Tisha B'av - The 10 Martyrs Ep. 291

Well, I'm sorry to say that it once again is tishov and uh this is our special tishov program that we do every tishov. Uh unfortunately each year I'm hoping this will be the last year that I'm going to do this but uh here we are again because uh because we prefer sitting on the floor and mourning and suffering than doing chuva. It's uh it's not so bad. Not so bad. We talked about this. You know, everyone manages with the nine days. Not so bad. Not so bad. The showering, the laundry, the milking, not so bad. And so we end up in this situation year after year. There's been a tishabove for over 3,300 years. Some years it was yontiff and some years it was not. And so we have a kenus that is our companion. Over the years people have written uh I don't know what word you'd use for it other than kina. Yeah. It's it's not a p. It's a kina has a special power to it. aka a certain pain that comes across in the kinos and uh it gets harder and harder for us to find meaning in them without understanding them. And so therefore people come up with perishimum and explanations and you see people have a hardcovered kenus never happened. They were offset the little paper ones cuz you left them in sh because you wouldn't need them for next year. Now people are already planning planning for next tishb. What are we going to do? What's the program? It's hard. It's hard because it's just become such a part of our life. It's hard for us to imagine uh a year where tish will be a yantiff, will be a sim. hard for us to imagine but uh but that day is coming and I mean it's Hashem all of us will live to see it but for now it's tish and so every year we try to take a kina and talk about that kina to be able to give us some insight into tishab and so I want to take tragic story that is captured in Mina it's number alon which of course is the story of the harug mus the 10 sadikim who were killed by the king and slaughtered And we say akina on it on kipper as well. It's one of the central kenus that we say on these special days because it was an event like no other. And the med tells a story. When Hashem made the trees, they grew very high. They were very happy. When Hashem made the metal, they were sad for which is going to chop us down. If we didn't give from our tree the wood to make a handle, they couldn't chop us down. And we provided the weapon for our own destruction. If they hadn't taught Torah to the Caesar, this never would have happened. Isaac with Torah. One time the Caesar was learning Torah and he saw that it was written, "If you kidnap somebody, you get killed." And he filled the whole house with shoes. He sent Friends, what's the punishment for someone who kidnaps? Death. In that case, you deserve death accepted upon you. The judgment of heaven. Yoseph because of the brothers of Yseph who sold him into slavery and the says they sold him for shoes. That's why they filled the his palace with shoes. Okay. And the story goes, "If they were alive, I would kill them. You are as great as the 10 who sold Yoseph. Give us three days to see if this was from Hashem. And they all gathered together. Ben, and these are the harug goes up to Shayim and they said to him, "This has been decreed mabot. and you're going to die. That's the story. And that is the story of how it is described in the kina. These giant trees, cedars of Lebanon. Now you see why they're called trees. The great of Torah Balishn. did battle. Everything they did, they were powerful and did it with purity. And because of them, my eyes are filled with tears. I cry out in pain. The caim the crowns all of these pure of heart died with terrible death. They did a guru who would die first. The goro came out first. It came out on and he stretched out his neck. They chopped off his head and asked to cry on him. He put himself on his pure manura. He put his eyes on the dead heads eyes and his lips on his lips. And he opened and said, "These lips which spoke Torah got this terrible death. his he when was going to die the Caesar's daughter wanted to save him and they said no but we'll give you his face and so They flayed the skin off of his head. He was silent until it reached the place of his fillin. And then he cried out and the whole world shook. Their should remain for us for generations. Then they took out who with his genius it was like he took two mountains and ground them together and they ripped off his skin with combs of when his soul went out on the word as he was Happy that you return your body in purity. He was 70 years old. He died fasting [Music] who gathered together masses to teach them. He dashed with a Torah. They took him and his and they made sticks around him to burn him at the stake as the the flames were destroying him in the Torah. They put um piles of wet wool on his heart that he shouldn't die quickly, that he should suffer. They killed him. They threw him to the dogs and he wasn't even to have a burial. [Music] Bas came out and said yeah that there was nothing of Torah that he left unlearned a terrible day. the birds would burn up from the the words of Torah that he would learn. They stabbed him. He was. So he died uh uh going into Shabas and one after another they killed them. Um, how many of us have been killed by stoning and burning, by the sword and by strangulation? Those that were left were eaten by lions. The parts of the were eaten up. Do good to us and don't make us suffer anymore. Yeah. Save us. In justice, the king who rules should say, "Your days of morning have passed. You