Tisha B’Av asks us to mourn what was lost and to consider what we have inherited. Jewish continuity depends on the choices made by each generation and on whether it succeeds in passing its knowledge, commitments and responsibility to the next.

One of the recurring lines of the day is bemotam tzivu lanu chayim, “through their death they commanded us to live.” It is a difficult sentence, and perhaps it should be. It does not remove the tragedy of loss, nor explain it away. But it does insist that memory is not only about what we have lost. It is also about what the living must now carry.

We remember because grief does not stay present on its own, and ritual is what keeps memory from quietly slipping away.