A day for tears, yearning, mourning, and hope: 18Forty readers share what the Beit HaMikdash’s absence means for them today.

Renowned Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai offers profound thought in his poems, "Death of My Father" and "Forgetting Someone."

“I don’t know if my words could ever ease your pain,” Julie Yip-Williams writes in a letter to her two daughters. “But I would be remiss if I did not try.”

The strangeness of death, of loss, is that no matter how many books we read, how many philosophical discussions we have, how many psychologists we speak with, how many times we experience it, it will always be elusive—impossible to understand.

Human emotions are intense and, sometimes, incredibly painful. To avoid that hurt, we seek to escape into distraction to “take our mind off everything.” That's a mistake.

In one of 18Forty's Must Reads, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg opens up about the loss of her husband.

“During the course of a lifetime, virtually no one can avoid an encounter with death. Yet it is an experience for which one is rarely prepared.” — Dr. Emanuel Rackman

In one of 18Forty's Must Reads, Rabbi Shmuel Hain writes what a Marvel superhero and the ancient rabbis both knew: Grief is just love persevering.

Blaming someone for their pain—whether that's grief or some kind of interpersonal violence—is our go-to mechanism. How quick are we to demonize rather than empathize. How quick we are to move into debate, rather than hang out in the actual pain of the situation.

In one of 18Forty's Must Reads, Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin writes how, in Tractate Moed Katan, the Talmud teaches us the only life lesson we need.

Our exile impacted God, Jewish society, and the Jewish People. The Talmud explains how.

As we continue to expand our dictionary for our language of loss, 18Forty presents three books we find vital to the conversation.

It is Jerusalem, once a mother rejoicing with her children, who is grief-stricken, struggling to grasp the elusive understanding of loss. But she does not grieve alone.