Why Jews Still Mourn a Temple Destroyed 2,000 Years Ago - Rabbi Zev Leff: Living Inspired

Rabbi Le, welcome to the program. Beginning tonight, the Jewish calendar enters its darkest period, the three weeks when we mourn the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple. First of all, this period is called the benhamsarim between the uh uh two borders start with the 17th day of Tamuz where five tragedies happened in Jewish history. Um the luos were broken uh by Mosher Rabenu on this day when he came down from Hari and saw the Jewish people serving the golden calf. And uh later on the carb hatid they stopped were prevented from bringing the daily sacrifice in the temple on this day. and um uh the walls of Jerusaleim were breached when the uh uh siege that the Romans had made. Uh they were able to get through the walls and begin their destruction of Jerusaleim and eventually the Banikash in the second temple. And um in history the Mishna says that Apostamus burnt a safer Torah on this day. And uh also an idol was put up in the He in the uh Ba Mikdash. And uh these three weeks culminate with tishabove where both were actually destroyed and our ancestors were decreed in the desert and not to be able to enter Eris Israel and that generation would have to uh die out and the city of Bar was decimated on uh on Tishab. In any case, the want to put into perspective a little bit so we can see why these days even though there are days of tragedy but have in them a glimmer of hope also. We're mourning. It says that uh the day of tishabove should be in a person's eyes like someone just died and their uh dead relative is before them ready to be buried. That's how strong the uh mourning has to be. Now a regular morning period is just the opposite of what we're doing. The day of death is the most intense day of mourning. And then after the person's buried, you start a period of seven days where the mourning goes down a little bit. The person sits Shiva. He's in the house. People come to comfort him. He has certain laws that apply to him. Um and then after the seven days is out, it goes down another level. 30 days have other laws much more much more uh uh lenient laws and then by a father and mother the morning continues on till the end of the year and at the end of the year person goes back to his regular uh schedule here it's just the opposite instead of the rabbis instituting that we should start mourning on tishabove like somebody just died and then gradually go down after tishabove have a certain amount of days where we're mourning on a lesser level and then on a lesser level until the morning every year for the bas until it's rebuilt uh goes on year after year they did just the opposite we start with certain lenient ro rules of mourning now till the beginning of the month of Av those beginning of the month of Av till the week of Tishabove itself the morning goes up more strict and then from the week of Tishabove even more strict until from the seventh day above and and era of Tishabove is even more and then it culminates on tishabove with the most intense and then immediately after tishabove the next day it's just the opposite. It's an inverted uh uh process from a regular morning. So, I want to explain two reasons why. One reason is a regular morning period, the warning hits a person like a like a ton of bricks emotionally. Person dies, a relative, they're they're they're uh uh destroyed. They're they're they're uh in a panic and they Torah and the rabbis wanted a person to get back to normal. It's like a deep sea diver. You can't come up all at once. It's a gradual thing. So you um uh express the morning and uh and get it out of your system. So you start with the day of of day of death. That's the most intense emotional feelings and then you uh get get it out of your system a little through the shiva even more through the schllo and by the end of the year it says the maze is the the deceased is forgotten from the heart. That doesn't mean you forget about the deceased after 12 months. It means that the morning is no longer totally emotional but it's more intellectual now and the intellect can rule over the emotion until the 12 months. The emotions are very very strong and you have to um alleviate them by going through the morning period. It gives you a chance to u uh get out those feelings until you can get in control again intellectually. But when it comes to the morning for the basikdash, it's impossible that a person should come on tishabove at least in my estimation and feel like somebody just died. I mean the basikdash was destroyed over 2,000 years ago. We never experienced a basikdash. So it's like somebody coming telling me that uh on this day you should know 400 years ago your great great great grandmother died a violent death. I'm not going to be able to really feel emotionally I never met her. I never knew about her. And the fact that it happened 400 years ago to my great great great grandmother is really not going to put me into a emotional panic. I'll understand it here fine. So it's impossible for a person to come on tishabove and really feel like somebody just died. So here you have to build up to it. You have to start with Shivasamus and some of the laws of not listening to music and not getting married and you