will now go to the light. This is the Kinus version of the story and it's an amazingly powerful story. There's only one problem with this story. It never happened. Didn't happen. They died at different times in different incidents and different stories. They they were never gathered together because the story is very strange. Why would the king bring all of them in there? And said, "Well, let me check in shmayim to see if this is a gazer from Hashem." And what would have happened if he came down and said, "No, sorry." Hashem said, "No." You think that the the king would have been that understanding. So the kazal with the story of the rug mus is telling us a story. is telling us a story and bringing it all together. We all know how the Purum story worked. The Gmorra and McGill tells us that the Jews of that generation deserve to die because they went to the party of but in the time of they didn't know this answer. It wasn't part to them. So was hiding in the cave and they sent a bird with a message and said why did that generation deserve to die and he said because they went to the suda of okay but we read the mcgillis Esther we see it starts with that story but that story happened 9 years earlier they didn't make the association between the events It's easy with the gift of hindsight to say this happened for this reason and this happened for that reason. It's easy afterwards to put everything together and give an explanation. But Bashas Misa, why is this happening? Why is this happening to us? There was a story in one of the concentration camps. They decided to put God on trial for the Holocaust. They were in the middle of the Holocaust and somebody took the job of defending a bar and someone took the job of prosecuting a bar and it came out that he was guilty and he said Hashem is guilty. They said what do we do now? Said it's time for In other words, they didn't have an answer. Many would argue we still don't have an answer. We search for answers. The Gmorra asks why did Bayas reishon happen that it was destroyed? The first why did Bay Sheni take place? Why was Beta destroyed? Why was Torah Mala destroyed? The Gar asked these questions after the fact. What was the the rishonum asked? Why did the crusades take place? The Aonum asked why did uh the Kmeni uh destruction in Europe take place? They didn't have kodes at that point. They could only offer the best explanations they could. And in our day, people struggle with the question why the Holocaust happened. But it's not always clear when something's taking place. So here it is hundreds of years after the Pur story and they're not sure why it happened. What was the cause? So they know that these 10 sadikim were murdered by the Romans not at the same time and not for the same reason but the saw a pattern where other people didn't see a pattern like told them you know when they went to that party 9 years ago that was sitting and waiting for them nine years later when Hmon came to power but they didn't see it and very often it's hard to see a pattern. Something happens here and something happens there. And it takes the eyes of Khazal to understand what was happening. And the Kazal said all 10 of these deaths, though they happened at different times and for different reasons, were all united by one central cause. And so they wrote the story of the Harug Mus as if they went to a king and the king told them this and they went up to Shamayim. They found the gazer in Shamayim. But that's not what actually happened. But it's there to teach us that there's a connection between events even when we don't understand them. And that's very important for us to know. Nothing happens for no reason. Today we don't have Nim. The best we can do is go to aim and try to understand why. But anyone who can tells you we know why the massacre in ter took place if you're claiming that you have nva well unfortunately tell us who has nva today not normal people but the in the place of the that's what the anessa gdola taught us that there was a transition because the anesola were made up the men of the great assembly of andim and we made that transition ition from the to and the are able on some level to give us insight into these things. Can they say for sure why it happened? They can't say for sure. The khazal can. But when the rishonum struggle with the crusades and the struggled with takat and we struggle with the holocaust and within and with the best we could do is try to come up with understanding to try to make sense to try to connect the dots but the kazal saw these 10 deaths and said this was not random. They were there for Yoseph which in of itself is a very strange reason to give because after Mak Yoseph we went down to Mitzim for 210 years and then we were in the midb for 40 years and then ba rishan lasted for 850 years and then we were in gullis for 70 years. Now lasted came to took place after 420 years and after all that time you decided now is the time to collect on mak yoseph seems a little strange there wasn't another moment in history where there were 10 sadikim who were as great as theim that you could have settled this score and had take place now. And if you read the medish of the malus, you'll see in the kina we mentioned this one died of shabas going to shabas. This one was killed on yam kiper which is another way of knowing that it didn't all happen at the same time. Riba was 120 years old. This one was 90. This one was 70. So there seems to be this common denominator. They were all very old when they were killed. And