Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Tisha B'Av Insights

[Music] again i apologize for being a little late uh you know people have contacted me they want to just discuss uh the jewish perspective on global warming and you know i'm not i'm not an environmental specialist i will say one thing i i remember yerushalayim in the 1970s that in the summer you had to wear a sweater and those days are long long gone and it's interesting i mean that that itself is at least anecdotal proof that uh it's getting hotter here no question about it and this summer is pretty good they're pretty good right to that but okay our shirt tonight is dedicated uh refuse leima to bryan batrava and she should have a referral of associate israel in aliyat nishama fort seviben avram halevi and iran who's your site is heir of tish above and we also have an anonymous contributor so mr or mrs anonymous uh we uh thank you for sponsoring tonight's class and then i have an announcement uh yi bana has begun this fundraising drive to raise funds for families in need for the upcoming uh yom tovim 100 of the money collected goes directly to these recipients uh you can find the link in the youtube description box below or on the ban now website and again tisco of mitzvoth as you know yubanet not only has torah classes not just mine but rabbi poston and other rebecca and other speakers of the shiorim but they're also involved very much in hesed and we know that particularly at a time of difficulty for amy israel into the world uh the president that we do create a great great success so i would urge everyone to generously contribute i wanted to start a little bit although we generally don't do too much halacha in this shear i just want to mention just a few halakhas because of tishbov coming up and the configuration is a little unusual because the ninth above is actually on shabbos and we since we don't fast on shabbos except in the case of yom kippur so the fast will be on sunday saturday night and sunday the 10th above and that is called a nitra pushed off now for most purposes like any other fast you got to fast but there are certain leniencies in the laws of nitra so for example particularly if you have a pregnant woman or a nursing woman normally for tish above they try to hold out unless they have extreme discomfort even then for tishaw we will allow it for anitra we are very very lenient in that that even if there is a minor discomfort for a pregnant or a nursing woman we will allow them to eat but here is the thing we know and i remember years ago i happened to be at somebody's house when we were going from shabbos to tisha buff and the person was acting too quickly for me to stop him but the person didn't really figure out how to make abdullah and everything else so he literally made havdallah when shabbos was over he says we will start the tightness after abdullah so he made rape of it he drank the wine okay now we have to fast i mean unfortunately that basically meant that he violated the fast from the very first minutes so it is very very important to understand the sequencing of abdullah in the case of either initiate or when the 9th above is in fact on sunday which can sometimes be sunday night i'm sorry i'm sorry saturday night saturday night when shabbos is over you make no havdalah whatsoever however in order to be allowed to do malacha you must either declare baruch hamadil being kodesh or if you're governing my rev in the attach paragraph that is the equivalent that will allow you to do malacca because until you say barakam abdel or the habdallah in the shimon ashrae you're not allowed to do malacha after that the only thing you will do is you will light a cavdela candle and you will make a bracha beaure mourrae hajj very very strange it is the only time that beret moreyo h is made as a freestanding bracha not connected to abdullah assuming you're not going to eat on sunday and i'll talk about what if you are going to eat sunday night you will make a habdullah now what do you make it on so then there are many many men hug him some say that you know you're not supposed to make it on wine or grape juice so you would make it either on beer or some would allow apple juice orange juice or even flavored soda if you do make it on apple juice orange juice or flavored soda instead of berapri agave and you must be sure to make shahakal and then you make the broccoli there's no candle because you already had the candle mostly shabbos and there's also no spices okay it's just the liquid plus the uh bracha hamado benco now it's important to know that in the event you have to eat on the ninth of a i mean you have to eat on sunday if you do have to eat on sunday you are not allowed to eat until you make kavdala even on tisha buff so you would actually have to make this abdullah on tisha b of itself again without spices the brisker rub would allow grape juice even on tisch above okay but that's locust but at least on juice or or or the like and you would make burger magnum encoders now if all you're going to be doing is drinking water however because let's assume you have medicine and you need to take water then you don't make abdullah for that you do not have to make a dollar for water but if you're going to have any other liquid or any other any food you would have to make abdullah even on tish above itself it's much more maple too not everybody agrees with that either but it's much more maple now one other thing normally when tish above is observed on the ninth above there are certain mourning restrictions that remain in the tenth above as well and the reason is because ghazal tells us that the basa mikdash was set on fire in the late afternoon of the ninth ava and most of the basa mikhtash burnt on on the tenth above atkid that rav yochanan who lived a few hundred years after the khorban remarked that if he would have been in the generation of the corbin he would have made the fast on the 10th of us what that means is because of that essentially in a normal year not this year in a normal