The Day of the Breaking of the Ax

Said Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel: There were no greater festivals for Israel than the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur

The Talmud goes on the list several joyous events which occurred on the 15th day of the month of Av:

a) The dying of the generation of the Exodus ceased. Several months after the people of Israel were freed from Egyptian slavery, the incident of "The Spies." [1] demonstrated their unpreparedness for the task of conquering the land of Canaan and developing it as the “Holy Land.” G-d decreed that that entire generation would die out in the desert, and that their children would enter the land in their stead. After 40 years of wandering through the wilderness, the dying finally ended, and a new generation of Jews stood ready to enter the Holy Land. It was the 15th of Av of the year 2487 from creation (1274 bce).

b) The tribes of Israel were permitted to intermarry. In order to ensure the orderly division of the Holy Land between the twelve tribes of Israel, restrictions had been placed on marriages between members of two different tribes. A woman who had inherited tribal lands from her father was forbidden to marry out of her tribe, lest her children—members of their father’s tribe— cause the transfer of land from one tribe to another by inheriting her estate.[2] This ordinance was binding on the generation that conquered and settled the Holy Land; when the restriction was lifted, on the 15th of Av, the event was considered a cause for celebration and festivity.

c) The tribe of Benjamin was permitted to enter the community. Av 15 was also the day on which the tribe of Benjamin, which had been excommunicated for its behavior in the incident of the “Concubine at Givah,”[3] was readmitted into the community of Israel.

d) Joshua ben Eilah opened the roads to Jerusalem. Upon the division of the Holy Land into two kingdoms following the death of King Solomon, Yeravam ben Nevat, ruler of the breakaway Northern Kingdom of Israel, set up roadblocks to prevent his citizens from making the thrice-yearly pilgrimage to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, capital of the Southern Kingdom of Judea. These were finally removed more than 200 years later by Joshua ben Eilah, the last king of the Northern Kingdom, on Av 15, 3187 (574 bce).

e) The dead of Beitar were allowed to be buried. The fortress of Beitar was the last holdout of the Bar Kochba rebellion. When Beitar fell on the 9th of Av, 3893 (133 ce), Bar Kochba and many thousands of Jews were killed; the Romans massacred the survivors of the battle with great cruelty and would not even allow the Jews to bury their dead. When the dead of Beitar were finally brought to burial on Av 15, 3908 (148 ce), an additional blessing (HaTov VehaMeitiv) was added to the “Grace After Meals” in commemoration.

f) “The day of the breaking of the ax.” When the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, the annual cutting of firewood for the altar was concluded on the 15th of Av. The event was celebrated with feasting and rejoicing, as is the custom upon the conclusion of a holy endeavor,[4] and included a ceremonial breaking of the axes which gave the day its name.

Although these events may all be worthy of commemoration and celebration, how do they explain Rabbi Shimon’s amazing statement that “There were no greater festivals for Israel”? In what way is the 15th of Av greater than Passover, the day of our Exodus from Egypt, or Shavuot, the day we received the Torah? Rabbi Shimon even places it before his other “great festival,” Yom Kippur!

To understand the significance of Av 15, we must first examine the workings of the Jewish calendar.

The most basic feature of our calendar is that it is primarily a lunar calendar: a calendar whose months are set in accordance with the phases of the moon.[5] The Zohar[6] explains that the people of Israel mark time with the moon because we are the moon of the world: like the moon, we rise and fall through the nights of history, knowing times of growth and diminution, our moments of luminous fulfillment alternating with moments of obscurity and darkness. And like the moon, our every regression and defeat is but a prelude to yet another rebirth, yet another renewal.

The night on which the moon is first visible to the earthly observer after its concealment marks the beginning of a new month. For the next two weeks, the Jewish month grows with the moon, reaching its apex on the 15th night—the night of the full moon. There then follow two weeks of ever-decreasing moonlight, until the night when the moon falls completely dark and the month dwindles to a close. The rebirth of the moon, 29 or 30 nights after its previous birth, ushers in the next month: a new climb to fullness, followed by another descent to oblivion, followed by yet another rebirth.

