Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Overwhelmed with Grief over the Destruction of the Temple

[Music] okay hi everybody and uh i appreciate you coming uh first i just want to say may sound a little pretentious but a sheer torah is more reliable than tish above because tisheba will be cancelled if moshiach comes but torah shiorim are going to keep on going even when russia comes so we are more reliable even than the fast day of the of the ninth above and again of course uh very grateful to roy poston who does all the work in allowing the issue to keep on going uh first uh this year today is sponsored in memory of dr marvin weintraub juan olivera of vancouver canada by his family who passed away april 2nd he was a research scientist a community pillar cherished husband father grandfather and great grandfather i i myself know the mishpakha very very fine and prominent mishpache may his memory be a blessing may the different torah that we say tonight be in aliyah the shama and as well and only aetna shama for our dear departed friend benjamin yisrael bench lomo uh you may remember uh benjamin gancher was the teenager that we were praying for for a year and a half and unfortunately tragically he did succumb uh to cancer but his parents continue uh to support torah and that will certainly be a great great success for his pure nishama and again uh arts fearless are for all of the holy israel all of those who are suffering that they should be zoha to a refuge leima minashimayam we are of course a few days before tish above the so-called nine days a time of mourning a time of sadness and i'd like to start with uh an observation of yosef dove sullivan of yeshiva university and he points out that we know that all of the laws of the nine days and tish above are modeled after the laws of aveilus the laws of mourners right mourners who sit shiva they're not allowed to have intercourse they don't wear shoes they sit on the low bench they don't wash right so all of these things are part of the laws of mourning tish above has an extra dimension over and above morning and it's also a day of fasting a novel during shiva doesn't have to fast obviously ninth ava so ninth above is actually a conjunction of two different halachic institutions it is an aspect of mourning and it is an aspect of tightness and sometimes they overlap for example if i were to ask you why right on tish above i'm not allowed to wash myself now why is there a prohibition of washing on tisha buff is that because it's the fast day or is that because it's a morning day it's a very very interesting idea now i'm not sure if i mentioned this last week i don't think i did so i think i'm not repeating myself maimonides makes a very very interesting point maimonides tries to prove from a gemara and rosh hashanah that the fast day of the ninth ava was even observed for the 420 years of the second temple they observed tisha b'av when there was a basa miktas now you might wonder what is the logic of observing tish above when you have a basa miktas tish above is mourning the basal mikdash mourning the absence of the shakina mourning the fact that our relationship with god is impaired it's not just a building of course but it's symbolic of a diminution in our relationship so if you have the base of mcdesh and you have all of that why are you observing the fast of the ninth of us so i'll give you two answers to that answer number one is that the second temple never fully restored what we lost with the first temple yes we had a temple we brought corbanos we had sacrifices but for example we didn't have prophecy in the days of the second temple except at the very very beginning the last three prophets were khagai and then it stopped the kohen guido did not have the prophetic medium of the breastplate the aura in between him where the letters would light up they they had the breastplate they had the jewels but it was not operating prophetically there was no aron hakodesh and luchot in the second base of miknish if you walked into the aranaka if you walked into the kodasakudashima there was nothing in the room there was no arena kodesh in fact khazal actually used the expression that the bayou cheney the second temple didn't even have the shaheen the divine presence was not fully there so consequently given the fact that even when we had the second temple we did not regain the closeness that we had during the first temple there was still an occasion to observe the fast of the ninth above that is answer number one answer number two ref vajric suggests is very intriguing when the second temple was built it was known by the sages of the time that it was not going to last it was eventually going to be destroyed because it was not built in a miraculous redemptive way it was built with the permission of the persian government and cyrus so they knew that this temple was not made to last this temple was going to be destroyed not only that but they had a tradition that the second temple would be destroyed the same day as the first temple namely the ninth above so they knew the temple was going to be destroyed and they knew it was going to be destroyed on the 9th of of but they didn't know when it would be destroyed so every single tisha buff was a time of ominous fear and trepidation waiting for the other shoe to drop and therefore if salvation has a very interesting point the observance of tish above when there was a temple was not the same type of observance when there's no temple when there's no temple tishaba is a day of mourning when there is a temple it is a day of repentance and prayer that the evil decree should not be carried out it's a different nuance it's not mourning because according to the second answer we had a second temple according to the second answer we're