Episode 98
Av, Grief, and Cosmic Permission: The Torah of Alchemizing Loss
In this week’s Underneath the Underneath, we enter the month of Av — a time when the Torah invites us into the depth of loss, not to avoid it, but to be transformed by it. Drawing from classical and contemporary sources — the Talmud, Psalms, the Piaseczner Rebbe, Francis Weller — we explore grief not as weakness, but as gateway.
What if the tears themselves are a kind of prayer?
What if the ruins are not a failure, but an initiation?
From the Five Gates of Grief to the gates of tears that remain open even when all else closes, we ask: how do we meet our sorrow with presence? How do we make space for the losses of our lives — personal, ancestral, collective — and emerge not diminished, but more whole?
This episode offers Torah for anyone who is ready to feel, to release, and to walk the sacred ground of grief with integrity and courage.
Ohmek Session dated July 29, 2025
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More on Yocheved Sidof:
Yocheved Sidof is a mystic, teacher, trauma-informed spiritual guide and leader of Ohmek, a community of women and men pursuing deeper ways of Being.
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