Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Tu B'Av - Getting up from Mourning

[Music] okay uh good evening everyone thank you thank you for coming it's good to see uh human beings in person and uh tonight i'm going to deviate a little bit from the parsha and talk about the fact that tonight and tomorrow is a very significant date uh in the jewish calendar this is the 15th of and the mishnah tuba it's called or in modern hebrew they call it yo mahaba the day of love and uh the mission in massachusetts the end the end of massachusetts tells us that lo hayu yamim taipembi israel there were not uh festive days as festive and joyous in claudius rail as the two days of yom kippur and on the 15th above and it describes a ceremony that sounds very strange to us that women who were unmarried would dress in white and everybody dressed the same and the garments were borrowed so that there shouldn't be any discrimination between wealthy and poor and they would dance in front of men again it's hard to imagine how this would work in the modern religious neighborhoods today and men were yeah and men would choose their marriage partners uh there would be shidduchim that were made strangely enough not only on the 15th of but on yom kippur itself circle with their back to them is that possible or are they facing them uh well you know even if you're dancing in a circle i mean eventually you know your face faces demand at some at some some point uh one could imagine with all of the wall posters we have in jerusalem condemning this practice and that practice one would have imagined uh well the rabbis of the mission are pretty great but i think they crossed the line when they uh allowed this priestess but nevertheless this is what was done now the gemara asks akasha we understand why yom kippur is such a happy day yom kippur is the day of forgiveness it's the day of atonement it is the day that moshe rabbanu brought down the second tablets which signifies that hashem has forgiven us from the sin of the golden calf at least at that time so we understand that even the yom kippur is a fast day but really it's a very very joyous day it's a wonderful opportunity of reconciliation with the almighty but the gemara asks we okay but the gemara asks what is so great about the 15th above what is the significance of that date what happened on that date that makes the 15th of a day of simcha so the gemarian tightness gives no fewer than six reasons six reasons why to be of is a happy and festive day and i'll i'll i'll treat the reasons in chronological order in terms of jewish history the first reason is the gemara says means digging graves the digging of the graves was annulled or cancelled what does that refer to we know that from the sin of the spies hashem the creed that the generation of the desert would die in the desert actually it was only the men not the women and the way it worked was the tamiyu shami and the medruza explains that since the spies came back on the 8th above gave their negative reports and the people cried the night of the ninth of and they didn't have faith in hashem so hashem decreed attenborough you cry they cry for naught for no reason this night and this day shall become a brahia ledoros a crying for eternity so the way it worked was every single night of tisha b'av throughout the desert the door hamidbor would dig their own graves and they would sleep in those graves starting off with 600 000 people they would sleep in those graves they probably didn't go to sleep and anyone who had reached the age of 60 that year did not get up the next morning so everybody dug the grave but only the people who reached 60 died but everyone had to experience the experience of of death and therefore based on the law of averages if 600 thousand people died over a forty year period that would average out to fifteen thousand people dying a year now la maisa the kashmir is very complicated because the khaitan miragum did not happen in year one it happened in year two and the deaths began the next year in year three so actually there were only 37 tish aboves where people were dying and not 40. so in truth the average would be closer to twenty one thousand a year rather than fifteen but okay be it as it may uh the mission the medris is talking in approximations now let's now go to the tissue above of the 40th year based on the averages there would be 15 000 people left you know whatever whatever the exact numbers were they dug their graves they expected to die this would be the end of the door hamidbor in year 40. what happened was they didn't die they woke up the next morning again they probably didn't sleep that night but they got out of their graves they were alive they didn't understand it they figured maybe we had the wrong day maybe it was the eighth above not the ninth above so they repeated the exercise on day ten night ten night eleven night twelve night thirteen night fourteen on night fifteen they saw a full moon when they saw a full moon the 15th above they realized that the gezera of hashem was over and at least according to tosos what that means is a very strange thing 15 000 people going with an average who should have died in year 40 did not die and were permitted to enter the land of israel and that we realized that hashem gave us that last reset on the fifteenth about technically the question was on the ninth of bob