not mourning the absence of a temple but we're praying in desperation that we shouldn't lose it it's a very powerful idea that every single tish above was a day of terror during the 420 years of the second temple because they just didn't know what was going to happen today it's like i mean imagine if somebody was told you are going to die uh the fifth of love or it's fifth of thomas but i'm not telling you what year you know how would we feel every fifth of thomas right it would kind of be you know a big sigh of relief when that day passed at least for that year right so that's what ruff sullivan says but uh be it as it may the rambam's the rambam's big innovation is that the fast of the 9th ave was even observed during the 420 years of the second temple the other fast days were not the 17th of tamwas the 10th of te base the fast of godzalia they were not at all observed when there was a base on mikdash but the ninth of actually was but then ralph sullivan makes another observation that's very interesting and he says if you look at the laws of what are called private mourning look at the laws of mourning generally you always find they move from the most hamor very strict and they get progressively easier for example the first seven days of mourning are very strict the mourner does not leave his house he's not allowed to wash he has to sit on a low bench then what happens after the seven days is we enter a more relaxed state of mourning that's called sloshing that's for the next 23 days so a total of 30 days so the avail is allowed to go out but you know you don't go to weddings you don't listen to music and the like and then for most relatives after sloshim that's the end of the morning period for a father or a mother the halacha is you have to have morning for 12 months but even that that's much more lenient than the 30 days so the trajectory of availas is min hamor from being very severe to being progressively relaxed when we think about the public mourning that we have because of the corbin basa mikdash we actually find an opposite pattern first we start on the 17th of tomorrow's with the three weeks now the three weeks first of all are not even mentioned in the gemara the gemara does not know anything even though there's the fast of the 17th of thomas and then there are no restrictions but our minute is we don't make weddings from the three weeks we don't listen to music from the three weeks etc and then you get the nine days where we don't eat meat or drink wine or do laundry except if it's shabbos and then you get to the week of tishaba which is actually this year there is no week of tisha baker this above is the beginning of the week but that's more hamor even svardham who don't necessarily start things from the nine days they do start these restrictions from the week of tish above and then there's erev tishapuf and then the crescendo is tishabuf which is the strictest of all the morning periods do you see you're moving in an opposite direction when it comes to private morning i start off heavy and it gets progressively lighter when it comes to public morning i start off lighter and it gets progressively heavier it goes from the cow the light the easy to the hamur why is the trajectory moving in opposite directions and rav salvajic suggested that that is because the purpose of the morning is exactly the opposite when a person loses a loved one a person loses a parent a person loses a spouse a child god forbid a brother or sister their world is devastated in many many ways now again this itself is a very interesting dynamic obviously if they had a close loving relationship that's the case but the truth of the matter is even when there are and maybe especially when there are difficult relationships let's say somebody was unfortunately estranged from their parent or estranged from their siblings often it's still going to be very very cataclysmic to lose that relative because there's so much unfinished business that hasn't been worked out there's a tremendous amount of pain by the way i even read an article and this is very interesting about the trauma that divorced spouses suffer when the spouse they're no longer married to died even if people have been divorced for many many years there's you know some connection that they have and there are usually issues that were not fully worked out and there's a tremendous pain so when you suffer when a person suffers a bereavement they're in a state of shock they're kind of comatose they don't know how they can go on how do they rebuild their lives so as a result the purpose of aveilus is to provide a healing of this great pain so they will be able to resume a modicum of normal life in other words the goal of availat is to take a person from a state of immobilizing grief to be able to re-enter society and be productive once again so during shiva the person is doesn't even leave his house people come to him people talk to him and then just like sticking your toe in cold water stick out you know go outside re-enter society now grief and trauma are never totally forgotten but what happens through the process of mourning and again kubler-ross talks about the four stages of grief and whatever it is there are certainly going to be stages in dealing with grief is that grief can eventually become compartmentalized that's an important idea meaning there's part of you that's always going to be grieving always going to be sad but you can put it in part of your brain and in the rest of your brain there can be happiness there can be productivity so the reason why mourning starts off hamor and becomes progressively cal is the very goal of the morning is to give you the wherewithal to eventually join society sometimes a person loses someone and they don't want to live anymore they don't