17 Tammuz—Breaking or Building?

did you hear the one about the wall it's hilarious i'm still trying to get over it okay funnier the second time huh okay so we're talking about i'm going to tell you one about the wall this is not a joke though actually the opposite of a joke it's very very sad very sad thing connected to a wall the 17th of tamils is one of the public fast days that were established by our sages in order to commemorate and to mourn for the incidents connected to the destruction of the base amigos the holy temple in jerusalem specifically what is the event connected to the 17th of tamos is that is the day of the splitting of the wall there was a city wall a wall a protective wall around judah shalom around the holy city of jerusalem and on the 17th of tamos the the the wall was split we know what happened three weeks later on tisha b'av on the ninth of of that's when the temple itself was destroyed but three weeks prior to that on the 17th of tamos that is when the city walls were split and therefore we fast on that day as well now i'm sure you are acquainted with the idea that everything in judaism is subject to discussion and debate and divergent opinions there was once a receptionist at a synagogue answers the phone says hello the guy on the other end says i'm looking for a one-armed rabbi the reception who says you're looking for what the guy says i'm looking for a one-armed rabbi she says why are you looking for a one-armed rabbi he says because the one that i have right now every time i ask him a question he answers but then a second later he says but on the other hand so i want a one-armed rabbi doesn't always but on the other hand okay so here's what i'm going to tell you like everything in judaism surprise surprise there's a little bit of a macholicus here a little bit of a debate bob lee and eureshalami the babylonian talmud and jerusalem talmud in the bavli gamora 28b it tells us that the city meaning the city wall was breached or broken on the 17th and then it asks hold on a second but it says apostate yohu it says over there in the fourth month which is what nissan year seven thomas fourth month thomas betisha lahiddish on the ninth day of the month the yahazak of the famine became the starvation became greater about year in the city and it says right after that in the very next passage and the city meaning the city walls were split meaning on what day on the ninth day of tamus and this is a pasik this is a an explicit verse in yemen the prophecy of jeremiah so this and this is the discussion in the talmud bavali so how does the bible answer it says amirova said the sage rava lay kasha it's not akasha it's not a difficulty designer there were two temples two destructions so tishba of the destruction of the temple on the ninth day of that was the same date in both destructions so you're talking about 423 bce before the common era when the babylonians destroyed the first base amitosh and 69 ce 69 of the common era when the romans destroyed the second base of amigdus but everyone agrees that the destruction of the temple itself was on the ninth day of of however in both times both destructions however the babylonian talmud is saying when it comes to the splitting of the walls which happened before the actual destruction of the temple the city walls that is different that in the first destruction the babylonians it actually happened on the ninth day of the month as the prophet clearly says and in the second destruction one the one that was from the romans it happened on the 17th of thomas that says in the first place amigos the city walls were were broken on the ninth of the month and in the second destruction it happened on the 17th of the month and as far as the actual halacha the laws of these fasts it tells us even though we're told that in the first peso mikdash the destruction that was beset by the babylonians the city walls were broken on the ninth of ain't signing bethesda we don't fast on that day we don't fast on the ninth elba you're zion by only on the 17th why and the shocking aura says the yosef carol says even though we go according to the babylonian talmud which says that the city walls were breached on the on the ninth day of the month we don't fast on that day why not kevin bishop could be your zion bay since in the second destruction those walls were broken on the 17th teak no asanas would be designed by the fast was set up for only that date why mushum the corbin bayashini khamerlon because the destruction of the second base of ignish is more severe for us more severe for us meaning to say that's the one that that's the one that we're living with that's the the one that put us in the gullets that we're in so therefore the shogunate says oh by the way that's what the mercado says the morgan of rome mentions if you want to be a balnafish if you want to be extra from you can fast both days it's not how luckily required whatsoever but if you want to be extra careful and scrupulous you could fast both on the 9th and the 17th of thomas too late this year you missed it but at any shucks you missed it okay but um that's what the shogunator says now like i told you this is subject to a dispute it's not so uh accepted from all perspectives in the me also in tinus it says it brings this same verse that the breaking of the wall was on the ninth of the month and you know what it says it says actually the breaking of the wall was on the 17th of thomas both times both the first destruction launched by the babylonians and the second destruction launched by the romans both times and what do you do so then the shaman says what do you do with the possible we have a verse we have a verse in jeremiah that says that the the wall was split by the babylonians the first destruction on the ninth day of the month everyone following all the the dates here right so the irishalme says yeshkan so it means a faulty calculation there's a faulty calculation at play it's not the ninth of the month it's the 17th of the month both times both destructions okay fine no problem look it's