that they didn't die but we didn't realize that till the fifteenth of nowhere uh ruben tom's shot is very very difficult because the torah indicates that only two people two men of the dorhamidbar survived and entered the land of israel yoshua bin nun and kalif according to this interpretation it was yeshua bennun and khalif and fifteen thousand of their closest friends so there's a lot of difficulty how do you understand this type of amnesty and that's why there are different explanations but nevertheless at least according to rabbenu tom's understanding the symbol of the 15th above was the final gezera the final decree on the generation of the midboard was canceled and 15 thousand people going with an average did not die that is simple number one that's called bakloo fair the digging of the graves was battal symbol number two goes back to the daughters of salafra if you remember the daughters of salafrad salafrad was a man from the tribe of menasha salafra died in the desert and there was a major argument between salafra's daughters he had no sons and salafra's brothers as to who would have the right to inherit his property in the land of israel apparently slept with brothers were not 20 years old at the time of the spies so therefore they are of the new generation that will be allowed to enter the brothers made the argument that all those sons inherit before brothers that's only sons if there are no sons daughters do not have a right of inheritance and would go to the brothers the daughters argued that if there are no sons daughters have a right of inheritance moshe avenue did not know what the was he asked hashem and hashem told him that daughters do have inheritance rights if there are no sons and therefore the brothers don't get the arusha now that is act one of the play but there is an act too the brothers came back with another argument the daughters of salafrad at this time were unmarried women now the brothers made the following argument if these women from the tribe of menasha inherits selafra's property and they marry a man from another tribe when they die their inheritance will either go to their husband if the husband is alive or it'll go to their children but their children are not of the tribe of menasha their children are of the tribe of their father so it turns out that land that was assigned to the tribe of menasha might possibly be transferred into another tribe and that would dilute the holdings of the tribes remember eric israel is divided based on tribes so as a result moshe urbano again asked god what should happen what should be done and hashem answered with a rule a halacha that any woman who inherits property by virtue of her father not having children is only allowed to marry a man of the same tribe as her father the daughters of salafrad were commanded that they must marry people of the tribe of menasha and they cannot marry people of other tribes now what's interesting is that although in the torah itself this appears to be a permanent law theoretically even applicable today that a woman who inherits property should only marry a manner for same tribe in fact ghazal understood as part of the oral law that this was a temporary stop gap measure until the land was divided meaning this was designed to ensure that the initial division of the land under yeshua benue after seven years of conquest and seven years of division will go to the right people once that chaluka is over women can marry anybody they want and this was not treated as a permanent allah the gemara has a different proofs for this according to our messiah the prohibition against women marrying outside of their tribe was terminated on the 15th of after yahushua completed the division of the land approximately 15 years after this law was given therefore it's a great simple in fact that's why it's connected to marriage because this allowed women to marry anybody they wanted and therefore became a day of marriage and shidduchim that is the second reason that is given for the simcha of the 15th above the third reason is also connected to marriage and here we have to go hundreds of years into the future you remember that after yoshua died there was a period of some 300 years where there was no monarch there was no king for the jewish people but they were ruled by a succession of chef tim judges right the book of judges is about those ears shimshon etc in fact this whole neighborhood the names were taken from the book of judges whether it shemshon ya'll recover all of these are from the book of book of judges now there's one passage in the book of judges that's a constant refrain and it says in those days ain't be israel there was no king in israel ish every person did whatever was upright in their eyes so sometimes people read that puzzle and kind of assume that what is being described is some type of utopia you don't need a government you don't need a bureaucracy people did what they want they're under their fig tree takas gaf no they're under their vine toe and they're under their fig tree and it's describing kind of an idyllic society that when you have to fight a war you gotta you gotta shelf it to lead you and otherwise no need for government but in reality if you examine the context in which that puzzle appears it is always very ominous and very negative it's describing anarchy lawlessness a lack of respect for justice is did