want to live anymore they lose a child or something like that but god wants us to live and god wants us to go on and mourning is one of these psychological mechanisms of judaism that gives people a ritual to be able to take their grief and deal with it talk about it and eventually compartmentalize it so they can go on when it comes to the khorban bay samiktas we actually have an opposite problem how many people cannot get out of bed in the morning because they are so devastated with grief over the loss of the base amicus i i tell my students narcimaech this will be a really creative excuse why you didn't go to minion in the morning you know rebbe i just couldn't i was thinking about the corbin based on mktosh i was devastated that would be a very high madrega to be sure but that's not our madriga we are not shattered we are not devastated we are not overwhelmed with grief so we need a mechanism to allow us to resume normal life it's really the opposite we don't even know what it is that we are missing you know the generation that experienced the hormone-based mikdash appreciated what the base of mikdash meant not just the building but in terms of god's presence and they mourned and they grieved but we are like a blind person who was born blind how would they understand color a deaf person who was born deaf could they really understand music what is it that we're supposed to understand you know there's a famous story that's part of israeli culture uh in the 28th of er uh we observed yom ushalayam the great day in 1967 when the israeli army was able to recapture the old city and of course the temple mount and among the first soldiers who came to the temple mount were the yeshiva boys from the hester yeshivats who were very religious and learned and to them the recapturing of the temple mount the kaisal mahravi the western wall was a religious event with profound emotional overtones and they were there even when it was still dangerous even when there were still snipers in the different buildings so it wasn't even that safe but they were there almost immediately after the army was able to reach the plaza actually wasn't the plaza then but the the coattail which was surrounded by garbage and buildings and all sorts of things and they were crying and sobbing both in gratitude to god and in sadness that this is not really the beta macdash this is only one wall around the temple mount and there was with them a felony soldier a totally secular soldier one who did not keep any of the mitzvoth one who did not even necessarily believe in hashem and he was sobbing along with them and when his comrade said to him what are you crying about these guys they have a feel they believe in god they believe in torah this is important to them what is the big deal about the temple mount to you why are you crying and the person said i'm crying because i don't know why they're crying and that's something that makes me very sad that i don't know what to cry over now the truth of the matter is this very famous story the truth of the matter is that's not just the predicaments of this khiloni soldier this is our predicament we are him we are exactly what he's going through what is it that we mourn what is it that we cry over what is it that we don't have exactly and that's something to cry over the swastemas once told the person a person asked the swazamas what do i do if i can't cry over the basamiktas and this fassem has said cry over your soul that cannot cry over the bass amicus cry over the emptiness of a religious life that doesn't even understand what it is that we don't have so says rough salvation going back to the morning trajectory the purpose of mourning for the besa mikdash is not to get us out of an all-consuming grief that has taken over our lives but to try to get to a place where we feel we've lost something and therefore you start easy and the hope would be by adding on externalities adding things on so to speak perhaps the increasing sense of external mourning might give me might give me a feeling for what i've lost so now it's a beautiful explanation the reason why i'm removing from the call to the hamur is the purpose of public mourning is not to get you out of a grief modality but to get you into a grief modality as opposed to private mourning where the grief modality is instinctual and natural and the purpose of the abe lut is to get you out of that particular particular pattern so this is what we're dealing with here we're dealing with the idea that kitsoniot hopefully has some input into paneemia what is that sonia meaning external behaviors might somehow influence me psychologically for me to realize what it is that we don't have now in some ways you could even say that this is the silver cloud or the silver lining of the many dark clouds that we faced over the past year almost two years now whether it's covet uh in which so many people died but even the even brexit the people who didn't die and didn't get to these are healthy but look at the devastation in terms of economic devastation in terms of family separation in terms of lockdowns in terms of parents not being able to be with their children and grandchildren the psychic cost of all these covert restrictions is absolutely enormous and it is not a small factor in the loss of life it hasn't been discussed as much but there have been a lot of covert related deaths that are not because of covet but it's because of all of the stresses that this type of life has generated like i don't want to get into a controversy but some have argued that that night that might even be greater than the deaths due to the virus okay but i don't want to get into that because people have strong opinions but nevertheless covert has been a very rough time and then we have almost miscellaneous