year where the ninth above is observed on the ninth above as soon as tish above is over essentially you're back into the nine days no laundry no bathing no haircuts no music no meat no wine until until the middle of the day the next day okay that's how it's normally in a normal year this year however because sunday night and monday is not the 10th of august it's the 11th of of so the going to does not apply but it's a little strange because we do bifurcate things that does mean sunday night sunday night right after the fast after abdullah you are allowed to take a bath or a shower you can do laundry you can do haircuts and the like however meat and wine other than the habdullah wine meat and wine should not be consumed until the next morning so it's not sauce but it's a slightly strange type of humra you don't do it at night but if you want to have a nice fly-shake breakfast whatever it would be you can have flake shakes in the morning and if you drink wine in the morning you can do that uh you can do that as as well okay now that's only because now remember don't confuse this this is only when the sunday fast is a nitra when the sunday fast is the ninth of because shabbos is the eighth above then it's a regular tish above and all of the restrictions will apply until of monday but since this is a nitra you're already past the tenth above so laundry haircuts showers baths immediately uh meat and wine the morning now what about listening to music centering this seems to be a much locus if i compare listening to music to the laundry which is mutual right away or i compare listening to music to the meat and wine which is not much or until the morning the savara is logical is it should be treated like the luxury of meat and wine so i would hold off on music until the the morning okay but ice is not relevant this year because it's in the okay so again again i mean obviously uh if you have any childhood you can either ask me or ask your local orthodox rabbi um i don't want to get into too many details of allah but just be aware of the abdullah thing because it's always very clear in my mind like oh except that vivid memory of the guy who made abdullah right after tisha b'av and you know it's an understandable mistake i mean you know you have to figure out how do i reconcile abdullah with tish above so the person might say well shabbos isn't over until abdullah so i can make abdullah but that's a very big mistake be careful that you do not make that mistake it is important however that saturday night you make a break on the candle and the reason is because the brock on the candle can only be made saturday night i mean you know during the year if i forgot to make abdullah saturday night i can make abdullah sunday monday tuesday until tuesday night but the bracha on fire can only be made mozart shabbos and the reason is because it's not really connected to abdullah per say it's a blessing of gratitude because god gave fire to adam or or enabled adam to discover fire saturday night after shabbos and therefore every mozai shabbas we give thanks to hashem for the gift so to speak of fire so you don't have a choice that cannot if you missed the bracha beret morais motze shabbos it cannot be made any other time so that's why even on tisha above we make the bracha boray moriho mozai mozai shabbos there is well maybe i won't bring it there is a bit of a shout out there are postcards that say a woman cannot make beret merese mr brewer and other postcards seem to say that's all right so even if a woman is by herself uh mostly shabbos she should make the bracha bere maresh okay so that's kind of the harassing portion of what i wanted to talk talk about obviously this is the shabbos before tissue before the fast of the ninth of the ninth above and indeed it is the ninth above the date itself is the ninth of this shabbos is given a very special name it is called shabbas khazon which literally means the shabbas of vision and the simple reason why it's called shabbas khazam very very simple reason is because the torah which is the third half torah of tragedy is the first chapter of safer yeshayahu that starts with khazon yeshaya benamotz the vision of yeshayo so it's called shabboshazon just like the shabbos where we read as yashir is called shabbas shira et cetera right so that's the simple reason it's interesting that yeshayo actually lived more than a hundred years before the destruction of the base amikta shivaki shayo lived while there was a base on mikdash right there was no corbin yet and most of yeshayoto is giving comfort to binay israel in anticipation of the exile in fact the seven have terrorists of comfort that we are going to read uh after tish above until rosh hashanah are all taken from the navy ishaya yeshayo is called the great prophet of comfort and yet the last top torah of tragedy is from yeshua so the simple idea is shabba shrazarin just means the shabbos where we read however the swarm hakadasham the holy swarm tell us that there's actually a deeper reason that every on the shabbos khazan we should try to visualize in our mind is visualization visualize in our minds the idea of what a bassam mikdash represents because the truth of the matter is the greatest problem that we face is we really don't understand what it is we don't have and as a result we can't really mourn for it because we don't know what it is it's interesting there was a rev who told the story again i mean maybe it's not the nicest story because it's critical of people but it's a bit of a you know kind of gives you a punch that um he was a rob in new york and he saw he met some congregants in the street and they were very very sad they were very he was during the nine days they were very sad so he figured uh hashem these people are taking the basal mix very seriously and he said i know it's a very sad time but hashem will be with us and hashem will bring gaula and hashem will bring a yeshua and we can't give up hope so they looked at him and they said well god didn't really help the yankees last night