what they want is not a compliment it is not praising the society it is condemning a society that did not have boundaries and this puzzle appears especially towards the end of the book of shelton there is one of the most distressed distressing events in nach and this is the story of the pilage bhagiva the concubine in giver giver was a town in the tribe of and it talks about a man that was traveling with his mistress with his concubine and he needed hospitality and he was given hospitality in the house of a benjaminite and by the way this man is no paragon of righteousness either because he he gets he gets lodging in a home and he has his concubine sleep outside so even before the violence that happens happens he is treating her like a jerk treating her like garbage and essentially what happened was she wasn't excused my language she was gang-raped and left to die and in the morning the man the owner whatever it is the master comes out of the house trips over her body and sees that she's dead he's outraged he cuts her up into pieces and he sends a piece of her body federal express whatever it is sends a piece of her body to the various tribes and he demands that they do something over this outrage that they try uh the offenders etc the shavatim demanded of binyamin the the equivalent of extradition that they should identify the wrongdoers and they should be tried by kind of a national court the tribe of binyamin refused the extradition request and it's very very fascinating the way the ramban describes the whole dispute it's a very political issue that's quite quite reminiscent of the american civil war that is the tribe of binyamin argued that each chevet is the equivalent of a sovereign state yeah we have a common religion called the torah but we are a sovereign state in our territory and you have no right you the rest of israel has no right to get involved in the punishment of a crime that was committed within our jurisdiction the other schwartm took the position we are a nation and when something like this happens it is a matter of national concern not just individual concern again if you know your american history it is mamash the issue of secession many historians have said that the american civil war was not fought over slavery per se it was fought over the rights of states to secede from a union in which every state took the position that they had an inherent sovereignty that allows them to leave the united states if they wanted to and the federal government took the position or the states took the other states took the position you cannot that you belong to this single nation in fact as it pointed out just as a little digression that grammatically there was a change prior to the american civil war newspapers referred to the united states as a plural the united states are committed meaning they were separate states the states are committed after the civil war the united states was referred to as a singular noun the united states is committed it's like a single hefsa it's no longer a collection of separate states so be it as it were what is described in the book of shelton is a massive civil war in which all of the tribes of israel declared war against the tribe of in yemen and as you can imagine bin yaman was defeated binyamin was almost decimated there actually is a tradition it's not in the tanakh itself that many benjaminites ran away they fled and there is a tradition recorded in the targum that they fled to european countries i believe although i have to confirm this that the british royal family has a claim that there is the blood of the tribe of binyamin in their yigas and they think that in the coronation ceremony there's even a little bit of a reference to it so again they don't claim malcolm smith they don't claim to be the descendants of judah of yehuda but they do claim a yikes to benjamin and indeed who knows there is there is there are sources in the targum and in some midrashim that a number of benjaminites did flee to europe and again uh lahabjo many many have dulles i think dan brown in one of his uh da vinci type books which i don't know i don't think it's the da vinci code but in some of his books actually makes the whole point about uh about the the royal houses of europe being connected to that jewish blood but be it as it may benjamin was almost in at least in eritrea was almost totally decimated and not only that but to punish benjamin the tribes of israel took a vow that none of their sons or daughters would marry anyone from the tribe of benjamin now that would mean in short order the tribe of binyamin would have gone become extinct and the extinction of a whole tribe of israel would be a spiritual calamity because god's presence in the world depends on the 12 tribes the word god's unity the word the morale says is aleph which is the one god on top of seth and dalit 8 and 4 which equals 12. and even today where we have the lost 10 tribes and supposedly therefore we don't have all the tribes the truth of the matter is intermingled in all of um israel are members of all the tribes it was the kingdom of the ten tribes that was destroyed there certainly were remnants of the ten tribes that are intermingled among us so this was a this was potentially a devastating tragedy the crime against the pelegi was a tragedy the civil war and the loss of jewish life was a tragedy and the potential