beginning to feel something's not right. Something's wrong. And then you build up a little bit more when the month of Av comes and you begin to feel even something is even more wrong. I can't bathe. I can't wear freshly laundered clothing until of Tishabove, right? and then I don't eat meat and the air of tishabove is even more then maybe by building up the emotion maybe then you can feel something on tishabove that's why it's one reason why it's the opposite of a regular morning we're building up towards that emotion it can't come to the person automatically so we go through a period where we build up our emotions that maybe on tishab we'll be able to feel something um emotionally uh like like somebody just died. That's one reason. But the second reason is that the destruction of the basikdash was in fact uh in our interest because uh the garra says that God god vented his anger on sticks and stones and not on us which means the following. when a uh person sins, so he causes himself spiritual harm and many nations have sinned, done terrible things and have committed spiritual suicide and they disappeared into the history books. The Romans and the Greeks and the Assyrians and so on and so on. God will never let the Jewish people commit spiritual suicide. God will never abandon us and he'll never let us abandon him. Give you an example, Marshall. He can understand. Imagine a 5-year-old super strong toddler who is also a very super brat and he loves to play the following game. He loves to run into the road into the street and play chicken with the cars that are coming. That's his favorite pastime. And his mother realizes this a very dangerous pastime cuz he may not get out of the way of the car before he gets run over. So, she's tried everything. She tried some modern methods of education. They sat down and discussed what they feel about getting hit by cars and that obviously didn't help. Then she tried some more conservative methods. Started yelling at him when he did it. And finally she hid him when he did it and she put him in a corner when he did it and nothing helped. And one day they're walking the mother and the son on the side of the highway. And um the mother feels that the son is pulling away from her and there's a uh 16wheeler tractor trailer speeding down 100 miles an hour down the highway. And she feels his son pulling away wanting to go and pray chicken with this uh with this tractor trailer. And she realizes that if he does, he'll never get out of the way in time. And that's it. The end of her child. In her other hand, she has an iron pole. She has two choices, only two choices, because I made up the marshall and I can make it up any way I want. There is no other option. Either the child will pull away, run in front of the truck and get hit and that's the end of the child. Or she can take the iron pole and break his legs and now he can't run into the street. It hurts her. It hurts him. It's going to take six months for him to heal. But the child's life was saved by breaking his legs. So too, sometimes the Jewish people as a people are on a path of spiritual suicide. And the Rabon sent prophets to warn us and to beg us. And then he sent us uh various tragedies that are supposed to wake us up and put us on a different course. And in the end, nothing helped. So the Rabon had to break our legs. He had to destroy the basikdash in order to shock us. And it now is going to take 2,000 years to recover and rehabilitate. But during those 2,000 years, we've longed for that bas. And we've done a lot of chuva and we have intensified our mitzvah and Torah learning and have have yearned for the basik to be rebuilt that maybe when it be rebuilt we'll treat it properly and be able to be on a different course than we were before. So the whole destruction was for the sake of survival and it's the whole gulus is only in order to to remind us that when we finally go back to aris is we should be on a different course that we than we were when we had to leave when God took out his anger on sticks and stones in order to shock us and not have to have us commit spiritual suicide but he had to break our legs in order that we not run in front of that truck. So therefore, the fact that we are mourning every year is we're reliving it. If we would correct the the things that caused the destruction, those things that put us on a suicidal course, then the basics will be rebuilt immediately. The fact that that hasn't happened means that we haven't corrected those things. So every year we relive that destruction. It's not just we commemorate it, we relive it. So we start off with the 10th of of the message and we would do chuva then we wouldn't have to have come to 17th of tam built didn't happen. So we relive again the next thing where the mother yells and hits and there's 17th day of tunnels. If we'll get the message and we'll do chuva as a nation then the day will be rebuilt and we won't have to come to the nine days. If we don't then the nine days again uh put us through that that that process of of of uh even even greater now we're getting parched and finally our legs are broken again on tish above if we don't get the message. So every year we relive that whole process. The mother doesn't break the child's legs as the first option. It's the last option. So