meaning meaning to say he was making a point they were not even thinking about the make baseline they were sad because the yankees again i'm not sure if my dates are right but it was something it was a sports team i guess baseball season i don't even remember but the sports sports team was unsuccessful and that caused them to brag and it really is the case and i hate to say this that sometimes we will feel worse about that than the fact that we're in gallows without a basa mikdash now again i don't want to knock people who are sports fans that happens not to be my hr but you know i have someone whatever everyone has their yates or ira the things that make them injured now that get their interest and it's an amazing thing rav sullivan used to point out a very very fascinating observation he pointed out that the we have what is called private mourning a person suffers a bereavement there's a process of mourning and then there's public morning where we mourn publicly as a congregation we mourn the corbin based on mikdash and the leg right so one is called availas of a yachid the availus of an individual the other is called avelos of the rabbim of the sebar now sovereign point it points out that the trajectory of the mornings move in opposite directions when you have a private availus so how does that work we start with shiva which is very very strict for seven days i don't leave my house right etc and then we have sloshim for 23 more days you can go out but there are different restrictions and then for most relatives like a brother or sister that's the end of it wife husbands but then for a parent you have an availus for up to a year but that's much more lenient and then after the year you're basically free of these restrictions in other words availa starts out very very tough very very rigorous and it gets progressively lenient as you go through time with the availus over the base on mikdush we actually find at least during the weeks of observance of this surveillance we actually find a reversal of the pattern we start off with the three weeks so the three weeks first of all for spartan there's almost nothing that's observed about the three weeks other than the 17th of thomas itself but let's go with ashkenazim right ashkenazim we do have ashkenazim have restrictions during the three weeks so what you don't get a haircut you don't listen to music you don't make weddings and then we move to the nine days where we don't do laundry and we don't uh we don't take baths or showers and then we move technically into the week of tish above which is actually even stricter this year there is no week of tisha because tishb is on a sunday but if tishrev would have been on a wednesday or something the sunday monday tuesday would be stricter than even the nine days for example you wouldn't make a seem on on meat uh during that time and then we have erev tisha and then we have the crescendo of availas which is tish above itself so if salvatrik points out when it comes to private mourning we start out very very strict and we get progressively relaxed when it comes to public mourning we start out very lenient and we get progressively stricter why is that so and he pointed out that the spiritual and psychological functions of the morning move in opposite directions when a person suffers a bereavement their life is often shattered they often feel unable to connect to the world they need as it were to be in a protected environment they need people to come to them they need people to comfort them even if and i will say even if a relationship was difficult even if for example someone had an abusive parent someone had a parent that it was difficult for them to connect to you have to understand they're still totally broken when that parent dies and the reason is because now they don't have a chance to repair that damage or at least so they think meaning as long as the person was alive there was always that hope that maybe things might get better so you'd be amazed i mean death of a parent for example is very traumatic no matter how difficult the relationship of the child to the parent by the way it's even true for spouses there's some actually interesting psychological research that even when people got divorced and they've been divorced for many decades when a former spouse dies that creates extreme trauma i've i've had occasion to correspond with with women in that situation and it's really a situation of the unacknowledged mourner because nobody nobody figures that she has any relationship to the guy that she was married to 30 years ago besides the fact that they may share children that of course would be a major but even if they don't even have kids so there's nothing connecting them but they're still you know something we we had a life together and part of my life went away so the purpose of availas is to eventually give a person an inner healing from their devastation so they can eventually rejoin society gradually a little bit at a time so after shiva we say now you're ready to go outside your house but maybe not go to a wedding yet after sloshim at least if it's not for a parent now you're ready to go to a simbra in other words a veilus is a healing psychological mechanism that enables a person to leave their grief now you don't you never leave your grief one night perhaps the better word instead of leaving is compartmentalization a loss is always going to be a loss but initially it overwhelms you it fills every fiber of your being and at some point you compartmentalize it so you can smile again you can laugh again you can interact again there'll be something in your heart and in your mind that will have that sadness but it gets compartmentalized and that's the great bracha of time the old saying that time heals all wounds it's exactly what ghazal said when they talk about hashem made aside that there's something called shikha now shikaka doesn't mean we totally forget but it means that we're no longer emotionally overwhelmed and we could rejoin life because it is god's will that we not