decimation of a whole tribe of israel would have been a tragedy finally on the 15th above we don't know how many how long this period was annulled the vow and permitted shaivit bin yaman to re-enter into claudia israel this too is a marriage issue this is connected at the 15th of ours a day of marriage one is because of the daughters of salafrad and the other is the aftermath of p lagesh bhagiva so that is the third simcha of the fifteenth above we now come to the fourth sempra and this again is hundreds of years after that that is all of us know that after hamel died his kingdom was split into two very unequal halves there was the northern kingdom of the ten tribes whose capital was in shamron and they were ruled by the malche israel who were not descendant of david and then there was the southern kingdom of malchus yehuda which is essentially yerushalayim and a little bit of the land around jerusalem and that was ruled by the hereditary successors of muhammad and david malche-bastavit and that was called malchus yehuda so malchus israel was the kingdom of the north and malcolm was the kingdom of the south now we do know that at various times we had our own wars meaning yehuda and israel were not always living in shalom they were sometimes fighting against each other we also know that malchus israel was destroyed more than a hundred years before the destruction of the temple by sanchez the king of assyria right assyria exiled the ten tribes and destroyed their kingdom now one of the very first things the very first king of the north was yeravan bendevant and yorevan ben nevad did not want jews from his kingdom to go to jerusalem to visit the temple because he thought that would create a loyalty to the south so one of the very first things that your reverend ben nevad did was he constructed golden calves in bay sale in the shamron and he had guards like you know west berlin and east berlin that did not allow people to go south towards jerusalem and for hundreds of years this was the situation that jews from the north were not allowed to visit the base of miknash the gemara gives us stories that there were some heroic people who managed to get through but by and large for 300 years jews from the north were not able to go to the base of mikdash the last of the maokai israel was a man called hoshea benella and what he did was he took away the guards he took away the golden calves and he told the jewish people there if you want to go to the base of mikta go ahead and go no problem tremendous thing he gave people access to the baitham ignac according to our messiah there's no textual proof of this but according to our messiah he freed people and enabled them to go to the base of mikdash on the 15th above by removing the guards and that is the fourth reason for simra the gemara asks the obvious kaja he's such a good king such a good guy he took away the golden calves and enabled people to go to the base of mikhtash why was his kingdom destroyed precisely at that point he was apparently righteous and the gemara's answer is kind of a scary answer the gemara's answer is yeah he let people go and nobody went nobody took them up on the invitation so all the years that they didn't go they have some type of excuse we can't go because there are guards when there are no guards and you still don't go that shows you don't care now obviously what had happened is that over hundreds of years you get brainwashed you know this is true even with kidnapping we have things called the stockholm syndrome or whatever it is where you could be a victim of kidnapping and abuse and your kidnapper could actually open the door and say you want to go go and you're so brainwashed and negatively habituated that you don't even have a conception that you could be freed of this life and you might even identify with the abuser and with the kidnapper so apparently there was something like that that that happened okay so i've mentioned so far four reasons for the simcha of the 15th of and i'm going in order starting in the midbour and then yahushua bennun and then pilages begiva at the end of the shoftim and then hoshea benella at the end of malchus israel we now come to something that happens after the destruction of the second temple at the hands of the romans we know the romans destroyed the second basa mikdash tish above in the year 1768 and 70 a little bit of uncertainty 70 is the most common date that was given but around 60 65 years later we had the famous or the infamous barkhochma revolt in which there was a great jewish military leader whose name was shimon benkuzeva and rabbi akiva called him bharkokba the son of a star because ruby akiva actually believed barakova was mashiach and bharkokba led a tremendous revolt against the roman domination of eric israel and barkova initially was enormously successful he minted many coins right there are many coins you could see with barcodes shimon ben coziva mello israel when i see israel according to historians he liberated from roman occupation over 900 towns and settlements obviously some of them were very small but there were 900 settlements that he reclaimed there is even some archaeological evidence that together with rabbi akiva he began to lay the foundations for a third base amiknash because rabbi akiva thought this was mashiach perhaps we'll leave for another share i mean israel be akiva mistaken so to