Accordingly, the 15th of the Jewish month marks the high point of that month’s particular contribution to Jewish life. For example: Nissan is the month of redemption, and it was on the first day of Nissan that the process of our liberation from Egypt began; but the results of this process were fully manifest only on the 15th of Nissan, with our actual exodus from Egypt. So it is on the 15th of Nissan that we celebrate the festival of Passover and experience the divine gift of freedom through the observances of the seder.

Another example is the month of Tishrei. On the 1st of Tishrei (Rosh HaShanah) we crown G-d as king of the universe, rededicating the entirety of creation to the purpose for which it was created and evoking in G-d the desire to continue to create and sustain it.[7] But the celebration of the divine coronation is eclipsed by the days of solemnity and awe which occupy the first part of Tishrei, and comes out in the open on the joyous festival of Sukkot, which commences on the 15th of the month.

(This is the deeper significance of the verse, “Sound the shofar on the moon’s renewal, which is concealed until the day of our festival.”[8] The shofar, whose trumpet-like blast echoes our “coronation” of the Almighty, is sounded on the 1st of Tishrei, the day of the moon’s renewal; but like the moon itself, the experience remains “concealed” and largely unexpressed until “the day of our festival,” Sukkot, on the 15th of Tishrei.)

The same is true of each of the twelve months of the Jewish year. Each month possesses an import and quality uniquely its own, which undergoes a cycle of diminution and growth, concealment and expression, reaching its climax on the 15th of the month.

The greater the momentum of an object’s plunge down a mountainside, the greater the impetus that carries it up the next mountain; the further an arrow is pulled back on the bow, the greater the force that will carry it forward when it is let fly. This basic law of physical nature also governs the flow of lunar time and the spiritual qualities it enfolds: the lower the descent, the loftier the ascent to follow.

Hence, the month of Av must indeed possess the greatest 15th of them all. For what darker eclipse is there than the one preceding the full moon of Av?

The latter half of Tammuz and the first days of Av mark a breakdown in the very heart of the universe and the onset of a spiritual winter from which we have yet to emerge. On the 17th of Tammuz in the year 3829 from creation (69 ce), the lunar orbit of Jewish life swung into the steepest decline of its 4000-year history. On that day the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Roman armies; for the next three weeks, from Tammuz 17 to Av 9 (observed to this day as “Three Weeks” of mourning), the enemy steadily advanced through Jerusalem, invaded the Holy Temple, and, on the 9th of Av, set it aflame.[9]

The destruction of the Temple was but the physical counterpart of a deeper, spiritual loss. The Holy Temple in Jerusalem was the seat of G-d’s manifest presence in our world—the source of everything spiritual and G-dly in our lives and the focus of our efforts to implement the divine purpose in creation of “making a dwelling place for G-d in the physical world.”[10] Its destruction marked the withdrawal of the direct and open relationship between G-d and His creation and the onset of a state of galut—a hiding of the divine face, a shrouding of the true, underlying reality of creation behind the mask of the corporeal and fragmented world we experience today.

And yet, the greater the descent, the greater the ascent which springs from it. The terrible darkness of the latter days of Tammuz and the first days of Av carries the seeds for an equally glorious “full moon” on the 15th of Av—a full moon that represents the perfect and harmonious world of Moshiach that is the product and outgrowth of our long and bitter galut.

Therein lies the significance of the various joyful events that the Talmud recounts as having occurred on the 15th of Av: they each mark a step in the climb out of the descent of the 9th of Av.

The destruction of the Temple on the 9th of Av was preceded by another tragic event on the very same day many centuries earlier. It was on the eve of Av 9 that the twelve spies sent by Moses returned from their reconnaissance of the Holy Land and dissuaded the people of Israel from settling and sanctifying the land, causing G-d to decree that the generation of the Exodus would not enter the Land of Israel.

Indeed, the two events are deeply interrelated: our sages tell us that if Moses’ generation had merited to enter the Land of Israel and to build the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, it would have been an eternal edifice, inviolable and indestructible. The goal of a “dwelling place for G-d in the physical world” would have been fully and perfectly realized, avoiding the need for any subsequent regressions or descents.[11] Thus, the events of that Av 9 were the source and harbinger of the destruction and galut which the day eventually wrought.