become paralyzed by grief and we continue to live that's god's will as long as he gave us life he wants us to live now i remember very very vividly when i first became a a show robin in silver spring it's one of the very very first events not just first funeral but almost the first event was a man who was a baltimore first wife was a non-jew and they had a son and the son converted and was raised really with the father and the son died tragically a young man around 11 11 years old i died tragically and the whole congregation was there to comfort the man who was a member of the congregation and i still have a vivid vivid picture in my mind of the woman the mother leaving the cemetery alone although we did comfort her but she left the cemetery alone while the man was left left with many many people who were there to comfort him and it reinforced to me number one the need to obviously be considerate of everyone that suffered the loss but it also brought in a very very strong way the remarkable healing nature of the jewish morning rituals that a community comes together and they tell the person we share your pain you're not alone we can't give you an answer why god did certain things but just know that you're not alone and when we share your grief that makes the grief easier to bear that is why private mourning moves from the strict to the lenient to allow us to get back into the rhythm of life when it comes to the corbin basa mikdash we have the opposite problem how many people and i include myself how many people are so devastated by corbin that they can't get out of bed in the morning maybe it's a new excuse for high school kids who don't want to go to show you know dad i just can't go the corbin besiktas is so overwhelming i mean it's a joke right we if somebody were to say that it would be a joke you know the generation that experienced the corbin basa miktas knew what it was some people didn't want to drink wine or eat meat they said how can we drink wine at all when we no longer have the wine libations how can we eat meat if we no longer have the corbanos there were people who said we cannot do anything and the rabbis told them that's not the right attitude because after all how can you eat bread if you don't have to let him upon him so they said okay we'll live on fruit and water so then they said well how can you drink water you don't have the water vibration of circus so they realize that they have to go back to normal but we are like blind people how do you explain color to a person who was born blind never experienced how do you explain music to a person who was born deaf we never had it our parents didn't have it we don't know what it is and on the other side of the coin for most of us most of the time life is pretty good you know most of the time you know you have a roof over your head you have a parnassa and especially perhaps those who are to live in irish israel and to live in yerushalayim when people say hashem i can go to the coast cell or if you're a little more avant-garde again shiloh i can go to the harabayas baruch hashem but what is the cause of the castle is the remnant of the walls that surrounded the temple mount and what is arabia's a place where there's a mosque and and and and the don't even allow jews to dive in there so hashem we have something but it's a something when you go to the kaiser side by side with the joy of the merit of going to the kaiser should actually be a profound sadness of what it is that we don't have so the purpose of mourning the temple is not to get yourself out of your grief but to put yourself into your grief so we start gently and hopefully through my actions i awaken my emotions and then i'm ready to feel the power of the grief which is god's grief of not having a base of mikdash the purpose of private mourning is to get me out of my sadness the purpose of public mourning is to get me into my sadness and that's why it moves in opposite directions now i've already spoken more than once about the idea though that grief itself dr balatanya differentiates between what you might call grief and sadness it says sadness i mean you can use whatever word you want i mean the semantics the actual label is not important but there are two concepts sadness is when a person is paralyzed they're like a stone they don't feel they're so washed out that they don't see any value in life any purpose in life grief is very different grief is very alive you feel certainly hashem does not want us to be stones a stone doesn't grow a stone does not serve hashem hashem wants us not only to serve him hashem wants us to serve him in joy but in that joy should also be a feeling of what it is we don't have and i said many many times that it is the yearning for redemption that can create a closeness to akadesh parker an awareness of distance makes you closer absence makes the heart grow fonder one can become extremely close to akadeshwar through the aveilus of the ninth above because you are crying with the shahina you're sharing god's grief two people even who love each other who are separated by a thousand miles they can be joined in their heart by the thoughts they have of each other and there's actually a sense almost a telepathic communication that people can have at a distance if not consciously on the subconscious level of soul to soul portal tish above we cry with hashem and in that context we can become very very close to akadesh park it is the closeness that comes from distance and the morale mentions that this is the meaning of the famous ghazal that mashiach is born on the ninth of it doesn't have to mean that the person who will be mashiach his birthday is on the ninth above maybe yes maybe no but what it means is the messianic power in the world enters the world through the grieving and the sadness of tisha b'av and that is why tish above paradoxically this is so amazing tisha paradoxically is a day that number one in your mio calls tish above a moat now a maoi literally means an appointed time so grammatically it could apply to a