“Every month, the moon gets smaller and smaller… until it vanishes completely… the new light of the new moon is a light that never shown before… so this new moon has the potential to shine to its former greatness…

In the ceremony of Kiddush Levana, the sanctification of the moon, we say, ‘We the Jewish people will be renewed in the future like the light of the moon’. Like the moon, we will arise from nothing. The Jewish people are the people of the moon. So many times in our history we seem to be on the point of vanishing completely… and we rise time and time again, like the moon.

The 9th of Av is the Jewish people’s national day of mourning, a day of utter destruction, of utter darkness. And it is from that total nothingness, like the darkness of the moon that our redemption will come.”