they died going into Shabas. They died going into Yamiper. They died saying Keshma is not the only one. The medra says who died saying keshma. It was something very unusual about all of their death that gave the kazal insight that this is all connected. Why? Why now yose yose brought a da on his brothers? He ratted on them to his father and the brothers decided he's trying to disenfranchise us just like Asov wanted to take the braus and everything that Clay stood for away from Yakov. Yoseph was trying to do the same thing to Clay and he wanted to make himself the only one who was going to be left and have the other 10 dealt out. That's why they thought he was a rodeave. They thought he was making this grand plan to get their father to turn against them to fool their father with all of his tricks. The way Asa fooled Yitzk, Yose is fooling Yakov. And they believe their father was being fooled. That's why they felt they were in the clear fooling Yakov and pretending that Yseph had been killed and taking the Pim and putting it in blood to fool Yakov just like Yakov had fooled Yitk because what can you do? We're saving Clai. They were sure that Yoseph's intentions were bad, but they weren't because when Yoseph was born, Yakov says to Lavan, "Now I want to go home," says Rashi as now I have the one who is going to defeat Asov. So sure you could be fooled into thinking Yoseph was Asov. That's because he has the job that Asov had. As was supposed to destroy the evil, but then he became the evil. Now Yoseph has that job. And wherever he sees evil, he has to fight it. So if the world is starving to death, he has to save the world from starvation. And when his brothers come down to Egypt with their families, he has to protect them and make sure they're safe. And when he sees his brothers doing things that are wrong, he feels it's his obligation to tell their father. Not because he's ratting on his brothers, but because he feels that that's his job to weed out evil wherever there was. And there was apparently the seeds of problems in theatim. Unfortunately, they reacted to it by hating him. And they shouldn't have hated him. We have a term for that. Sin is I mentioned this years ago from every left every left said there's no such a thing as sin asum hating for no reason. You always have a reason. It's just not a good reason. They hated him. They thought they had a good reason, but they didn't. And they didn't realize they were wrong. Not until the end of the story. And Yseph has these two dreams where first all the 11 brothers have to bow down to him and then the 11 brothers in Yakov have to bow down to him. And Yoseph knows this. He had a nava and he told it to the brothers and they just hated him more [Music] and they sell him to become an eb. But you can't keep Yoseph down because he has the kayak to be able to be makain the bad in the world. So he becomes the head of the of the slaves. He becomes the head of the household. And then they trump up charges against him and they throw him into prison. He becomes the head of the prison. And from the boar, the way it's described, the pit, he's taken out and becomes in charge of all of Egypt. one smooth transition. It was no problem for him and he saves the world from starvation and he paves the way for his brothers. So he makes everybody in Egypt get a brisma so that when his brothers come down they won't be persecuted. And he moves around the entire population of Egypt so that his brothers won't feel like strangers. Everything he was doing was for their benefit. But they never believed it. And when they the 10 brothers come down after they sold him into slavery, it says he sees his brothers. It doesn't say and he remembers how they threw him in the pit. He sees his brothers and it doesn't say they remember how they sold him into slavery. He sees his brothers and he remembers the dreams. And now he understands I am the vehicle of tikun of what's bad and there's bad in Israel. It's called sinum and I have to remove it. So the first thing I have to do is get all 11 brothers down here. And so he pretends that they're thieves and they're liars and they're spies. He locks up Shim. says, "You're not getting anything until you bring Binyam down." And sure enough, they come down with Binyammen. And all 11 brothers bow down to him. And now he's fulfilled the first dream. He has to fulfill the second dream. And he has to get Yakov to come down. And he knows the one thing that's going to get Yakov to come down is Bin Yammen. He'll do anything to save biny because there's only two ben and the ben ra serve an essential purpose in the world. There has to be a mashiach bin before there's a mashia bin. And if I keep y then for sure he'll come down and then they'll all bow down. And Yehuda stands up and starts yelling at him. How could you do this? How could you be so heartless? How could you this? Yoseph's heart was never in it. Few times in the story, he has to go off and cry because he just can't believe he's causing this pain, but he knows it's the right thing to do. And finally Yehuda breaks him and he cries out and says, "I'm your brother Yseph." And then he goes over to his brother Binyamin and he cries on Binyamin says, "Rashi for the ba mikdash." Well, that seems a little random. Why don't you cry because we're the only two left? Why don't you cry because mom died giving birth to you? Why don't you cry because I never got to see your 10 children that you had and named after me. That was one of the times he ran off to cry when he heard about