Transcript
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I want to share with you a small idea
about Tisha B'Av. In a few days, I'm
going to the country of Korea. [music]
Not the north, but the south. South
Korea is a country of lights [music]
and freedom and innovation. A place
where you can dream and move and build,
where there's Wi-Fi in the subways and
there's 5G in the mountains and there's
robots running around doing things for
people.
But just above South Korea, just a
couple miles in the distance, there's
another Korea. North Korea. A place
completely locked in time. A country
completely frozen [music] in darkness.
There's no normal cell phones. There's
no internet. There's no access to truth
or to history or the outside [music]
world. There's just lies and silence.
But the people that live there [music]
go about their lives like everything is
normal. In fact, the North Korean
government convinced them [music]
that they are living in utopia, while
the rest of the world is decaying and
crumbling. They are convinced that they
are a model society. The citizens of
North Korea walk around completely,
entirely unaware that the objective
quality of their lives is about a
quarter of the rest of the world. They
have absolutely no idea that their
reality is about a quarter of what it
could be.
Now, imagine if someone, one person,
sneaks across the North Korean border
and whispers into the ear of a regular,
obedient family and he says to them,
"You know that there's a whole 'nother
world out there.
A world where people live freely, where
ideas are born, where beauty thrives,
where you can say what you think, where
you can know what actually happened in
history, where there's music and color
and laughter and connection and
technology and modern medicine and a
glorious, wondrous world."
That family,
they would sit there stunned, completely
frozen, because for the first time
they'd realize that they'd been living
inside of a lie, that they're living in
a prison that they never knew they were
in. And they would cry, not because
their lives changed, but because for the
first time they realized what they were
missing out on. Tisha B'Av is that
whisper to us. [music] Tisha B'Av is a
whisper from across the border that
tells you there was once a world, a
world infinitely greater than this one,
and you've never known it. You were born
in exile, you've never tasted it, you've
never smelled it, you don't even realize
what you've lost. We sit on the floor
every year trying to cry, but how do you
cry for something you've never seen,
something that doesn't exist in your
memory? How do you cry when life is
pretty good?
So, let me whisper it to you.
There was once a world where the sky
felt closer, where the fruits were
sweeter, where the air was purer, where
the land gave you everything you needed,
where there was no such thing as
spiritual confusion. You didn't wonder
if you were connecting to Hashem, you
felt him in your bones. There was no
hustle to survive, there was no drowning
in bills, there were no plagues or
pandemics or cancer or fear, there was
no silence from heaven, there was
dignity, there was clarity, there was
beauty. The Jewish people walked tall,
we were respected, we were admired.
Nations all over the world poured into
our cities bringing us gifts out of
honor. We lived in peace, we lived with
meaning, and most of all, we lived with
truth. You didn't need to guess if you
were if your davening was enough, or if
your learning counted, if your heart was
heard, you knew Hashem was close. He was
real, he was palpable. You didn't
believe in him, you knew him.
And we lost that.
>> [music]
>> That whole world.
Tisha B'Av is not about mourning a
building, it's about mourning a reality,
[music] a life, a level of being we've
never known, a quality of life that is
10,000 times better than what we have
right now. So, when people say, "How can
I mourn the Beis Hamikdash when my
life's pretty good?" I have one simple
question to ask it. Is it really good or
are you just living in North Korea? Are
we living in a world so cut off, so
broken, so spiritually limited that we
don't even realize what we're missing?
Do we really think this is it? This life
of spiritual fog, of uncertainty, of
exile, of inner struggle, this is the
dream? Yeah, we get used to this world,
or the world we're handed, we adjust, we
adapt, we convince ourselves that's
normal, that this is good enough. But,
what if it's not? What if this life is
only a fraction of what we're created
for? What if we've been living with the
spiritual amnesia, mistaking exile for
home and darkness for light? Are we
walking through life unaware of the
unfathomably wondrous world Hashem wants
us to be living in? Not because we're
blind, but because we've forgotten how
to look.
Tisha B'Av is not about sadness, per se.
It's about waking up. It's the day we
dare to say, "This isn't the world we
were meant for." The Jewish people were
built for more, for clarity, for peace,
for closeness to Hashem so real you can
feel it in your bones. On Tisha B'Av,
our souls remember, even if our minds
have forgotten. Deep down, there's a
quiet cry, an ache, a longing for a
world we've never seen, but we're always
meant to live in. So, let the whisper
rise. Let it open your heart. Let it
shake you. Not with despair, but with
hope. Because when the yearning becomes
real, then the redemption gets closer.
This Tisha B'Av, ask yourself,
will I hope? Will I cry? Will I plead
for a world better [music] in every
which way?
Or will I foolishly walk right back into
North Korea?