tragedies as happened in marone as has happened in surf side in miami collapse of a building i mean whoever hears about a collapse of a building in in the united states i mean those things don't happen it's not like north korea or whatever whatever it is and the breakdown of law and order over the past summer in the united states it's been a difficult time it's been a turbulent time it's been a time in which a lot of the things we took for granted whether it's the stability of a building or the stability of a society kind of are up for grabs and if there is a silver lining in it maybe it gives us a more visceral sense of why we need mashiach why we need to why we need redemption why we need god's presence to become more revealed in the world in a good way you know when life is comfortable without great challenges then you know who needs besan mikdash who needs mashiach who needs goula so sometimes things are shaken up in our lives to give us a sapiaya to give us a yearning for redemption so maybe i'm just thinking out loud maybe it'll be easier so to speak to mourn on the ninth above this year than some other years precisely because of the the darkness and the turbulence that we have been facing over the past year and a half or so but still as i say it's a difficult exercise because hashem by and large we're comfortable especially we're living in there at israel we're living in your shallow those who live in your islam are living in your jawline even right and yet we need this tish above and of course it should be recognized that the ninth ava itself you know people often ask why have rabbanim not called for a day of mourning because of the holocaust yeah it's true that in israel otherwise we have yoma showa but yamashawa is not necessarily recognized by all rabbis particularly of the more kharadi rabbis and the short answer is that the ninth ava is the jewish day of national mourning the ninth ava is not only about the destruction of the temple even the kinos that we're going to recite on tish above there are keynotes about the crusades in 1096 the wiping out of jewish i think the wiping out of jewish communities many people recite kinos more recently composed about the holocaust they're not necessarily in the official keynotes books but many will pass out holocaust keynotes and and the like because tish above is about the tragedies of living in a world where we are estranged from hakodesh burkha now we connected to the temple meaning we're not just thinking about disconnected tragedies the idea is the temple which is a symbol of the ashrae sashrina when we don't have that connection to the shrine then all of these things happen so everything is connected to the khurban basa mikhtash but nevertheless we think about all of these things and that would include the more recent tragedies and difficulties that we have been that we have been grappling with but within tish above there's an interesting paradox on one hand the ninth ave is a crescendo of availat sadness and yet the ninth ava has certain aspects of festivity as well as bizarre as that sounds for example we do not recite the tachrenin prayer on the ninth of af because the night of is called a holiday moed ninth of have you don't say sad things you don't say tacoma particularly after the middle of the day the latter half of the day after khatsot around 115 or 120 there's a relaxation of a lot of the morning for example we sit on low benches until hatsos and then we get up the men who do not wear talos and fill in in the morning as a sign of their bereavements after khatsos from inha they put on taloson's villain the parochas of the aranakotis that is removed on tish above again as a sign of our deprivation we put back up after women in particular in yerushalayim had many beautiful customs in the latter half of tisha buff they would light a candle in honor of mashiach being born on tisha buff they would clean the house sweep the floors in honor of the imminent coming of mashiach there was a third custom women head that the postgame said was not right but it shows a certain attitude uh some women had a menage they would wash their hair the afternoon titular now the postcards say don't follow that minute because tishberg you're not allowed to watch but the belief in mashiach the belief in the idea that tisha would be a day of simcha was so strong that there were many women this is brought down in suffrage who would wash their hair rabbi allazar khalir who is the great religious liturgical poets from the 8th century who wrote most of the lamentations there are 46 kinos in our book he wrote around 25 of them 24 25 of them actually he wrote many he wrote many more he wrote around 60 kinos but we only include 24 in our kinos books but there's another part that he wrote that we don't even read today it's extinct he wrote kinos which are poems of lamentations but then he wrote an equal number of necromot poems of consolation and the intention was tish above morning we recited kinos tish above afternoon we recited nerhamat for various reasons that custom became extinct so i'm not aware of any place that recites the pirkei nachama but one needs to know that the same rabbi alejandra khalil who wrote kinos for the morning wrote nicholat for the afternoon i've been trying to find them i i'm having difficulty finding them but they do exist in old makzorim if you go back uh 500 600 years you will find pirkei nakama in the old in the old maksarim for example i think the uh there's a maksa roma the minute of rome is actually very very interesting if one goes back to the max or roma you can find many many things that you don't find in standard standards to durham so what's interesting is that after we go through the crescendo of avelute we then reaffirm our belief in the loving