BETWEEN THE STRAITS: FROM DESTRUCTION TO REDEMPTION
By Rabbi Moishe New
We are now in the period known as bein ha-metzarim, “between the straits”—the three weeks of mourning that culminate in Tisha B’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. These weeks are framed by sorrow, but they also carry the seeds of the greatest hope.
The term bein ha-metzarim is borrowed from the Book of Lamentations, where the prophet Jeremiah describes the anguish of the destruction of the First Temple. The “straits” evoke constriction—being hemmed in, pressed on all sides. It’s the antithesis of expansiveness, of clarity, of divine revelation.
During this period, calamities struck our people across the generations. The walls of Jerusalem were breached, the daily Tamid offering in the Temple ceased, and both Temples were ultimately destroyed. The Ninth of Av saw the fall of Betar, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto deportations—an endless litany of Jewish suffering.
But why do we mourn the Temple so passionately, so persistently? Because the Temple is not merely a structure—it is the spiritual epicenter of the universe. It is the place where G-d’s presence was openly felt. Its destruction represents the concealment of that divine presence and the onset of a spiritual exile that continues to this day.
Exile is not only physical displacement. It is disorientation. It is a world where truth is blurred, morality is relative, and G-d seems absent. And that is what we mourn: the distance, the confusion, the darkness.
And yet, the sages tell us something astonishing: These very days will be transformed into days of celebration and joy. Not merely replaced—but transfigured. The very sorrow we feel now will become the source of the greatest joy.
How is that possible?
Chassidic teaching offers a profound perspective. The pain of exile is not the absence of G-d but the concealment of a deeper presence—one so intense, it cannot be revealed in conventional ways. This explains the paradox found in the Talmud: when the Temple was being destroyed and the Divine Presence was withdrawing, the cherubim in the Holy of Holies—representing G-d and the Jewish people—were found embracing. At the moment of apparent rejection, there was profound love.
This is the key: the concealment is not abandonment. It is the ultimate expression of closeness. It is G-d withdrawing His visible presence so that we can choose, seek, and ultimately reveal Him ourselves. The exile, then, is not a punishment in the punitive sense, but a process of transformation—one that empowers us to make the world a dwelling place for G-d.
The pain is real. The tragedies are devastating. But the purpose is not destruction. The goal is rebirth.
The Rebbe taught that even the Holocaust—whose horrors defy all understanding—must never be explained as divine punishment. Rather, it is an unfathomable darkness, whose meaning we cannot grasp, and which can only be answered by a redemption of equal or greater scale. Not with explanations, but with light. With G-d’s revealed presence.
That’s why during these three weeks we don’t merely mourn passively. We increase in acts of goodness, charity, and Torah study. We prepare. We build. We illuminate. Because we believe that these very days will be our greatest festivals. And it is precisely through our current efforts that this transformation takes place.
There is a tradition to study the laws of the Beit HaMikdash—the Temple—during this time. Why? Because we don’t just mourn the past; we anticipate the future. We are not waiting for redemption—we are building it.
May these final days of mourning swiftly give way to consolation. May the pain and darkness be transformed into joy and light. And may we merit to see the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash, the end of exile, and the coming of Moshiach—not as a dream, but as a lived reality.
Amen.
