Tammuz is the tenth month of the civil year and the fourth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. The 17th of Tammuz is a fast day in remembrance of Jerusalem’s walls being breached and the beginning of the Three Weeks, a period of mourning commemorating events surrounding the destruction of the Temples and the subsequent exile of the Jews from the land of Israel. Reb Shlomo shared with us many Torahs and Stories.
On the 6th of Sivan we celebrate Shavuot and the Yahrzeit of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement in Judaism.
Reb Shlomo taught us that when we stay up all Shavuot night and learn Torah we give ourselves the strength to be fearless and to face everything that G-d puts in front of us. Let this Shavuot mark a new beginning to give us strength to begin all over again. Let this Shavuot help us understand that the deepest holiness is how we pray for our children.
Here are some of Reb Shlomo’s teachings for the Shavuot.
Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day) is a holiday commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem in June 1967. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel declared Jerusalem Day a religious holiday to thank G-d for answering the 2,000-year-old prayer of “Next Year in Jerusalem”. Reb Shlomo had a very deep connection to Yerushalayim. He often said that when we lost the Holy Temple in Yerushalayim, we lost the melody to the Holy Torah. We lost its deepest inner meaning. He felt that in our day and age, a whole new generation of young people are moving to a different beat. They hear a heavenly melody. They’re dancing a new dance. Reb Shlomo often inspired the young people of his generation to learn some of the words that were sung in the Holy Temple, so like it says in Psalms, we could ‘sing a new song to God!’ and combining the words and the melodies we could really rebuild Yerushalayim and fix the whole world.
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