destructive day and yet we know that normally moed is a happy occasion a hag is called a moed so tish above is called a moat and in the liturgy you will notice we do not recite the tachranan prayer on tisha above because you don't recite tacron on happy days well okay fine tishema is hardly a happy day why do you not recite talking on tishma the answer that's given us oh because it's called the yumptum but why would it be called the optiv precisely because it's the yumtif of feeling my distance from hashem and in feeling my distance my love and my connection becomes even stronger even stronger and that's why maybe a funny thing to say might be a strange thing to say but i think it is a true statement many many people in a sense enjoy tisha buff not enjoy tisheba for the soros that it represents but it's a time to reflect a time to think a time to ask ourselves what is it that i need in my life not in a personal level but what does claudius realm need what does god need what would redemption be how would life be different how could it be how can it be different and this is an opportunity it's a moat an appointed time where we can do all of this so in that sense tisha b'av is a yamchav and it's even reflected in some very very interesting customs particularly in yerushalani which has some very ancient tish above customs some of them actually go back to virtually the destruction of the basa mik dasher shortly thereafter not too much the corbin the corbin was in the year 70 but we know in year 135 at the end of the barcock revolt which was catastrophic and the final crushing of the bar kokoba revolt was in the city of beithard not not the modern batara and it also was on the 9th above 65 years later and the ninth above the corbin of beta which numerically was even more catastrophic than the corbin basa mikyas and even religiously was worse i mean losing the base of make this is obviously a devastating loss but the romans did not destroy the people don't realize this the romans did not destroy the base of mikdash out of hatred for the jewish religion the romans destroyed the base of mikdash as a way of crushing a revolt of some revolutionaries who were trying to fight rome and they did so as a political act and even after the korban jews were allowed to practice their religion if you wanted to keep shabbos davin where'd phil and eat kosher have circumcision the romans didn't care they took away your temple they conquered you they they subjugated you you could practice your religion if you want when we read in the gemara that the romans made all sorts of gizeros against torah learning and rebbi akiva was tortured to death because he was teaching torah that's in the aftermath of the barkok revolt where hadrian decided no more mr nice guy because this was a second major revolt in a little bit more than 50 years and he was determined to absolutely crush and humiliate the jewish people that is when the land of israel which had been called judea or at least that portion of it was renamed palestina which means the land of the philistines there weren't there weren't even a nation called the philistines they were long extinct but he wanted to disassociate any jewish connection jerusalem after markov after beitar uh was jude and reign jews were not allowed to live in jerusalem and it became a city dedicated to jupiter aelia capitolina and the cardo in the old city is kind of a remnant of that and for more than several hundred years jews were not allowed to live in jerusalem it was inhabited either by pagans or a little later by christians i mean maybe there were some secret jews living there who knows but it was off limits to jews but once a year the romans gave permission on the 9th of for jews to circle the walls of the old well they weren't they weren't the same walls but you know the walls that at that time encircled the old city again nothing necessarily the exact same walls to kind of mourn and grieve and to this day to this day going all the way back to hadrian some do have a minute to circle the old city walls on the ninth alive either they either on the ramparts on top or or on the ground level whatever it is and this is a very old minute there's another minute that's not quite as old that the old you shall me women would clean their how they would sweep the floors in their home the afternoon of tish above to greet the mashiach that would be coming it was an affirmation of faith in bias we have to get the house ready because mashiach will be coming and it is a very very powerful minuk as well you know i know many of you may have heard of the uh the famous machlis family of malodovna my uh my next-door neighbors and uh unfortunately representative marcus was was nifty a few years ago and rabbi marcus he should be well continues their tradition with his family they they often host you know 100 people and shabbos etc amazing hospitality so situating they have a minute you know as many people many people don't follow the salah that's an interesting question but you're supposed to leave part of your wall unpainted as a zeitgeist corbin some people say you could be outsei with a you shalom picture or poster whatever it is ask your local orthodox rabbi but you leave a part of your wall not fully decorated so in the markle's home they have part of a wall not painted but they have a container of paint and a brush on the floor next to it so that every time you look at that wall and you see what is not there you also know that one day we're going to paint it because there'll be a ghoul so even on tishiba we think about the gula in fact it's very interesting i'm trying to find the nissan of this i haven't been able to find it you know teach above morning until the middle until khazos we are supposed to recite kinos right the keynotes for our 45 poems uh which deal with tragedies and soros limit lamentations most about the base of makedash but the truth is the kinos has other things as well it includes the crusades it includes various other massacres of jewish communities etc uh some say