Binyam's children. Why didn't he cry for the pain and the suffering? He cried over Mikdesh. Why? Because Yoseph said to Vinyam, "I failed. If I had been strong and I stood up to Yehuda and I sent them back without them, without you, you would have stayed behind and Yakov would have come down and they all would have bowed down to me. And then I would have pulled off my little turban and said, "Surprise, it's Yoseph." And YaKob would have said, "Yeseph, what are you doing here?" And he would have said, "That's a great question. Does anybody want to answer dad's question, how I got down here to Egypt?" And for the to have to have admitted the terrible thing they did in front of their father, it would have burnt the sinner out of Cla. Sometimes it takes something very dramatic to burn out that type of hatred. Today people are weak. We're always afraid to be too hard on them. That very pes tells a story about Readron that when he was B and yeshiva. So they were running late and they finished khazar after and he wasn't sure if he should say taken because normally you don't say taken after he's looking around was sitting up front it seemed to him pretty so he says kadesh so he says kadesh at the end of ding the mashia gives a clap on the bema and says I'm going to ask all the rash yes to please leave the misra wall because we have a new rashiva Sham shadron he poskins all the shilas and the yeshiva sham shadron said I froze says I wonder if I could ask the new rashiva to bring me a mishnabic bay and he says I don't know how my feet moved I went and I brought him the safer and he opens up and he reads that you don't say after but if you're running late like on a tinus this then you can said I went back to my apartment I got into bed I pulled the cover over my head I didn't come out for two days and then came and said the mashia wants to see you and he said I didn't know if I was more afraid to go or not to go and I decided I was more afraid not to go and I come in there and I'm so humiliated and the mashia looks at me and says you know Why I did what I did. I'll get you gumar and sit down. List of shadron says like a surgeon he stuck in a knife and cut out half my ga. I'm just sorry he left the other half there cuz sometimes it takes something very desperate to make an impression on us. There's a fellow that I met but I never heard his story. Obnor Weinberg tells over his story. I just knew this guy was a quadripollegic. He was in a wheelchair. People used to go to him for shabas. What's his story? He was on the University of Chicago. Tall, good-looking, athletic fellow with top grades. He had his whole life ahead of him. And a black militant came onto campus and wanted to shoot a white guy at random and chose him. And the bullet lodged in his spine and he became a quadripollegic. He couldn't move his body from the neck down. And he tells the story as I was lying in the hospital bed and I said my life is over. You know here I thought I was going to be popular. I was going to be social. I was going to be rich. I was going to now I be in sports. Now I have nothing. Can't scratch my own nose. Why am I alive? And he stops and he says, "You realize I never asked that question, why am I alive?" And I probably never would have asked my question, "Why am I alive?" unless something really dramatic happened to me. Then he would look at the person he was talking to, and I said to myself, "It's a good thing I was shot." If Yseph had stayed strong and would have forced theatim to admit to Yakov what they had done, it would have been so traumatic. It would have burnt the sin out of fell. But it didn't. And you see it at the end of the story when they're coming back from burying Jacob. The brothers say, "Dad said, you shouldn't do anything to us because we sold you into slavery and that you should forgive us." That's what dad said before he died. And Yoseph said, "No, he didn't." And they said, "How do you know?" He said, "Because I never told him. My beloved father, I saw him when he first came down to Egypt. I loved my father more than everything in this world. But I avoided him for the next 17 years. I never went to visit him. I never went to talk to him. I kept myself busy because I was afraid what would I do if he asked me, "How did I get down to Egypt? and I didn't want to lie to him. So, I missed seeing my father for those 17 years just so that I wouldn't embarrass you. Well, the Schwatam lied because they were sure that Yoseph hated him. And he said, "You think I hate you because you hate me. I never hated you. Not for anything you did to me. I only looked out to help you. I only wanted to make sure you were settled in. I I circumcised the whole country. I moved around the entire population of Egypt just to make you people comfortable. I never hated you. Everything I did was only done out of love. But because you still hate me, you assume that I hate you. That's the sin. And it laid dormant in Cla Israel for 210 years in Egypt and 40 years in the Midbar and 850 years of bias reishon and 70 years of gullis and 420 years of bias sheni. And once the second bas mikd was destroyed because of this sinam which had never gone away. We say it every morning in Davening. [Music] These are the seven spherists and Malus and they represent seven historical characters. Abraham is Gurra. Yakov is Teres. Moshe is Net. Aon is Hod. Yoseph is Yo. And David is of course right. is yeah is the first three. And how is Yoseph desri described? That which brings together the B mikdash sees a ladder going up