The three evil aspects of the three Worlds are thus illusion, hatred, and guilt. How do we know this period is about guilt, about feeling guilt? Because there are 22 days, and the scroll of Lamentations that we read on Tisha B’av is based on the 22 letters of the Alephbeit, in acrostic form. The reality we blemished, the World, is like a text. We made ourselves illiterate and blurred the text. Every form of rectification of reality begins with confession. In fact, in the Torah itself, the practical element of doing teshuvah is confession. Why? What makes confession superior to just deciding to never sin again? Confessing with words brings to the fore of the consciousness forgotten or repressed memories. Without spoken confession, I will never remember these repressed memories I was not able to cope with.
What is the first word of the confession is “We are guilty” (אשמנו). The confession follows the order of the Alephbeit because it means to rectify all our words, all our memories. It is the general confession that we are the ones who are guilty. That word corresponds to the first day of the Three Weeks. Each day corresponds to one of the 22 words in the confession.