keynotes even about the holocaust that were written in recent years by the bubba rebbe and by rav schwab different different ones right so chemos are sad sad sets that's sad and we're supposed to say them until hazos but now now the author keynote says a few different authors but the majority of the keynotes are actually written by a single author and this single author although he's a very mysterious person it's so interesting that there's so much we don't know about him but he is the most famous of the jewish liturgical poets and that is rabbi al-azhar hakalir uh when did he live big big mach locus but but basically mostly he lived probably the seventh or eighth century in irish israel itself at a time of great persecutions from the byzantines so he lived at a time of great great persecution but he was an extremely prolific religious poet for example a lot of the putin we say on rosh hashanah yom kippur in the maksar are from real estate but the truth of the matter is most of what he wrote for the sitter we don't say meaning he had things for pesach the arbor parties all sorts of shabbos is in the middle every shabbos of svera omer if you really said all of those people that were written in almost every shabbos of the year there would be also poems for ufra for hassan is for brises for pidgeot most of which we don't say in fact it's even hard to look to to find them there are scholarly additions there are scholars of putin and again i myself on tish above i i give a share as we're saying kinos i do an explanatory here and many other people do it as well so because of that instead of 45 kinos we do approximately 15 kilos and try to explain them as we go through it and again one needs to know that kinos are not like mcgill ancestor it's not like it's important that you say every word in fact by keynotes it probably is better to say fewer of them and try to understand what they are the problem with rabbi elizabeth carlier generally is he has an extremely obscure style number one grammatically he makes up new words the ebenezer was critical of him for that but also thematically he alludes to i mean he has a phenomenal mastery of every medrash every obscure madras and he'll often allude to mid-rushing with like a word or a letter or something if you don't know the mattress you're not even going to know even if you know what the translation of the word is you're not going to know what he's referring to so the commentaries are all there unlocking the midrashic illusions and the like so hashem there are now some wonderful wonderful commentaries i mean art scroll itself uh has two different editions they have a regular commentary and then they have a linear and then they they have kinos from ref soloveichik from cohen um and then in hebrew they have wonderful the if you know the messifta other they did a messiftaquinos which is quite quite good and there's some others as well so these days you can actually uh get a good lemurs of kinos but the reason i'm bringing this up is it's brought down that kishame that he wrote 45 keynotes to be said in the morning of tish above he wrote an equal number of nerdhammoth comfort prayers to be said in the afternoon of tishop now these comfort prayers have virtually vanished i i can't even i'm sure you could find them somewhere i cannot find them they're not in any collection of kinos but at one point in time there was a minute that the afternoon of tish above we said pirkei because we're we're thinking about the gaula right we're thinking about the legal so the point is all of this confirms these central points that tish above tish above is a situation of distance but from the distance we reconstruct a closeness to hashem that creates a passion that is much more powerful than would have been without that awareness now there is a famous passage in the talmud you shall me and the talmud jerusalem says any generation in which the temple is not rebuilt is as guilty as the generation in which the temple was destroyed now this is an interesting idea that's not intuitively obvious we might have thought the following oh the generation that lost the base of mikdash they're guilty of many many serious obeyers we're not so bad but we don't have the special merit to get it back that's what i would have thought the talmud you shall me is actually making the opposite point you don't need a special merit to get back the temple all you need is to rectify the sins for which the temple was destroyed that's a that's actually a kiddish and what that means therefore is the destruction of the temple for x y and z whatever the reasons are is not a past event but every second we don't have a base on mikdash we are redestroying it we are redestroying the basement so if hazal say the second vasa miktas was destroyed because of sinashinam it doesn't just mean the sinashinam of then it means we're redestroying it now because of sinastrinam because if we wouldn't be guilty of sinatrina we would have it back any generation in which the base of mikdash is not rebuilt is guilty of the same factors that caused its corbett so bhavat rabbi used to say we have to envision that we are setting fire to the basa mikdash itself we are destroying the base on mikdash every single day we don't have it and we also have to realize that this is not just about destroying a beautiful building you know i say destroying the basement saying okay i mean it was a beautiful building to be sure but okay i have to grieve because a building was destroyed it's much more than that the bay samika was a symbol of the divine presence so when we talk about khoriban basamikas we're mourning the absence of the intimate relationship with hashem and we're trying to feel that void that's what we're mourning the siluca in the world you know the quran resolutely describes although it's describing the first base of but it would be a similar process that god left this earth or he left the base of mikdash in ten stages each time he stopped waiting and yearning for the jewish people to do chuva the shrine was in