speak because the truth of the matter is rebbi akiva's activism had tremendously negative consequences in some ways because eventually what happened was hadrian retaliated with overwhelming force and brutality and the custer's last stand of the barkholska revolt occurred in the town of bataar not not the same as the present location different place of beta and the numbers that hazal give for the jews that were massacred are staggering and again we have to assume that their exaggerations the numbers are tens of millions it probably was not that but it was certainly hundreds of thousands and the blood was flowing all the way to the mediterranean it says the romans were able to use the jewish blood to fertilize their gardens for years there was so much blood and also it's important to understand that the and by the way the destruction of bacteria occurred on nine to five as well so uh the ninth of ab is not only the corbin basa mikdash it is the destruction of beta by the way all of the references in the gemara to the various decrees of the romans against teaching torah anyone that teaches torah gets killed ruby akiba's flesh is being um combed away with iron combs all of that is not in the aftermath of the corbin basa mikdash it's in the aftermath of baker one has to recognize the romans did not destroy the temple as an act of religious persecution the romans did it to quell a rebellion there were zealous people among the jews and opposed that approach who wanted to overthrow roman domination and eric israel and the romans wanted to quash that rebellion and destroying the temple was one of their strategies to destroy the rebellion but they were not attacking religion per se so after the hormone basamiktas jews were allowed to learn torah they were allowed to do mitzvoth no they were impoverished they were demoralized they were crushed many were murdered and many were sold into slavery but those who were the romans didn't care you want to dive in you want to go to show do what you want it's of no interest to us but in the aftermath of barcode hadrian took a very very different tack that is when hadrian realized that if he wants to destroy the jewish spirit he has to try to destroy the jewish religion and in fact in the aftermath of the barakah revolt jews were barred from jerusalem jerusalem was converted into a temple to jupiter known as ilya capitalina and for almost 200 years jews were not allowed to live in jerusalem at all and in the old city uh the parts that's called the cardo is the remnant of that roman time where yerushalayim was judenrein it was free of any jews the only time except for the 19 years between 48 and we had the period when jerusalem was elia capitalina and under the adrianic decree jews were allowed to visit and encircle jerusalem from the outside only one day a year on the 9th of 9th was kind of rubbing salt into their wounds and therefore the custom that some people still have i'm not sure they do it today to circle the walls either on top or on bottom circle the walls of the old city on the ninth above is an old old old custom of mourning that dates from the aftermath of the destruction of batar on the ninth above through hadrianic persecution so what hadrian also did was hadrian did not allow the corpses of beethoven to be buried because he really wanted to crush our spirits he wanted us to see hundreds of thousands of corpses decomposing i mean can you possibly imagine if this would have happened we'll see a miracle avoided it what this would have been it would have been you know even worse than the concentration camps much worse than the concentration camps in terms of the bodies and he did not allow the bodies to be buried and for three years they remained on the ground but a tremendous supernatural miracle happened that the bodies did not decompose and at the end of three years and one week meaning the fifteenth about from the ninth above to the fifteenth above three years later the harugae baiter were finally allowed to be buried and that was on the fifteenth above so the fifth sembha of the fifteenth av was the haruke baiter nitnu were given a burial because i'll say this actually was uh also resulted in a change in in in addition to mazon berkatta mazan originally had three blessings the first blessing thanks god for food and sustenance hazana sako the second blessing thanks god for eric israel in particular allah the al-amazon the third blessing at least in its iteration after the quran asks hashem to have mercy on you shalom and on the temple and ask shashem to rebuild jerusalem now obviously before the khurban it was not written as a prayer to rebuild jerusalem but it was asking ushem to bless you shalom and that was the end of benching meaning benching ended you shall i am amen or whatever gerso you have but after beithard the khachamim added a fourth blessing which is hatovah metiv god does good or god is good and god does good and because i'll explain hatov god is good that the bodies did not spoil and god does good that he gave us the ability to bury these bodies and that was the fourth blessing of that was added to birkat amazon and that ends with the words may god never diminish us now after that the harahamas that's not part of benching harahmans are just later minhagem and that's why according to the villenegon benching is over with al-jacasreno and even those who say the