Never Invisible: A Tisha B'Av Message (5782)

whatever as we do every year we're going to sing a song or two to try to get us into the mood to put us where we need to be power of melody even on this sad night and said day to transition from the holiness in the high of shabbos to the sitting on the floor in the low participant means what it represents all that pain all that mourning all that grief all that tragedy all that suffering to go from that high to that low we need something to help bring us there so please join in i am [Music] is [Music] i am [Music] is [Music] is [Music] a [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] a [Music] a [Music] to a [Music] i [Music] my [Music] i am [Music] me [Music] foreign [Music] [Laughter] [Music] is [Music] i am [Music] is [Music] i is [Music] ah is [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] is [Music] i am [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] is [Music] probably sitting here low to the ground we're not meant to be manufacturing feelings we're trying to transport ourselves back in time to understand or appreciate or feel the loss of something we never knew to tap into tisha bob you don't have to go back in time you don't have to journey through history but tomorrow in the keynotes certainly we will honor and recognize and memorialize and moan and weep for the calamities throughout our millennia and our centuries unimaginable that have kept setting us back and back and wiped us out and wipe this out again and again but to feel the pain tonight and to sit in the morning to grieve for these next 24 hours you don't need to go back in time you simply need to be aware to be a feeling person and to recognize and feel the pain of today khurban is not only a description of tubate mitas which no longer have but since that time the silica since hashem withdrew since we were unworthy we misbehave and we couldn't simply be kind to one another no parent wants to be among their children when their children are at each other's throats no parent wants to live together with their family with their children when the children dismiss and marginalize and call names and isolate one another so i'll show with drew for two thousand years since then we've been paying the price [Music] of hurban claudia's straw tonight is in a state of hurban as we sit here on the floor but safe and secure nobody here is waiting to hear the sound of a siren nobody here is identifying where is the closest shelter where can i run where can i hide which child do i bring under my arm which do i grab their hands but over the last 24 hours 350 rockets have rained down on our brothers and sisters and the khurban is not only their threat that they face the khurban is not only the danger that they confront the quran is not god forbid god forbid and the injury or worse they would suffer the corbin is that as strong and as powerful and as mighty as we are as much as we have returned to our homeland as much sovereignty as we have we are so proud we have something that could blow missiles out of the sky instead of doing what's necessary to eliminate the missiles and those who shoot them all together because that's to live in a world of fear and concern for international opinion is hurban to have to apologize for your right to exist to have to build playgrounds that are bomb shelters is a state of horobun even as we return to our land and even as we've been privileged in our generation to begin to feel the estrada make no mistake tish above is still observed we're still sitting low on the ground as if hashem is reminding us that it began yesterday and continues into this day that we're still in a state of hurban our communities experienced khorbanos this past year our greater boca raton community loss of a child loss of a young man terrible diagnosis and illnesses the challenges and loneliness sure one of it's rubbed on him for seven months hasn't been found because he has to dedicate all of his attention to a young beautiful innocent pure girl who needs love and support that's horrible that's who is corbin there's a different hormone i want to speak to you about tonight it's not visible you can't see it you can't observe it can't record it but this corbin is so real it is so painful and it's felt by people who are in this room and it's more likely felt by people who couldn't even make it to get to this room momentarily we're going to begin with the words and physical distancing and physical isolation the tragedy of two years of people who are apart there are still those who are vulnerable and still those for whom it's dangerous to come back and while so much of the world including all of us in this room to a degree have moved on there are still those and we must not forget we're physically distanced and quarantined and be dude and by dad there's another type of badad it's another type of isolation of aloneness and it's not being physically separated but a feeling emotionally and spiritually alone because as the physical pandemic raged throughout the world there was another pandemic that was building it had begun already before coven before any of us knew that term or that word or took a test this other pandemic was already beginning to spread its numbers were far and wide the pandemic has certainly accelerated this other pandemic doesn't have a take-home test this other pandemic there is no vaccine for it but it too is contagious i wrote in the weekly this week my article of the pandemic of mental illness of anxiety depression of loneliness if you don't think this is a pandemic if you don't think that yeshua there are people who feel so alone i want you to think about for a moment and consider these facts 44 of high school students describe quote feeling persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness nearly half of the young people in our lives 44 percent of high school students with all the gizmos and gadgets with all the luxury and prosperity with all the comfort and affluence with all the technology that is connecting supposedly online 44 of our young people feel persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness it doesn't get much better for adults the national rate of suicidal ideation among adults has gone up every single year from 2011 and most recent study in 2022 measures nearly five percent so say five percent right it's a small number but it's five percent but do you understand what that means do you understand for every 100 people in this room five have thought that life is not worth living five are living every day with such pain that they feel it would be easier to disappear to be gone five