to Shmay and coming down. He says that's the mikdash says the nor spelled backwards is where the is that's where the noa is where comes together the upper is attached to the lower when the base of mikdash was destroyed That connection was lost. Now, now more than any other time in history, we so keenly feel the loss of Yoseph within first Ba Mikdash. We knew in 70 years there'd be a second bas. We knew how long the gull would be. We were looking for it. We were waiting for it. But with the second basin mikdash, we're still waiting. And so at that moment when the destroyed the Bikdash and said now it's time to collect on which laid the foundation for the sin and that haunts us to this day. The hatred that destroys us. So the kamas said, "When we saw Jews protesting in the streets against their government, when we saw Jews on Yam Kippa ripping down on the of a minion in the street, when we saw all the hatred between the Jewish people, we knew we could attack." That's what they said. I'm not saying it. I'm saying if you want to know what the reason was for that kamas said and one of the hostages spoke and said we the kamas were always watching the news to see if there were protests against the government and people fighting and arguing because then they knew they should be strong because the sinners of Jews hating Jews There was a Polish nobleman who converted to Judaism. He was known as the Garrett Sedica Vna. Abraham ben Abraham. Eventually he was discovered and turned over to the authorities to be killed. How did he become discovered? A Jew was angry at him because he told him to stop talking during Davening. And this Jew was so upset that he decided to rat him out to the authorities and have him killed. That's the hatred. He went up in flames because of that hatred in Clawel. Pablo Christiani was a Jew converted to Christianity. He's the one who forced the debate with the Ramban. There were Jews who were communists who persecuted other Jews in Russia. This has gone on for centuries. The hatred We read the and we read about these 10. The Torah is based on loving your neighbor as yourself. The job of the coming was to be our to go into the and make like and between Israel and these were people who were willing to sacrifice themselves for cla risk their lives to teach Torah, risk their lives to keep it alive, old men tortured to death. And the source of that death was the mak y was the sale of yose that introduced the sin that haunts us to this day. You know, Benjamin Franklin famously said, "Gentlemen, if we do not hang together, then we will surely hang separately. Senseless hatred is a luxury we cannot afford. I can't do anything about the outside world. I can't do anything about the nations of the world that hate us. And I can't do anything about the non-Torra observant community who hates us. But among ourselves, we can't have mutual respect. Don't get me wrong, like River Left said, always a reason to hate somebody. Someone double parks and locks you in and you're stuck for 10 minutes. I once had to go to work and somebody parked in front of my driveway. I couldn't get out of my driveway to go to work. for an hour. Someone cuts the line, someone does something, you know, of course it gets us angry. Of course, we're upset. But if we do not hang together, then we will hang separately. We have to stay together as if our lives depend on it. Because it does at Hari we were able to receive the Torah because we became one says we had a greater and why because our was greater because we weren't just not fighting We knew we were all going to die unless we stood together. How often do we see that? I saw it in 1967. Now all the Jewish people all over the world believed that Israel was going to be destroyed. The whole country was 9 miles wide. How much does it take to kill destroy a nation nine miles wide? The Golan Heights were considered unconquerable. Egypt had the largest air force in the Middle East. The Arab Legion was the best uh army in the entire Middle East. What could we do? Small little country. We came together because we really thought it was the end. Gentlemen, if we do not hang together, then we will surely hang separately. I hope and pray that this is the last tish of where Tishb is a tragedy. I'll be more than happy next Tishb to film a podcast from the Basa Mikdash as a co and I'll have the inside track. Yeah, we'll go in, we'll film, we'll talk about the gula. No more death, no more sorrow, no more hunger, no more pain. No more illness. Won't have to go to the hospital and hold someone's hand as they die before our eyes. We won't have to see people getting thrown out of their houses because they can't pay their bills or having their electricity shut off or having stalkers deliver food packages to their house because they don't have food to eat or see kids getting thrown out of yeshiva and wandering the streets having people kill for people and sit around and smoo and say terrible things about each other. And the RV gets up to speak and people are mumbling and making eye contact. We know more of that like one person like the says, you know what it means that if you're cutting a piece of meat with your right hand and you accidentally cut your left hand, your left hand doesn't grab the knife and cut your right hand back. because we understand that we're one person. We're one body and hashem. If we can overcome this hump and finally be a tikun for the sin that these 10 sadikim died for. Then maybe maybe this can be the last tish of tragedy. We should all have a