different arachimaans you're allowed to talk if necessary because that's not actually part of birkat amazon by the way atopa native has a long form and a short form the long form is berka tamazon the short form is broken and that's recited at various occasions one of the occasions would be when you're upgrading your wine if you began your meal with a lower quality wine and then in the middle of the meal you bring out the champagne so you don't make a beret priyagufen because you already made the burpio government but there may be an occasion to make a bracha of hatovah native but be it as it may this is the fifth reason for the joy of the fifteenth above then we have a sixth reason and this is the final reason for the fifteenth above and that is one of the things that the basa miktas needed in a constant supply was obviously wood we needed wood because what was the fuel that fed the fires for all of the corbanos but wood was somewhat scarce in eric israel particularly in the decades after the rebuilding of the second temple because both the babylonians and later the romans devastated and destroyed whole forests in fact a lot of eric israel that does not have trees on it originally had many many trees many many forests and the like so as a result it was always difficult to get enough wood for all of the carburetors now the wood cutting season is in the summer because you don't want to cut when the wood is moist because when it moist it warps it doesn't burn well etc so they would cut wood throughout the summer for the coming year and the last day for cutting wood was said to be the 15th of the 15th of was the completion of the wood cutting season because it was thought although it doesn't quite fit our environment today approximate that after the 15th above the summer is the heat is not as hot as it is and the days get slightly shorter and the nights get slightly longer and therefore you have less heat in the day and therefore there's more moisture in the wood and therefore the official end of the wood cutting season was the fifteenth above and that became a simpler for two reasons number one it was a great symphony because baruch hashem we have enough wood for the next year that was always a simple and number two hashem we don't have to cut down any more trees it was kind of almost an earth day like tu b'shvat we're celebrating the idea that we can let the trees grow and we no longer have to cut them was cut down if it didn't have the heat they would have worms yeah that's correct uh because when there's moisture in the uh moisture in the woods so you can have uh bugs or worms in the wood will become warm it would not be covered to put on the altar that that's correct so that was the great symphony hashem we've completed the need to cut down the trees and we can celebrate the fertility of the land so six reasons for the simcha of 2bf 2br 15 okay so now i want to look at another list and draw a comparison if the 15th above has six reasons of rejoicing let's go back to the ninth ave which we celebrated or commemorated just a week ago and let's remember the five tragedies that the mishnah enumerates happened on the ninth above right the mishnah says that on tisha b'av there were five sarot that happened and again i'll do this in chronological order surround number one tish above was the day that it was decreed that our forefathers would die in the desert because of the sin of the spies sorry number one summer number two the destruction of the first temple by the babylonians underneath netser sarah number three the destruction of the second basa mikdash by the romans 490 years later on the exact day sarah number four the fall of betar in the year 135 which was a massacre even greater than the corbin basa miktas and resulted in much greater religious persecution and then finally sarah number five is again the aftermath of beta and that is the city of yerushalayim and the surrounding areas of yerushalayim were plowed with salt and sulfur this was actually a common roman practice and part of this was to destroy the fertility of the land so you can't grow anything it was a way of to this very day the soil around jerusalem is is very very acidic and though hashem we are able to grow things but it's a difficult it's a difficult process so we have five sarots of the ninth of earth and we have six smart six joyous occasions for the 15th of us what i want you to do is i want to compare the five tragedies and show that for each tragedy of the ninth there is a compensating mitigating redemptive factor on the fifteenth above that actually corresponds to the tragedy as if god is undoing the tragedy a little bit first the first tragedy was the ninth of it was decreed that our forefathers would not enter the land of israel thirty eight years later on the 15th of us that gezera was partially annulled in other words some of the sorrow was undone the first simcha corresponds to the first tragedy okay second tragedy of the ninth of us is the destruction of the first pesa mikdash now ghazal tell us that the first base amiktus was destroyed because of the three most serious averages that exist avodah zarah idolatry gilearaya sexual immorality shiva dam in murder but if you look in the words of the prophets you will see that although all three are various were prevalent the one average that they talk about more than any of the others is always