not the first mache lake is bavali in yoshami we we can handle that that sometimes bobbly and shall we have different perspectives and also it's not a shock to us that the that the positions and rules according to which one remember the shukha norak says quran right and that's the cloud that's the that's the uh the legal principle generally if there's a mach like his bible you show me you follow badly for practical purposes for halal purposes right um so babli says there were two different dates in the first base of magnus the wall was split on the ninth the second base of english the wall was split on the 17th yoshami says no it was the wall was split on the 17th both times and as far as halacha we follow the babli and uh we say that really there were two different dates however for practical purposes we only follow the second date according to your xiaomi we're not choosing between two dates because there is only one date is everyone following all this all this math a little bit confusing right okay fine should i sell you an insurance policy now just sign it it's okay fine i worked out the math okay okay so again we're we're not afraid of a macho like it's valuable to show me uh we're used to that problem is a different problem we know that there can be divergent opinions meaning different perspectives different ways of looking at things two people standing in two spots looking at the same thing they can have two totally different views because of where they're standing and that's that's to be understood however we have a we have a principle which guides us that there can be no i'll use the technical term means a disagreement about reality in other words when it comes to an opinion where we want to place emphasis on one thing or another okay we understand there are different approaches so one approach would emphasize one thing another approach would emphasize another thing but when you say that there's a there's an historical event either it took place on that date or it didn't it's not a matter of perspective it's not a matter of emphasis either it happened on that date or it didn't and that we can't really handle i'm not like there's no such thing as arguing about the reality there's arguing where to place emphasis what to what to underscore there there can be two different opinions about when it comes to actual practical application which one we should express as far as our as our ritual observance um you know like bay shama i would say you like one last minute candle lemonade every night and basila would say you like one more every night that's fine that's a matter of perspective and opinion but an historical fact either it happened on that date or it didn't so we're left with what we call a machelechus promethius which cannot be so how we're supposed to deal with that that's my technical question that's more of my learning question now i'm going to ask you more of uh i don't know call practical question which is we all know that mashiach is coming sooner than later and we're all hoping that it's much sooner than later so why are we even talking about shavasana thomas we have no faith over here shivazuma thomas didn't come it's not and until the last second why are we even planning for it you know one of my boys went off to uh yeshiva's kayats today he went on the bus and he's going up to the mountains he's going to yeshiva's guide summer yeshiva and he had this fordham list and one of the the the books that he's supposed to bring was a kinus i said why are they telling you to bring a guinness that's terrible he said well they wrote on the thing if khashoggi is not here i said no if they don't write it on the paper don't bring the kids and if at the last minute you're scrambling around trying to find a guinness then fine but what are you preparing for for tish above for by the way the coolest thing i ever saw and i don't even know who the guy was but um i was in the mountains this was 20 years ago 25 years ago i was at uh there's a there's a swarm shop what's the name of that town that little town in the catskills where there's like wood burn is it called wood burn yeah okay so there's a there's a judaica store there's a swarm shop it was like the day after tish above and some camp director came in and i guess they were short they didn't have enough guinness the the previous day so he asked the guy there he says i need to buy 200 of these and he's like no he's like well you don't have him he says i refuse i will not sell to you i'm not going to sell you guinness you're telling me you believe a whole year from now we're still going to be in goddess i will not sell it to you i thought that was pretty great anyways why are we talking with shiva thomas we're all expecting that just hoping we're expecting there's not going to be a shiva also but thomas what are we even learning about it for all right so i've got a couple questions on the table one is how do we understand this apparent mach like is between the bob of you to show me which cannot be yeah there's a more personal question which is why are we preparing for something that we all hope and expect we're not going to have to deal with okay so you ever heard of the butterfly effect there's a couple different explanations of what that means one of them has to do with chaos theory and entropy and that that's one version of it that butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world could affect it it could cause a hurricane the other side of the world then there's there's a different butterfly effect it's actually based on a ray bradbury short story i mentioned ray bradbury ray bradberry because i'm from chicago sewing he's from waukegan so it's always i always like to mention allianzman yeah of course ray bradbury is from waukegan of course i grew up in chicago so you know ray bradbury is from walker you didn't know that now you know so ray bradbury wrote a short story where the there was a time travel tourism industry in the future i think it's 20 55 or something that takes place and uh so and in fact in the story the company