Why the Destruction of the Temple Was Just the Beginning - Rabbi Menachem Salasnik

I say just tell us that the first base of Midrash, the first temple was destroyed because of the three cardinal sins, murder, immorality, and idolatry. Whereas the second base of Midrash was destroyed because of sinas chinam, baseless hatred. But the Chofetz Chaim explains that if you look through all the stories, the baseless hatred may have existed for a while. The reason why why the base of Midrash was destroyed was because that baseless hatred finally emerged in the form of speech. People were speaking badly about each other. They were speaking badly to each other. And it was that bringing out of this internal hatred that caused the destruction of the temple. And this seems weird because it sounds it sounds like these two things are equal, right? You've got the destruction of the temple because of these three terrible things, and then the destruction of the temple because of loshon hora. Really? And the Chofetz Chaim explains that yeah, you're right. If you were to take one individual case of murder or one individual case of immorality, and compare that to one case of loshon hora, obviously loshon hora is not as bad. But the reality is that loshon hora people don't realize that it's bad. They're not even aware they're doing it. A person can go through a whole day and not realize that they've spoken hundreds of pieces of loshon hora. And if you were to collect a person's day, week, month, year, decade of just speaking loshon hora without any awareness, then yeah, it builds up and it becomes worse than even those three biggies. The Chida goes further, and he says that actually, if you look at the reality that we're living, that the first base of Midrash was destroyed and then there was an exile for 70 years, and then the second base of Midrash was destroyed and we're still suffering almost 2,000 years later in exile. Which one is worse? As we embark on the three weeks, this has to be in the forefront of our mind. We may never be perfect in this area. But unless we're thinking and we're of what's actually going on with our mouth and the way we're behaving with our mouth, we won't realize that we're piling it on. The heap is getting bigger and bigger. Gaining that awareness, which is what we're going to be focusing on the next 3 weeks, gaining that awareness is only going to give us put us in good stead. And hopefully lead to the end of this morning that we have to go through every single year.