and strength.

The approaching Rosh Chodesh Av offers an extraordinary opportunity for intimacy with Him. It is a closeness born from pain, but one in which God's presence is perhaps more tangible than even during times of celebration.

A Prayer for the Journey

What, then, should we ask?

"Master of the Universe, I am on a long journey, and the daughters of Israel were not created for endless wandering. We are princesses. If I must travel, let me travel with dignity. Along this road, send me a loving husband, good children, and true joy."

Why may we ask for this?

Because of Aaron the High Priest, whose yahrzeit falls on Rosh Chodesh Av.

Throughout Israel's long wilderness journey, Aaron cared for something no one else did: dignity.

He brought the Clouds of Glory. He restored peace between husbands and wives. Our Sages teach that the Clouds of Glory even provided women with fragrant perfumes and beautiful adornments.

At first glance, such things seem unnecessary in the middle of a harsh desert journey.

Yet they were essential. They softened the roughness of the road. They concealed imperfections. They preserved human dignity even in the wilderness.

On the eve of Rosh Chodesh Av, the anniversary of Aaron's passing, we can pray: "God, I understand that the journey is still long. I know there are more stations before Mashiach comes and before I can rebuild a home for my homeless Mother, the Shechinah. But until then, grant me dignity even on this difficult road. In Aaron's merit, wrap me in Your Clouds of Glory."

The verse says, "A prayer of the afflicted when he wraps himself and pours out his complaint before God."

These words became the song sung repeatedly during the evacuation of Gush Katif. A poor person feels uncovered, exposed, almost unclothed. His deepest prayer is simply to be wrapped, to feel protected.

"So wrap me, Master of the Universe. Let me feel embraced. Let me know that You have entered my home, even while I feel so diminished."

Wrapped in the Clouds of Glory

We must recognize that these are days of sacred gathering. "He has proclaimed an appointed time against me."

God is extraordinarily present, and He weeps alongside us.

I place my hope in the prayers of the daughters of Israel, gentle souls whose feet were never meant for such a long and difficult journey.

May it be God's will that through their prayers, during the month of Av, He will once again wrap us in His Clouds of Glory and bring us home.

Rebbetzin Yemima Mizrachi is a lawyer by training who left the legal profession to pursue her lifelong passion for teaching Torah to women in a way that is contemporary, practical, and deeply connected to everyday life. She lectures widely throughout Israel and around the world. Her bestselling books, With What Shall I Bless You? and Parsha and Woman, together with her widely distributed weekly publication Parsha Ve'Isha, explore marriage, relationships, parenthood, women's mitzvot, and current issues through the timeless wisdom of Torah.