the kardashian and it left the koda shaktashem into the hegel waiting and it left the heihal and went on to the altar waiting then it went backwards back into the color shakta the medra says to kiss his home goodbye right you're evicted from your home you want to kiss it one more time and then he's in the courtyard and then he's on the walls of the court of the courtyard and then he's in the city of jerusalem and then he leaves the city and goes to the mountain to the east which of course is the mount of olives and he casts his last lingering glance at the city that he loves the people that he loves and goes up to shema now of course of course god is still with us and of course god still loves us and of course god still takes care of us you know god didn't disappear if god disappeared we would disappear but whatever it means and we don't know exactly this is part of our dilemma there was a diminution of our ability to connect to hashem and hashem grieves it and we grieve it and that as i say creates the creates the closeness and that is why through that grieving we then move to nahamah to comfort to hope to resilience and that's why tish above can actually build us up in such a positive good way but you have to honestly go through the process you go through the process of grieving and that catharsis can be a transformative event in your life so obviously since the talmud you shall me says every generation in which the basa mikdash is not rebuilt is guilty of the sins of the khorman so our job on tishua is also to think about this we know of course the second temple was destroyed because of hatred polarization among jews in some ways the fact that this still exists is so obvious that there's almost no reason to even talk about it are we guilty of sinatrina is there sunnah israel of course there is you have to understand that sinatra is not only what you might call red open hatred like throwing rocks although we've had that as well and just within a few months we've had within the religious world that was virtually unheard of but you have to understand on a deeper level sinner is not only what we would call an english hatred it also refers to coldness indifference cliquishness i have my group and my group is whatever however i define my group sometimes my group might just be me but even if i have a broader definition of my group we divide the jewish world into an us and of them but we have to realize them is us and us is them and i don't just mean within the religious world where that's actually very it should be very obvious but even vis-a-vis a non-religious jew or more accurately a not yet religious jew right walls barriers i heard a story that there were two nurseries or two guns that were next to each other that were separated by an iron fence there were just two different guns and one was murkharedi and one was either secular or even that hillary i don't i remember which one but of a different orientation like the berlin wall now again the fact that there was a fence that's not a problem they're two different properties i'm not that but the story goes that during recess the kids were communicating through the fence can't do that so they put a big black tarp over the fence so the kids who could not be able to talk that's what it is i'm not even saying which side did it or whatever it would be but the concept is we'll get poisoned by the other side but in truth what's interesting is that it's not just sinatra that is the cause for the quarantine because remember we have reasons for the destruction of the first base of mgtosh that are still relevant as well and it says the first by samiktas was destroyed because of the cardinal sins of avodahzara idol worship gilearaya sexual immorality murder now how do i connect myself to that meaning i could say the following all right sir you know okay i i have what to work on but i voted because i'm not that bad meaning one might think i have no connection to that and therefore that type of introspection is irrelevant right i'll only i'll think about senescriena i won't think about the other stuff but the truth is even that would be a mistake meaning we have work to do even on the avodah zarah giveaway let me explain why i'll give you three really quick reasons why i still have to think about that reason number one is that first of all ghazal have identified many things as a kin to idolatry or even murder so even if i'm not doing the actual activity i'm connected to those activities via the surrogates let me give you two quick examples because i'll say for example that one who exhibits anger is tantamount to our voters are so i am connected to our voter zara if i show anger because i'll also say if you humiliate somebody publicly it is treated as murder and we spoke uh two weeks ago i think about the power of speech the possibility life and death are in the hands of the tongue and that's not only physical life but your words can crush people or give them life and comfort so in that sense oh yeah and gilearius i have to say i'll say thoughts of improper sexuality are just as bad as actions and given the world that we live in it's almost impossible to escape those various inputs so to pat ourselves on the back and say oh i have nothing to do with about azaria is unfortunately not going to be true we have blood on our hands we have idolatry in our hands and we have improper sexuality on our hands as well right so we are connected to these things that's reason number one reason number two is you know this plays into the hands of the anti-semites so don't tell them but it happens to be right you know uh an anti-semite blames jews for all the evils of the world well you know i hate to say it but to some degree uh they are they are correct i'm meaning to say the spiritual nature of the world depends on israel now review the author of the was a mukubal he was a mystic and he had a very good cabrusa he had a cabrus of an angel he learned with an angel that's called his magette and he wrote a diary not not intended for publication of his