that does the time travel tourism is in chicago yes it is yeah anyways so uh they take you back in time and you can hunt like rich people can go and hunt dinosaurs so yeah so they they're going t-rex hunting they're hunting tyrannosaurus rex and they fig and there's a whole thing they warned them you're going to be standing on this elevated like levitation thing so you don't touch you don't step on anything you don't change anything um we've singled out one tyrannosaurus rex who's going to die within a few minutes so killing him will not change the timeline in any way because that's the whole thing like you cannot change anything back in the past because it'll have a ripple effect and it'll change everything right so anyways um i'm not going to tell the whole short story anyways the point is at one point one of the guys steps off the path and uh he gets back to the future or back to the present where he started from and everything looks different and this is written in the 50s it was like written during the specter of the holocaust and uh basically some fascist candidate named deutscher go figure because he lost the election before they left on the trip when they came back he had won the election and they saw the the president was different than how they left it and he looks at the bottom of his boot and he's horrified to see a crushed butterfly he realizes he stepped on the butterfly in the past and it caused a ripple effect which caused that this fascist candidate came to power and whatever anyways the point is butterfly effect obviously it's sci-fi it's it's a it's a sci-fi story but like most sci-fi it's making a a deeper point and that is the idea of the ripple effect of our actions that if you play something out if you project it out you'll see that something even small could have a a massive impact and so here's the question now that i told you about ray bradbury sci-fi butterfly effect okay is there something in torah that is similar to this idea of an let's call it alternate timeline where a small action is different and then everything else going forward becomes increasingly different you know one time there was a guy he used to always bother israel because he won the bench goemon so he one time he called up the dove he says this time for sure you're going to let me bench going he says well you know thanksgiving blessing when you survive a calamity you survive a life-threatening situation he says this time for sure you could let me says what happened he says i almost got hit by a bus he says well that that would warrant mention graeme will tell me what happened he says well uh the nine bus went up on the curb on the corner of delancey street and that's the spot where i used to stand to wait for the bus except i changed jobs a year ago but if i hadn't changed jobs a year ago i would still be standing on that spot and the nine bus would have hit me so the dove says you know something i had a similar situation myself um the other day my wife did the laundry and then she put the laundry out on the line out you know in the city you know the in the olden days in the apartments they have the clothes line in over the alley right between the windows so she took my pants and she put them out on the clothes line to dry and a big wind came and blew the pants and they flipped off of the clothesline and they went tumbling down five stories and fell into the alley and i would tell you something three days prior i had been wearing those pants imagine if i were still in them that would have been me so okay so the question is is there such a concept of an alternate timeline where if something would have been different even a small thing then the whole history of the whole world if you project things out far enough would have been completely different sure i'll give you the first example where it's explicit i mean we can theorize what if all the merchava never ate uh from the hadas right okay but here's something where it actually says it clearly in torah it's not as far back as pasha's braces okay what does it say our boy the rain was upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights now in english it doesn't bother us geshem rain okay whatever but in lush encoders geshem is a very specific term geshem means normal rain not torrential rain the word for torrential rain like occurred in the time of new york is marble marble isn't just the flood it means the torrents coming down precipitating down in such a voluminous way that's called marble it's not called geshem they're two different terms so rashi has to deal with this so on this verse and the words and the water was upon the land what does rashford say rishi says but hold on a second later on it says it was a mobile it was torrential a torrential downpour and over here it's saying it's geshem it's normal rain so which one is it allah but rather he answers when it first came down when hashem first brought down the precipitation he brought it down mercifully why if they would return into shiva if they'd get the hint in other words you may the reign would have been not only would it not have been destructive it would have been a blessing bracha we pray for rain right this whole filo we pray for rain is the rain is a source of blessing i mean to a degree i mean in in the right amount so it would have not only been that destructive precipitation it would have been helpful it would have been a blessing however when they did not repent when they saw the rain coming down and they didn't repent how you la mabul then these same waters became torrential and wrought all of that destruction so in other words we have such a concept that there's something happened in the world at the moment it happened it was a fork in the road the human reaction could have determined vastly different timelines in history meaning there would have been no marble now let's talk about our situation here the seeming macholicus bemidsius between beverly and yurushalami they cannot really be debating about history they can debate about perspective about where to place emphasis