Today is Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year. Even sadder than Yom HaShoah, which commemorates the murders of 6 million Jews under the Nazi regime.

How could it be sadder than that astounding loss? Because, the thinking goes, this day is when we lost touch with God, not once but twice, when the first and second Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed.

I will admit that this is hard for me to grasp. We found other ways to commune with God, ways that didn’t involve a magnificent building or animal sacrifices. We realized that Judaism could do more than merely survive without a temple, it could thrive. And it has.

Nevertheless, observance of Tisha B’Av has persisted through the millennia. This year, when baseless hatred (the supposed cause of the ancient Temples’ destructions) has divided Israel and democracy seems on the brink of destruction, it feels more relevant.

But tomorrow is Shabbat and we will read the Shema and the verses that follow:

Listen Israel, the Lord our God is one. You shall love your God Adonai with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them up on your children. Recite them when you are at home and away, when you lie down, and when you rise up… inscribe them upon the door posts of your house and on your gates.

After this stirring reminder of our obligation to love and obey God completely, we will read Isaiah’s words: Nachamu, nachamu, ami, “comfort, comfort my people, says God.”

I am not so naive as to believe that God will come along and provide comfort and solace to us in our times of sorrow and strife.

But I truly believe that it is a clarion call for us to not despair; rather to lift ourselves up and act. To remember that Judaism is stronger than her problems, wiser that her detractors, more capable of positive growth and change than even we — the change makers — can imagine.