zara is idolatry idolatry was rampant we don't even understand what that was about because at the beginning of the second temple the answer nessus agdola prayed that hashem should take away the yates or horror for idolatry so we don't even have that feeling anymore the bill nagon says it became the hr of money so if you want to know about what that passion for idolatry was it's for money and power that we have today but the actual bowing down to the statue we don't have that yet today the gemara recounts that the sages were discussing menasha one of the evil kings of israel who ruled for 52 years and menasha was a tremendous tremendous talmud who knew the whole torah and the sages asked him in a dream you're so learned you're so great you're so wise how could you fall prey to this abay dazara and his answer to them was if you lived in my generation you would cut your legs and tear your garments running through thorns to get to the nearest idol you have no idea what avidasara was so seen in this way the tragedy of the ninth of ave for the corbin bias re-shine is connected to the sin of idolatry well on the 15th of although this is not chronological but spiritually looking at it holistically the 15th of was a partial undoing of the sin of idolatry again i'm taking it out of order because this is when hoshea benella again that was before the corbin but looking at it holistically if the corbin bias rishon is the tragedy of aveda zara the 15th of represents the undoing of availazara by taking down the golden tabs and allowing people to go to the base of mikdash so in a sense the fifteenth above was a rectification or a mitigation or a reduction of that tragic aspect of tisha buff now let's go to the second base of miknash ghazal tell us that if the first place of mikdash was destroyed because of available the second base amicus was destroyed because of hatred hatred polarization divisiveness sinashinam is when jews don't connect when each of us has our separate sphere our separate orbits our clique our group but on the 15th about this is where you get six and five two events are the opposite of that clickishness number one the hectare to marry for a woman to marry outside of her tribe in the days of yeshua bin nun and number two the hatter of shavit binyamin to re-enter chloe israel see those are two because that's the opposite of sinatrinam because if sinatrinum is about walls barriers boundaries limitations when we expand the ambits of jewish people marrying each other that overcomes the sinasrina so again what is the pattern here that the tragedies of tish above are kind of mitigated and addressed by the smachot of the 15th above the fifth tragedy of tish above is i'm sorry the fourth tragic fourth tragedy of tish above is the destruction of beta fifteenth above the corpses of beijar could be buried the fifth tragedy of tishapev the city was plowed with salt destroying its fertility on the 15th of we restore the fertility by stopping the cutting of wood and celebrating the bounty that god has given us so what's interesting here is that if you compare the five tragedies of the ninth above with the six joys of the fifteenth above you actually see that each symbol of the 15th above is a rectification it is a repair it is a mitigation of the specific tragedies on the ninth of us why is that important you know we know that when god forbid somebody is a mourner somebody is sitting in a veilus so they sit they do what is called sitting shiva you don't you know the mourner does not leave his house people come to him the mourner does not participate in society the mourner is in a state of withdrawal and isolation and we are there to give him comfort to give him strength and we're not even supposed to initiate conversation we wait and we sit silently if he doesn't want to talk we don't talk we just sit there but then on the seventh day because you don't have to sit the whole seventh day on the seventh day there's an expression that we say getting up from shiva and one has to understand that getting up from shiva is actually part of the shiva process that a person mourns a person grieves but then god's message is you have to rebuild your life again you have to go on you can't remain in a state of devastating grief for your entire life because your life has a mission your life has a purpose you cannot surrender to unlimited sadness because that will paralyze you and therefore you have to get up that there's even a minute that when a person gets up from shiva they go outside and they walk around the block i know if you're familiar with that minute that's a very important idea you have to live again that doesn't mean you forget the person that you loved whether it's a spouse whether it's a parent whether it's a sibling whether god prevented even a child that grief you can you carry around through your whole life but you got to go on i mentioned i think i mentioned before tisha buff the gemara that the generation of the corbin was so devastated that they said to themselves we can never eat meat again because how can we eat meat if there's no carbonates of meat we can never drink wine again because there's no libations of wine so the sages said to them if you take that attitude how can you eat bread there's no meal offerings how can you drink water there's no water libation on sukis so what are you going to do you're going to die you're