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BURNT BY THE SUN

This past Shabbos we read Shir HaShirim in which Shlomo Hamelech depicts the Jewish people as a beautiful woman whose husband sent her away. She finds herself alone among other women who look at her in her desolate state of exile. She tells these other women ‘Although I am blackened, I am truly beautiful. It is the exposure to the sun that blackened me. Once I will retreat into the shade my beauty will shine forth.’ This is King Solomon’s depiction of our depressed state in exile.