kindness of god in the facet of god in the redemption that hashem will bring in the mashiach it's not only after tish above that we do that in the seven weeks of comfort which of course we do and we'll talk about that on tish above itself we do that we express our belief in mashiach and the truth of the matter is it may very well be that the model of this might be the prototype of all kinos what is the prototype of lamentations the book of lamentations in fact the english title is better than the hebrew title the hebrew title for the the book of lamentations is echa but is just the first word the english name book of lamentations is exactly what the called the rabbinical name for the book of echa is say fair hakinos that is what it's called when the ghazal talk about kinos they don't mean the liturgical poems that we recite they weren't written yet the chemos in the time of ghazal was the reading of the book of echa now there's a part of the book of echo that's extraordinarily beautiful and it kind of hits you in an unexpected way and whenever we reach that part of the book i i personally am very very moved and that is you know echa every all the chapters of except the last one are written in an olive based format so per you know each possibly aleph based gimmel per gallop is olive bays perk bases olive base perigimel however is three outer spaces meaning they're short staccato sukim alifa the falloff base base and it talks about again it has a depressing book it talks about deprivation starvation death destruction murder violence children being massacred right that's what it is a book of sadness a book of tragedy but in the middle of perikimmel when yumiyo is in the middle of talking about this the letter has the kindness of god never ends his mercy is inexhaustible he gives back our soul every morning your faithfulness is great that's where modani got that phrase from and it talks about from god does not come forth anything that is evil and god will listen to my prayers as i pour them out with sincerity if you look at it look at the middle of parrot gimmel and it's like in the middle of the darkness there's like 10 or 12 of light of optimism of hope and then he plunges back into the overall tone which is one of sadness and despair and it could very well be that maybe rabbi lazara khaleer who modeled much of his kinos after aha in fact erica was the model for virtually all of his poetry and tish above perhaps understood that in the middle of a veilud you have to have a sense of the hama even then but i would suggest that the connection between available is even stronger and that is it's not simply that after the morning will come comfort but the morning itself brings the comfort it's not just sequential it is causal it is cause and effect i had mentioned last week for forgive me before alluding to it again rev sud oak's idea that the three weeks and the ninth ava parallel in opposite the four le show note of redemption when we left egypt we were redeemed in four stages and each stage represents a greater closeness to god so the four khosat the for the show note of goula represent four stages that bring us closer and closer to god the three weeks on the ninth of in many ways is a reversal of that process so if the four stages we'll call it a b c d you're now going backwards d c a b you lose everything that you gained by the redemption but jeff seduck says that's only externally externally the three weeks and tish above seems to represent a going backwards losing everything you achieve by redemption but in reality rav sadok says there is a closeness to god that comes from closeness and there's a closeness to god that comes from absence that an awareness of absence creates such a yearning absence makes the heart grow fonder that in some ways the closeness you have when you're aware of how separated you are maybe a more powerful closeness than the closeness you take for granted when the relationship is there we see this in human relationships all the time a person could be married husband and wife are living together they don't get along they fight irritated right sometimes there won't be optimal shoveling but let's say they get separated for many many months how much they'll think of each other how much they want to be connected to each other and maybe when they get reunited they'll start fighting again but there's kind of a connection and if sudok says that if galut creates our yearning and our passion that itself brings the guru that is the meaning of the statement that mashiach is born on tish above not that the birthday of the physical mashiach will be tisha maybe not but the idea of mashiach an idea of redemption comes from the yearning and the mourning and the grieving that we have on tisha above that we feel what it is that we're missing and we yearn to be connected to god and god yearns to be connected to us the gemarian bracos describes hashem crying every day sobbing every day whatever that means and he says alas to the children who are exiled from the table of their father and he says alas to the father who had to exile his children god suffers from our galots even more than we suffer the question obviously is why doesn't god just change it okay hashem does what needs to be done but it doesn't mean he doesn't grieve it doesn't mean he doesn't cry and because of the nature of the infinity of god god's suffering is much more infinite than even our suffering i know there's a whole question here i mean the rambam says god doesn't have emotions this is a difficult actually topic philosophically to discuss but certainly the god of the kabbalists certainly is suffused with emotion feeling pathos empathy all that we're going through and that is how god chooses to relate to us even if in god's mystical ultimate essence