we go through all the other options first before our yearly reliving of this destruction. But the whole purpose of the destruction is that we should yearn to get the mikdash back. Because sometimes if you don't appreciate what you have says the way to appreciate it is to have it threatened to be taken away from you or actually taken away. And when you don't have it then you really want it. and then you appreciate it and then maybe you'll deal with it differently if you get it back. So the fact that we mourn for the basikdash um is a reason to perhaps give us an a an inspiration uh to be able to correct those things that need to be corrected. So we'll have a third base amas very quickly. In addition to that we said that after a year the mourning becomes more intellectual and not emotional and therefore after a year you stop mourning. So they asked by by Jacobu it says that when he thought that Yoseph was uh killed by a wild animal he refused to be comforted and he mourned for 22 years. What happened to the decree from heaven that after 12 months the morning uh dissipates? They answer very simply that um decree from heaven that uh death is forgotten emotionally after 12 months is only if the person died because the person really didn't die. There's no decree. So, Yoseph wasn't dead and therefore the decree didn't take effect and YaKob was able to mourn for 22 years. They say that Napoleon once heard in Paris uh wailing and crying coming from a building and he went in to investigate and he saw a lot of people sitting on the floor with candles mourning, crying. So, he asked one of them, "What's going on here? what happened? So the person told him, "Well, we had a temple and that our temple was destroyed, so we're mourning." So Napoleon left and he went to the head of his uh intelligence and he said, "Has there been any news of a temple being destroyed anywhere? These people think their temple was destroyed. They're mourning for it." And the head of his intelligence said, "We have no record of any temple anywhere being destroyed." He went back. He said, "I think you made a mistake." right? Your temple wasn't destroyed. I checked. He said, 'When was his temple destroyed? Said about 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem. So he said, "A nation that can continue to mourn 2,000 years for a temple in Jerusalem deserve to have it rebuilt." It's even more than that. says, "Whoever mourns properly will merit immediately, not in the future to see the joy of doesn't say that he will merit." It says he does merit now. Why? Because if we can continue to mourn, that means that it's not final. The bamed was not destroyed. It only sunk into the ground. It's only temporary. Because it's temporary, it's not like the person died. And if the person didn't die, you can continue mourning way beyond 12 months. The fact that we can continue mourning now almost 2,000 years is a sign that it's not final, that it's only being held in obeyance until we correct our ways. And then the basis will be built again and the gula will come. What's missing? The story goes that the Balevi, the uh progenitor of the Salvatic Prrisker family, was a rabbi in uh in in somewhere in in in Lithuania and um it didn't work out. something very difficult happened and he had to leave that Rabonus and um he he he vowed that he would never become a Rav again and years later the position of RAV in Brisk became vacant and they sent a group to offer him the Rabonus in Brisk and originally he said no way there's no way he's becoming a Rav again and they begged in bed the whole day. Finally, the head of the of the uh group that came to offer him the Rabonas get up and said, "There's 20,000 Jews in Brisk waiting for the Rav. How can you keep 20,000 Jews waiting?" So he immediately got up, told his wife, "Pack, we're moving to Brisk. I can't keep 20,000 Jews waiting." when he heard this story cried and he said if the BA lady couldn't keep 20,000 Jews waiting for him then how does Msiah keep millions of Jews waiting for him must be that we're not waiting if we'd really be waiting then Hashem would not keep Messiah would not keep us waiting so if we understand from this morning period what we're missing and we yearn to have it corrected And the fact that we can mourn shows us that it's not final, that it's only an obeyance and there's hope that uh that if we cry enough and we appreciate what we lost that we'll get it back, then the mourning here is a sign that things can change in a second. And as soon as we are fit and correct those things that caused the disruption of the basikdash, we'll be able to have the basikdash rebuilt immediately. either according to some it'll descend from the heavens and take the place of the mosque that's on Harabas now or world events will happen and that mosque will disappear one way or another and the Bikdash we will build the Bikdash and will enable us to do it and uh that makes the morning period now not just a time of uh feeling abandoned and sad, but a feeling that there's what something we can do. If we yearn and we want and we're willing to correct those things that need to be corrected, then we'll see the reve comes this this to this fast day will be a day of sim. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Be well. >> Be well.