Tomorrow is the first of the month of Av. I’m never sure how to call it because, to the best of my knowledge, it’s the only Hebrew month which has two obvious names: simply Av, and Menachem Av – ‘Av the Comforter.’ I’ve often wondered which name to use when.

The Talmud says that when Av begins, our joy is diminished, (in contrast to the spring month of Adar, when our joy increases.) I remember saying to Gabi, my beloved Israeli uncle x-times-removed who always has a melody under his breath and wise words on his lips:

‘A sad month, this Av, isn’t it?’
‘Only until the 9th, the fast of Tisha Be’Av,’ he quickly replied, ‘After that, it’s Menachem Av, all about consolation.’

So the ‘comforter’ aspect is from the 10th of the month onwards.

But this year I’m starting early. That’s because we need consolation in order to keep going; we urgently need to be people of healing and repair, and there’s no time to waste.

Tisha Be’Av is about destruction: the Temples, the communities destroyed in the Crusades, the expulsions, book-burnings, slaughters. It’s not because there’s no devastation in today’s world that I’m thinking, ‘we’d better start the healing now.’ It’s because there’s so much destruction, done to us, done around us, some done by us, that it’s unbearable, and I can scarcely face thinking about it. Nobody needs me to go into details. It’s because it’s all too much, that’s why I’m stressing: ‘Menachem – Be a comforter – now.’

Don’t think: ‘I can’t stop the wars, so what can I do?’ Don’t be disempowered. ‘Little’ things count. If you can send a kind message to the family of a hostage, do. If you can contribute to get food to Gazan children, or anyone hungry anywhere, do. If you can cook a meal for a friend who’s sick, do it. If there’s a parched tree nearby and you can nurse with water through the summer heat, do it. If you can say a thoughtful word to someone you’ve had a disagreement with, do it. There’s no such thing as ‘too small to matter.’

The ‘little’ things we do can inspire others. ‘I asked my Palestinian doctor how his family were in these horrible times,’ a Jerusalem friend told me. ‘You’re the first Jewish patient to ask,’ he replied, and went on to relate how, in a North American street, he saw some teenagers humiliate an elderly Jew while hundreds stood around, and he, a Palestinian, intervened.

‘The British Lady’s Slipper Orchid survived in only one location,’ two leaders of the charity Plantlife told us. ‘But forty people helped germinate seeds and now it’s back in the meadows.’ You could say, ‘What’s that do for the troubles of the world!’ But plants are part of God’s creation, and who knows what comfort their beauty may bring. Heather Jones, an NHS nurse, writes in Plantlife’s magazine how her colleagues spend long hours in high-tech environments where mental and physical depletion can lead to burnout. But nature lifts the spirits and restores hope, so she’s rolling out healing in nature to all the healthcare professionals in her region.

I’m not writing about these ‘small’ acts out of romantic unrealism, to deny the devastation in the world, but in order to keep myself going, to keep on the side of healing and consolation.

I often think of TS Eliot’s line in The Wasteland: ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins.’ Those fragments are my Menachem Av, my comforters. They’re the acts which sustain us daily, bring us closer to each other and give hope. They’re what we’re here on earth to do. At the end of each day, and, I believe, at the close of our life, they will gather round us, look us in the heart, and say, ‘You tried.’