we can't describe anything but certainly behaviorally there are the elements of god that connect to us on an emotional on an emotional level okay so this is why the idea that the morning of tish above is followed by mikhama is not simply after the morning comes but it's a cause and effect because of the magnitude of the morning that entitles us to that and that restoration of the relationship the more we care the more god wants to give us what it is that we care about the less we care then on some level the less god cares kind of it's a very interesting idea god gives you the type of life that you want to have in the spiritual zone not necessarily in physicals and i want to be a millionaire i'm not going to necessarily be a millionaire actually today millionaire is not a big deal i should say billionaire but whatever whatever it would be but spiritually god gives you the life you want you want your relationship with him you will get it and if you don't want a relationship with him you will get that as well not having a relationship this is the famous statement of ghazal bederecht adam wrote soleil the way a person chooses to go malika no so that's the way that god's going to lead you god is very cooperative i want to go on this road sure i'll take you i want to go on that road i'll take you you just hashem is the nahad who takes the instructions from us i will take you on the road that you want to go and that's true for allah as well now there is a statement in the talmud you shall me that's a very powerful statement and the talmud you show me says call door shalom what does that mean any generation in which the temple was not rebuilt is as culpable as the generation where the temple was destroyed in other words one without this you shall me one could have said the following oh the basal mikdash was destroyed because the jews had some very serious are they wrote but we're not guilty of those of iraq we just we don't have the extra merit to get the basamektus back but we're not guilty of what they did the talmud you shall me is telling you that is erroneous thinking you don't need special merits to get the besamiktas all you need is not to be guilty of the same things that cause the corbin which means the you shell me is envisioning the destruction of the temple as a perpetual event it's not that it happened and it hasn't been rebuilt but every single second we are redestroying the basa mikdash every single second we are burning it down so when hazal say the average or abc or whatever it is it doesn't mean they were those of varus they are these are famous so now let's go over a few things everybody knows i know this is a very well known gemara that i'm sure all of you have heard the gemara in massachusetts that was recently finished by the taffyomi that the first temple was destroyed because of the worst of eros in the torah the three sins which a jew must give up their life that is avodah zarah idolatry giglio rios sexual immorality shivika stamin murder right these are the awful lovers and many jews not all jews of course but many jews were guilty of these three averages the naviem talked about it all the time and people didn't listen and the temple was destroyed but the second temple that was destroyed by the romans in the year 70 most of the jews were observant they were keeping halacha they were learning torah so why was the second temple destroyed so the gemara says it was destroyed because of the sinatrinam hatred and polarization groundless needless hatred polarization that exists among jews and the gemara goes on and says see how much worse sinasrinam is than even avodahzara gilearayas srihastamin because the khorben that came from avadazara how long was that hormone only 70 years the babylonian exile was only 70 years but the corbin that came from sinatra we are still in that regardless to this very day the gemara said that add a thousand years to the gemara and we're still in that goddess so if you combine the gemara in yuma with the talmud you shall me it turns out that on some level we are still guilty of the sins of avodah zarah delay that caused the corbin bias region and we are guilty of the sinatranam that caused the khurban by it shining now let's analyze this a little bit i can very well understand sadly and tragically how we still have the sin of sinatra that's very very clear we've talked about it a lot of times and we know this we see the polarization within the jewish people we see the how fractured we are and such a tragedy it is when the whole world almost you know is against us and puts us down and and denies even the legitimacy of a jewish presence in the land of israel and with everybody hating us again i'm not being paranoid i'm not saying everybody hates us in a totally negative sense but quite quite a few do what do they say even paranoids have enemies you know so and yet how can it be when there are so many that's against us that we fight among ourselves so unfortunately to ask is there sinatranam in claudia israel today no the answer is pretty simple that's uh that's kind of a no-brainer that tragically it does exist and this is not only between religious and secular but within religious whether it's different groups of khasiddham and whether it's whether it's whether it's different subdivisions within every single group you know they see i think they as i once heard when i was a kid that eskimos can identify uh 300 different shades of white because they have to know different types of snow what's safe to walk on or not and they could see gradations in the color of snow that would not be perceptible to our naked eye well in israel people can see gradations of religion that are quite literally not perceptible to the eye of the unlettered american religious jew who comes and visits