but they cannot be debating about history and the answer is they're not they're not splitting a wall isn't something that happens like that what do you think they had dynamite the splitting of a wall is a process it's a process what happened at first a little bit of it broke you ever see a chicken coming out of an egg the chicken pokes out and makes a little flap a little window and he pokes more and pokes more until finally he can get his body through and leave the egg what happened on the ninth day of tamos the wall broke a little bit the wall broke a little bit and your xiaomi will agree to this your xiaomi will agree it's not a just like the bible says that the wall in the first destruction well the one with the babylonians the wall broke on the ninth but what does it mean it broke on the ninth it started breaking just a little bit it didn't completely break until the 17th now how is that a positive thing how is that actually something that if the jews would have responded differently to it not only would it not have become a calamity but it could have become positive hear me oh i've been warning them all this time he kept telling them duchova they weren't listening okay so finally hashem said i'll set never not so maybe you'll get the hint so he sent the babylonians and nebuchadnezzar and at this point they're besieged that's a reality what would be a zero-sum game the babylonians would leave but what would be coming out ahead to defeat the babylonians okay how are you going to defeat them you know last week's parsha it talks about when in the end of khukas it talks about they were fighting uh sikhrin who was the king of heisman hesman was a fortified city it was a walled city and they they couldn't get in there the eden could benefit the jews couldn't get in there to fight with uh with the city of hejman so hashem made them made these uh emoji do something stupid he made them get the stupid idea to leave their fortified city and go run out into the fields around the city and then the jews were able to defeat them okay so too similarly what could have happened instead of waiting to break open the walls so the whole babylonian army could just march in which is what they did you know what they could have done they started splitting the the city wall on the ninth make a little you know opening and maybe they would have gotten the stupid idea you know what the city's open up enough well you know we can walk in single file and as they're walking in single file the jews would easily pick them off and not only would they they they'd not be defeated by the babylon babylonians they would defeat the jews would defeat the babylonians so it could have the whole thing could have become positive in other words if they would have taken the hint not only would it stop would it arrest the negativity but the whole development would have been transformed and turned into something positive similar to the story of the marble that not only would it not have become a destructive flood but the the waters themselves which in the timeline which actually transpired the waters which became a marble would not have become a mobble they would have been ishmael waters of blessing reign of blessing so to hear if the reaction would have been different so that entire event of the splitting of the city walls could have been a positive thing okay fine so what do you do with the fact though that the xiaomi clearly says yes khan that this is an erroneous calculation we're trying to say that there's not a mach like this is between irish almighty and the baby we're trying to say that the the the irishman is also going to agree that on the 9th of thomas something happened so but it said there's an error in calculation so we can explain that a little bit differently too on an error in calculation happened what's the error in calculation that during the first destruction on the ninth of tamus when the babylonians first put that little hole in the wall and the jews saw it they said ah forget it now it's too late we're goners they threw in the towel they should have realized no this cannot only no this can not only be arrested so it does not become a negative development but if we do chuva now we can start an alternate timeline where this development where the first splitting of the wall on the ninth of thomas becomes a wonderful thing becomes a good thing and they would have preserved the base of mikdash and they would have defeated the babylonians but they made an error in calculation they thought that the decree was irrevocable that it's over it's all done no you could still do chuva the amish there was only sending you a wake-up call yay bishop was only trying to get you to to do not to not to surrender not to give up not to think it's a foregone conclusion but they reacted the wrong way and therefore what happened is the ninth of tamos led to the 17th of thomas where the city walls were completely broken open so yashami is going to agree with the bavali something happened on the 9th of thomas but there was an erroneous evaluation made at the time of what that meant and what would have to transpire or what alternate timeline could have transpired what's the point for us i was asking us before why are we even talking mashiva thomas we don't want there to be a shiva super thomas well the truth is yes we do want there to be shiva super thomas and i'll tell you why because the rambam says in the end of times the end of the laws of fasts that not only when mashiach comes will the fast days become nullified but they will become yemen they'll become yomtavim they'll be days of celebration it won't just be that the negativity has been has been arrested has has ceased has stopped then what did you gain again that's the zero-sum game what will happen is we will have transformed all the negativity ayuri let's all the descent will be like a person who crouches down low in order to leap up higher so the lower things go actually the more it propels it to a higher level we will see that when she comes and so the lowest days on our calendar