learning with the malach i think if you go to hebrewbooks.org you can actually get a copy of it and in the margin may show him he tells a fascinating story that he was once learning a difficult sugya in the gemara and he could not figure it out and he worked hard for a very long time and finally he had a shot and it was wonderful and then he's walking around in spots if you've been to svat you can actually you know you know the alleyways of the old city that he would be walking and he overhears a shoemaker who is not known as such a great tamil learning with his seven-year-old son that same gemara no he doesn't want to eavesdrop but he's a little curious and the seven-year-old asks his father the question that bothered her yosef cairo for two weeks god alhador and the father-in-law was a little impatient at his seven-year-old seven-year-old and said to him i knew this was too hard for you why are you asking such a foolish question the answer is obvious coming up with the answer that revisive cairo couldn't figure out for two weeks so review was heartbroken because he figured if this is so obvious that the shoemaker is a little upset as his seven-year-old son for not figuring it out and i couldn't get it it must be that god is not pleased with me he withheld basic understanding of me what is my sin what is my aveira why didn't i merit the understanding that even a seven-year-old is expected to have you can understand his frustration well he had someone to ask he asked his angel coverage what in shamayim is my sin that i couldn't understand the obvious and the malek told him it's very much the opposite this was a deep profound mystery that the world was not deserving of having but because of your work and because of your efforts you brought it into the world and once you brought it into the world even a kid could get it but without your effort it would have been inaccessible now that's the story now on a rational level that story doesn't make sense at all what do you mean brought it into the world he didn't write it he didn't teach it he didn't explain it he didn't communicate it to anybody so in what way did he bring it into the world so that a seven-year-old should be able to get it the answer is you see from here that that is the nature of holiness a person sits in his room does mitzvos stabbens with kavanagh learns he brings holiness into the world and if that holiness is in the world it lifts up everybody time used to say that the intensity of the learning in rotten a little village in poland determines the length of the skirts in paris it's like an atom bomb at ground zero the radiation is most intense a few hundred miles away less right you'll have radiation maybe three thousand miles away so in rodden we have all of this learning by the time it gets to paris maybe they're not learning but the skirts will be a quarter inch lower than the otherwise would have been this is the ripple effect of kedusha what that means is therefore if there's tuma anywhere in the world it's because we did not generate enough kedusha so even if i'm not guilty of awaiting if i live in a world of availability which i do then it becomes part of my responsibility to try to make the world a better place now making the world a better place can have many many forms you can be a teacher you can be a lecturer you can be a speaker or along with that in your private avodah's hashem you make the world a better place the world is differently configured by the kedusha that we bring into the world so in that sense we think about availability the third idea right so the first idea i mentioned is that we might be guilty of things like anger embarrassing people here who are in sexual fantasies the second is that we do bear in achrayats a responsibility for the world as a whole and the third idea is an idea from rep sadaq who points out that avaya zara gila rashford may be symptoms of character flaws so even if i'm not guilty of the symptom i don't have the symptom i may still have the illness and he identifies the underlying illness which results in availability as kinna jealousy which when taken to an extreme can lead to murder taiva lust for material and sensual pleasure when taken to an extreme leads to gilearios and he says cover the desire for self-glorification which can lead to idolatry in the sense of making yourself god syrup southwark says in that sense we still have all of them and this is what we think about on tish above because remember that when hashem first commanded us to build the basa mikdash hashem said make for me a temple so i will dwell within them the real basa miktas is in our heart and in our soul and the way we build the basa mikdash is making our heart and our soul a place for the shechina and when we do that hashem will bring us that mikdash so be as hashem there's still hope even this week that we could be zaika to the galla but if shalom it's not yet the time may we pray that there should be the last tishb you know there was a rabbi they tell a story about a rabbi that every era of tisha buff he would go into a bookstore and buy a new kinos lamentation prayers so the owner of the store said you know rabbi you know i'm happy to sell you a book i like to sell books that's my business but i know you bought a book last year and i know you bought a book the year before and i know you bought a book the year before that why do you buy a new book every year it's the same kinos so the rabbi said you think i hold on to aquinos after tisha buff i have full emunah shalema that this is the last one so i put it in sheamus i don't i don't keep my kinos for next year you've crossed for shalom i see that it's probably not going to happen so i got to buy a new one to be able to say the kinos i admit that most of us are probably not in that my dragon i'm not i'm not i'm a drag i have my kinos from from year to year but the ezra hashem we should we should really pray that this will be the last tish above of sadness and all future tish aboves will be days of rejoicing and simcha foreign [Music]