even myself who's been here for already 11 years you know my eyes are not quite adjusted to all of the gradations so sinatra nam is very much within us and and obviously one of the things we think about on tisha b'av is avat israel caring about our jews and that also means being grateful to what people are doing even people who are not religious what they do for the country whether it's army police fire garbage collection free people hakara tatov avat israel see the good in people understands that people have different roles to play in a society and society needs higher limb just as society needs full-time people who are learning torah and we're all on the same team we're all on the same page whether we know it or not we need each other we should appreciate each other that's kind of the simple message but what i want to talk about for a few moments is something that maybe it's a little less obvious and that's okay sinatra my god we've got to work on that but avodah zorro gili arroyos srivicus domin i mean i'm not guilty of that am i uh you know in other words how do i connect not so much to the sunnah srinam thing which i think unfortunately is something that we can connect to as a problem but how do i connect to the regulation that seems to be beyond the pale of what i engage in and the short answer is that ghazal understands that avodah zara giles are sometimes symptoms of character flaws and even if one doesn't have the symptom one might have the disease so if sadaq identifies i mentioned part of this last week that the three destructive forces within the human personality is avodah zarah i'm sorry is kinna jealousy taiva is lust for material and sensual pleasure excessively and covert arrogance and self-advertisement rapsada correlates the three character flaws to the three cardinal sins of avodah zarah gelati now some of this is more obvious some of it is less obvious he connects jealousy to murder because number one empirically a lot of murders happen you know if you factor out terrorism and war a lot of murders typically happen because of jealousy quarrels or whatever it would be and jealousy essentially denies the right of another person to have a good fortune that i don't want him to have well taken to an extreme that's denying a person life so murder is the extreme manifestation of insane jealousy gilia rios quite logically is an extreme manifestation of taiva if a person is overly controlled by lust god forbid that could manifest itself in gilearaeus it's a little less obvious how does kavod relate to avodahzara idolatry is connected to kavod and rav sadok says the literal meaning of avodahzara is strange worship and that is anything in your life that displaces god from the central is role zarah so avoid azaria is not limited spiritually to bowing down to a statue but it can include looking after number one that when my comfort my honor my glory my power my wealth becomes the central driving force of my life i have made myself an avodah zara or i've made my money in a voter zara or i've made my political ideology and i voted sorry so of cedric's point is maybe i'm not guilty in the grossest sense of bowing down to an idol or raping a woman or sticking a knife in somebody's heart but if i am guilty of kin of jealousy which is denying the right of another person to have good fortune if i'm too involved in sensual and material pleasures if i'm too preoccupied in my glory in my honor and i don't think about god then i have the disease i have the root causes even if i don't have the symptom the symptomatic manifestations of those makhans right so therefore when we think about the sins of the beta mikdash we're not only thinking about the biatcheni the second temple we're even connected to the first temple but now let me just mention a final point here that is the so the gemaran numa tells us the first temple was destroyed because of zara the second temple was destroyed because of sinatrinam but the gemara nadarim comes up with another average that caused the destruction of the first temple and it says when the first temple was destroyed the first temple the prophets didn't know why and the cham didn't know why and they finally had to ask god what's going on and god said ah the aveira was they didn't recite the blessings before they learned torah and the naveem didn't recognize that until god told them so this is a pella first of all what do you mean the navium didn't know why the temple was destroyed what what were they the day i'm talking about they were saying over and over again we do these alberos there's going to be a corbin and what were those available so why does the gemara say the avera was the relatively minor offense it's an offense but you know it's not up there with about azaria the relatively minor offense of lober batora takrila they didn't recite blessings over the torah right two questions why were the naveem in a state of confusion and number two why does god give that is the answer as opposed to avodah zarah gilearayas shri and he's talking about the first temple not the second temple rebellion one of the great bali musa gives a beautiful beautiful answer when the prophets the naveem and the khachamim were confused why was the temple destroyed they weren't confused over the alveros that caused the corbin they well knew the averages that caused the corbin were avodah zarah gila arias sweetheart i mean what do the navium talk about that is what they talk about they knew the jewish people were doing those aveiros and they knew that in the wake of those avedos there would be a corbin they knew that and that's the gemara in yuma that there were reasons why the temple was destroyed so what were they confused about they were confused with a meta question a question above the question and that is given