So when the dying of the generation of the Exodus ceased on Av 15,[12] this also marked the beginnings of the “ascent” of Av. A new generation stood poised to enter the land and lay the foundations for renewal and reconstruction.

And when the barriers between the tribes were removed, allowing their members to unite in marriage with one another, another element of the “descent” was being rectified. Our sages tell us that the primary cause for the destruction of the Temple was divisiveness within the community of Israel. Accordingly, the key to the ascent of redemption is the fostering of unity and harmony amongst us. Such is also the significance of another two of the special events associated with Av 15th: the reacceptance of the errant tribe of Benjamin into the community, and the removal of the roadblocks which had rent the people of Israel into two nations and had prevented the Holy Temple from serving as the unifying force between brothers torn apart by political strife.

The fall of Beitar on Av 9, which spelled the end of the last significant effort to free the land of Israel from Roman rule, was the culmination of the tragedy of the destruction of the Holy Temple and the exile of Israel on that same date a generation earlier. The first respite from this crushing blow to the Jewish people—the bringing to burial of the dead of Beitar on the 15th of Av fifteen years later—is another example of how Av 15 achieves the redemption and rectification of the 9th of Av.

The manner in which the conclusion of the wood-cutting for the Temple service was celebrated on Av 15 is yet another manifestation of the significance of the day. For the breaking of axes expresses the ultimate purpose of the Holy Temple, whose destruction we mourn on the 9th of Av and whose rebuilding will herald the harmonious world of Moshiach.

Why break the axes? Why not store them for next year’s cutting? Because the ax represents the very antithesis of what the altar, and the Temple as a whole, stood for.

Regarding the making of the altar, G-d had instructed: “When you build a stone altar for Me, do not build it of cut stone; for if your sword has been lifted upon it, you have profaned it”;[13] “Do not lift iron upon it… The altar of G-d shall be built of whole stones.”[14] If any metal implement as much as touched a stone, that stone was rendered unfit for use in the making of the altar.

Our sages explain: “Iron was created to shorten the life of man, and the altar was created to lengthen the life of man; so it is not fitting that that which shortens be lifted upon that which lengthens.”[15] Iron, the instrument of war and destruction, has no place in the making of the instrument whose function is to bring eternal peace and harmony to human life.

Of course, these events were only first glimmers of the full moon of Moshiach—a full moon which has yet to emerge from the darkness that envelops it. So today, Av 15 is a relatively minor event in our experience of the yearly cycle. We mark the day with certain observances and customs, but without the grandeur of Passover, the joy of Sukkot or the exultation of Purim. For unlike these festivals, whose “full moon” we have already experienced, the luminance of Av 15 has yet to appear; we are still in galut, still in the dark stretch of this cycle, still climbing out of the descent in which we have been plunged by the events of Tammuz 17–Av 9.

But the date is already fixed in our calendar as the greatest “15th” of them all. And with the imminent coming of Moshiach, the true import of the Day of the Breaking of the Ax shall come to glorious light, and the 15th of Av will be celebrated as our greatest festival.

[9]. The 9th of Av is also the date of the destruction of the First Temple in the year 3338 (423 bce) and numerous other calamities in Jewish history (see below in text).

[11]. See Talmud, Sotah 9a; Megalleh Amukot, Ofan 185; Ohr HaChaim on Deuteronomy 1:37 and 3:25; Ohr HaTorah, Va’etchanan, pp. 65, 93 and 2201 (see also Land and See, WIR, vol IX, no. 38).

[12]. According to the Jerusalem Talmud (Taanit 4), the deaths actually ceased on the 9th of Av, but the people of Israel were not aware of this until the 15th, which is why the 15th was made a day of celebration. This is consistent with the significance of the 15th as the apex of the month: the moon, of course, is always full; the “full moon” is the point in its cycle at which it is fully visible to us and we maximally enjoy its light. By the same token, the descents and ascents of Jewish history are descents and ascents only in our perception and experience of our closeness to G-d. In essence, however, there are no descents, for even on the 9th of Av, at the very moment of the destruction, our relationship with G-d was not diminished in the slightest (see The Intimate Estrangement, WIR, vol IX, no. 42; The Sixteenth Increment, WIR, vol. VII, no. 49).