gonna starve yourself is that what god wants does god want us to be so crushed by grief that we don't go on life goes on so here's the story this 15th of is actually the seventh day from tishaba it's like we've been sitting shiva and the 15th of us we get up from shiva and we realize that as devastating and as crushing as our corbin-base amigdas has been we have to go back to life not forgetting about the bais hamikdash never forgetting person has to think about the base of mikdash about mashiach about gaula every day and i've said a number of times already that maybe the isolation that the coronavirus has imposed on us and the whole world perhaps gives us a greater yearning for mashiach than we otherwise wouldn't have so in that sense there's a little bit of a silver lining but you got to get back to life in fact that was the meaning of the thing the last kingdom that we said on tisha buff elite c on viral laments zion and that's said to a song and that's the only keynote we say when we stand up raff salabatrick says even on tish above itself we get up from our morning to show that we have to go back into the world we still remember the base amigners and we sing and we lament as we get up but we have to get up and therefore the 15th above represents really the eternal optimism of the jewish people and that's why it's so much connected to marriage you know it was thought there were various times in our history where people thought what's the use of bringing more jews into the world in fact none other than amram and his wife took the position what's the purpose of giving birth to jewish babies who are going to be thrown in the water and killed and little miriam convinced your parents that they were wrong you have to have faith you have to believe that things will get better and from that optimism and affirmation of faith came moshe rabano that was the redeemer that was god's chosen redeemer of israel you know after the holocaust there were quite a few i hear about this all the time quite a few jewish parents who did not even want their children to know they were jews forget about not being religious i'm not talking about that they didn't want their children to even know they were jewish because they said being jewish is a cursed state people try to kill you if you want to murder you we will simply make believe we are not jewish and these kids didn't even find out they were jewish until you know whatever they're 20 25 years old that's also a form of death that's not killing physically but kind of let me kill my identity but a jew understands that even in the darkness there's a hidden light i mean look at beta itself i mean we're celebrating the fact that we can bury the hundreds of thousands of people who died at beta well what about the fact that hundreds and thousands of people died at beta how can you make that into a simcha that you can bury them but the answer is that's how a jew looks at the world i try to see the light i try to see the goodness and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because if i see goodness in the world then that's what the world will eventually become in one way or the other i'll just end with one very moving thought that raf soloveijic said there was one year in the 1960s where he suffered three bereavements in one year he lost a younger brother uh he lost his mother and then he lost his wife he sat shiva three times in that year uh although he did continue to teach for more than 10 years afterwards those who knew him well say he never really recovered from that devastation that hit him in such a tremendously powerful way and at the end of his final shiva he did offer a certain thoughts khazal tell us that when god made the world this was not the first world he made he made prior worlds that he had destroyed in fact someone to say that that might be an answer for the age of the earth that may refer to the earth itself being successfully destroyed by ice ages or whatever andrew salvajic asked what is the point of god making worlds that he's going to destroy what's the purpose of that and he said that god wants to teach us a lesson in our own lives that sometimes a person has a world and that world gets destroyed and a person gives up hope and can't go on and god's message is that even when your world is destroyed you go on and you create new worlds because that's what the almighty did he didn't simply say i give up. and that's a lesson for us and of course our salvation was talking about himself that his world had been destroyed but you have to go on and you have to create this is the history of am israel this is how we responded after the khurban basa mikdash after beta after the crusades after the pogroms after the holocaust that is why madinat israel itself was established in 1948 on the ashes of the shoah and that is really one of the greatness of the jewish people that no matter what the tragedy we understand that it's god's will that we go on and we rebuild and that is the fundamental message of the fifteenth above and that is why the fifteenth of is so connected to marriage to new generations to new homes to not giving up to not being despondent so because rat hashem wish everybody a very happy to be of a very joyous to be of and made this may this be the precursor to the rebuilding of yerushalayim and the binyan basa mikdash and mashiach said of yemen [Music] foreign