Tisha B'Av 2014

So now it is officially Tisha b'Av.  One law that I forgot to mention is that the tallit and tefillin, normally worn at morning prayers, are not donned until the afternoon.  I prayed without them this morning, and honestly, it felt just as if my ties to God had been severed, and I understood on a gut, emotional level the loss that the Jewish people had suffered with the destruction of the Temples.  In other words, for the first time ever, I finally got it.  I got it.

Also, on Tisha b'Av the scroll of Lamentations is read in the synagogue.  Because of my delicate mental health, I couldn't stay for the whole service last night (had to get home and to bed), but I read myself the first three chapters in English while members of the congregation chanted about a chapter and a half in Hebrew.  I finished up the English sitting on my floor (as is customary for the Lamentations reading) in my nightgown first thing this morning.

I am not wearing my arba kanfot right now because I figured that if a tallit (whose whole point is the tzitziot, or holy fringes) was not to be worn, I also should not wear my arba kanfot (whose whole point is also tzitziot).  I am fully dressed--t-shirt, skirt (a NEW skirt), etc. right down to a kippah/yarmulke (black velvet today, from my younger brother's Bar Mitzvah), though of course no jewelry--but I feel naked.  Arba kanfot are such an integral part of my wardrobe that it really does feel as though I am skirtless, or not wearing underwear, or something of that nature.