will actually no longer be sad days but they will be the inverse they will be transformed to their very opposite those will be happy days because they are moments in the timeline of history where things were developing toward toward meshiach now it could have happened in a way that at the time it was a very quick development like we described or it could take longer but at the end the end of the whole story those negative moments do not remain negative and they're not merely cancelled and wiped away they become revealed as positive uh i'll tell you a quick story there was once a year that was thrown in prison in russia communist russia and his wife wrote him a letter she says look our only way of eating is we have a little potato farm in the yard next to the house and i'm a woman and by myself i can't plant the potatoes because the ground is too hard the ground's frozen it's hard and normally you know her husband would do that so she's writing to her husband telling him her plight so uh he writes back there he's in prison he knows everything's being read so he writes back to her and he says don't touch the potato garden because that's where i buried all of the guns the next day a truck full of soldiers pulls up and starts tearing apart the yard and they're digging around and after hours they find nothing and they drive off disgusted so the woman writes her husband she says there were a bunch of soldiers here they tore apart the whole yard looking for something i don't know here's how you know the punchline so he writes her back says now plant the potatoes yeah exactly so if you look at a snapshot if you look at the moment in time where the yard is being torn apart so it looks like destruction but if you look at the end of the story you realize it's actually productive not destructive it's plowing it's part of growth part of growth is is plowing it's also why the prophecy says seeing that in the basement will be plowed under like a field not just stom destroyed no plowed plowed means for the purposes of growth so the point is then when when when when we speak in anticipation of oh shiva super thomas is coming it's not that casual were masochists and we're we're wallowing in the anticipation of a sad day and we're looking forward to you know uh being mournful and that's not at all not at all we acknowledge in the past it's been that way but when we say shiva's thomas is coming what we mean is we're anticipating something truly great and glorious and and and worth celebrating because all of the pain in the past all the apparent destruction is going to be revealed in its transformed state of the ultimate the ultimate building just like the reign of the flawed could have become gishma bracha reign of blessing but it didn't except here the story is not finished being written the marble story is over but here the story of the story of the jewish people is not finished and what we're going to find in the end when it all plays out is that every calamity every pain both to the individual and to the collective to the community every loss every setback it was all in order to eventually be revealed as a descent for the sake of the greatest ascent what we have to do is seize those opportunities just like in the times of the first destruction they could have identified the splitting of the wall as a positive development and it would have been if they would have reacted to it that way if they and killed they made an erroneous evaluation had they not though the whole thing could have transpired differently we have to learn from that when we look around and we say oh the world's getting worse it's not getting worse it's impossible the world's getting worse the world every minute the world's getting closer to meshiach you know the famous story about the clock famous story of the clock of uh of the heiser there there was a i we're running out of time so i'll tell you quickly the story but at any rate there was uh there was a there was a clock that um i figured which gutter yeah that was who came to a hotel and he had in the morning he said where do you get this clock from and then the balchman the the innkeeper had to admit the whole story how he got it was the faces clock he says how did you know it was a special clock because you know why every other clock you hear tick tock tick tock one second closer to your death this clock i heard a tick tock tick tock every tick tock one second close to meshiach i knew it was a special clock okay so there's two different ways of looking at everything you can react to it as a snapshot oh you know the world is worse oh this generation is worse oh kids these days ah the world these days or you could say no that's impossible everything that transpires in the world is a potentially positive development and it will actually be a positive zone when the whole story is over i don't want to ruin the novel for you but the the punch line the end of the story comes and we win the game and everything is is beautiful but even until that point what do you say it's a long book yeah yeah yeah like war and peace it's like but the point is for us practically when there's an incident that transpires and we jump to identify it as a negative occurrence a negative development we have to stop and say hold on a second it's impossible that something's going to happen that's only negative that's not that's not the way the ability to runs the world if something happens that appears negative it's to wake us up but not to wake us up so we start uh self-flagellating it's yeah truly but you know chuva means chuva means take action doesn't mean go sit in the corner and cry it means take action positive action it means simcha it means positivity and then we'll see that all the negativity gets transformed then it just seems bad for what our small eyes see correct we don't see the overall picture it's really good right and and if it wasn't good right means not only is it good from hashem's perspective from his infinite perspective even from our small perspective we'll be able to see how it's good okay all right