the fact that jewish people were studying the torah why didn't the torah elevate them why didn't the torah purify them meaning how could they have been capable of those of aros if they studied the torah it's like imagine a boy in yeshiva and he goes to darwining and he learns a morning seder in yeshiva nine to one with hasmada rabbah and then he has a two-hour break he goes to town commits a few murders a few rapes robs a bank and does a little arson on the side but he comes back in time for afternoon seder and he learns another four hours there's something wrong with that picture now i'm not saying there aren't such people i mean i i actually know not here but i actually i'm aware of people who kind of live a double life but that's typically a psychotic condition i mean that's not a normal thing i mean the question is there's something wrong with that picture doesn't learning torah elevate you doesn't it purify you doesn't it make you closer to god you learn torah and then you do a bodhisattva that's the question they're not confused as what were the sins that caused the corbin they knew that but they're asking how come the torah learning didn't help them and on that the answer is because they didn't say the bracha before the torah now why is that an answer surabel yolapian brings the following in the beginning of the book of malachim this is towards the end of david hamelik's life he's approaching 70 and you'll recall that he is seized with a shivering a coldness and he is covered with garments and the garments do not give him warmth i will not discuss the somewhat controversial uh solution that he employed for that that's a talk for another time but let's just focus on the fact that he was covered with blankets and the blankets did not give him warmth hazal say why did the blankets not help him so they laid down a rule that he who treats clothing with disrespect the clothing is going to take its revenge and not give him benefit when did david treat clothing with disrespect when sha'al was pursuing david to kill him at one point shaw went into a cave to relieve himself and he left his cloak at the entrance of the cave so nobody would go in and david was able to approach the cave and cut off a piece of the cloak and he was able from a mountaintop from a hilltop to social you see i was so close to you i could have killed you and i did not and if you recall there was a temporary reconciliation where shoulde says oh you know i love you david et cetera so for like one day there was peace then they went the next day already and they went back so cause i'll say that david did something improper now i would have thought well maybe you don't do that to the king but the gemara the kumari doesn't say it's because charles was a king it says you don't treat clothing with disrespect and that's right so wives should tell their husbands about throwing around their shirts or whatever whatever it would be you know that can have repercussions you treat clothing with disrespect it's not going to give you warmth and apparently clothing i have relatives because the clothes the garments that were not giving david warmth were not the ones that he got but it was the cousin of it whatever it is so they communicate and they don't give warmth so what do you see from this however you understand this physically you know i don't know there is a concept that when you don't treat something with respect it's not going to give you the benefit it's supposed to give you so revelation says if it's true that mavi gadim do not give you warmth if you're if you don't treat the torah as something special something wonderful something good the torah is not going to give you the benefit of purifying your soul and elevating you and therefore yeah if a person learns but does not appreciate the torah enough to recite a blessing and thank god for it that means they look at the torah as a burden they look at it as a bother they approach the torah with complacency and lack of passion then yeah you can learn from nine to one and then commit a rape and a murder and come back from ithaca you see that's the sacrifice meaning the sins were avoided but the turret didn't protect them because they didn't have the right attitude to the torah now this is something we can think about as well because the truth of the matter is even if a person keeps the mitzvoth which of course is a wonderful thing better to keep the mitzvot than not to keep the mitzvot that's an absolutely certain idea but if we look at the torah as something that's a bother that's a tirka we look at as somebody once says so many jews and again i don't mean to give muslims to other people i mean i include myself in this sometimes we sometimes look at the torah not as 613 myths vote but has 613 problems that we have to navigate around so we can do the things that we really care about now again uh even that is is a level that's better than not doing it but you see if we want the torah not just to be something we observe but we want it to be transformative we want it to elevate us we want it to change us we want it to purify us then our attitude has to be one of love and gratitude and respect and joy in our learning of the torah and therefore that's also something you think about the lord tehillah as a cause for the khurban basa mikdash so again i hope and i pray that maybe even this year we will not have the fast of the the ninth above uh but if raspberry this year we still will be observing the fast of the ninth ave may it be the last time that we do so may the ninth ave become the day that moshiach was born not so much in a physical birthday but in the sense of the power of redemption uh coming into the world and uh may we and quali israel and the whole world bizoka to the goulash lima bim hey reviews [Music]