still feels so invisible and so inconsequential and that they make no difference at all that if they were to disappear overnight nobody would notice five out of every 100 people we know have thought by taking their own lives these numbers are going up they're trending in the wrong direction because more and more people are living with shame and they're hiding in the shadows and they're feeling invisible and they're feeling bad feeling all alone in this world if you've ever had a pain toothache stomachache a migraine you had a pain for a short amount of time but it was overwhelming it consumed you people tried to talk to you and he said i can't talk my tooth is killing me my head is killing me i can't talk it's just all-encompassing and all overwhelming hashem that day 24 hours 48 hours so blessed to live in a time that we can take care of and heal the pain goes away but you know there are people that intense pain that overwhelming or encompassing pain they live with that pain chronically it never goes away there are people physically you struggle with chronic pain and that toothache or that migraine imagine your soul your soul is aching your heart is broken you don't know what's wrong and you don't know how to make it better and you can't help make it go away it is a chronic ending and yielding a pain that there is no relief it's the pain of itha yeshva a few years ago a young man i know wrote me a letter describing his experience with drugs and how he was using them to deny and escape his actual problem this real problem a brilliant young man academically accomplished an affluent family all the everything a person could physically materially want in this world but his depression was suffocating here and he wrote me the following quote for months during that year i would go to sleep every night hoping and praying i simply wouldn't wake up the next morning and every morning i would open my eyes and feel the crushing disappointment of having to endure another day moda anna seemed to be mocking me just this past week another young person sent me this text i read you his words i didn't write them i didn't make them up i didn't time them for tonight dear friends if you don't know from this count yourself among the most blessed but this is what's going on and this is the feeling that is around us this is what we are confronting this is what we have to address and tonight this is what we're sitting here mourning he wrote i feel like a hopeless case and i'm just tired of feeling this way treatment does not work for me therapy and meds don't do the job i just think that there's no way out of this darkness i'm so lonely and scared to get out of my shell i've created a force field so strong that only a worldwide pandemic can keep me from being the only one to have to stay in 24 7. boca raton florida has been almost 10 months of isolation not one person in my entire complex of the entire city of boca can i call a real friend except maybe the hospital staff i'm mentally ill it is not fixable my world is so small no one to talk to i isolate myself to get energy and i hate being alone i know people are not meant to be alone and i'm used to so used to being alone after being so for 10 years probably tired the sadness of the words i write and i wouldn't blame you for not continuing but i need to right to feel okay at this moment i am a waste of a life i am a nobody loser piece of garbage i wish i hadn't been born in this place we call earth because i don't know how to get out of it without hurting myself i just don't care about anything anymore i feel numb i watch tv all day and scroll twitter and tick tock and watch things that mean nothing but give a quick hit of dopamine i hate my life but i will keep fighting the illness and as the phrase goes never give up don't ever give up i won't give up thank you taking the time to read my course we did all we could to help this young man and to answer this call essentially for help but lest you think this is some outlier some isolated case maybe he's just one who's putting towards what so many are feeling and even those who aren't feeling it to this extreme even those who aren't in the five percent of thought of god for doing something about it so many are feeling down and out and emotionally and spiritually tired you're feeling so alone and that is such a horrible it's such a horrible how many people are in so much pain and it's such a horrible how little we have done to help them our jewish community we know how to tackle so many things so many problems we can throw money at we start programs and we organize special camps we start funds we make sure that no one with any physical disability is limited or is alone what about the people with the invisible disability people with debilitating anxiety people with depression people who feel they don't belong people who feel they're not worthy people wonder why they're here what's the point how could it be we let them sit alone so we sit on the floor tonight and tomorrow and that was not the time to fix it now is the time to cry for now was the time to mourn and grieve for the opportunities that we wasted and we missed and for this i'm speaking to and about myself not only those with debilitating illness but seniors and elderly singles those who are alone cry every morning we grieve leila but we haven't checked in often enough and haven't done enough and it created enough opportunities and connections and maybe this explains the peculiar talmud says one of the prohibitions of this day of tonight and tomorrow is that we don't greet one another we don't say shalom we don't say how are you we don't give shalom alaikum records this ain't sheila shalom it's awkward strange you see somebody tonight when you leave tomorrow come to kinos you take a phone call over the next 24 hours it doesn't change it continues through the day but it's do you know who we lost this year do you know how many rockets are raining down do you know how many lonely people there are there is no shalam alaikum today in the middle of sitting in the middle of a collective availas in the middle of mourning and grieving we couldn't be in the opportunities that we lost there is no shame there is no stronghold he writes and i can't love them they scroll for kalos rosh you give a sham you're going to tell a joke you're going to smile you're going to laugh like samus is you sit in the corner you're quiet you introspect you're you grief you're mourning you're you're in pain but the truth is i've always wondered it's a bizarre how did we get into this mess how did we get into this problem because of senescence we mistreated one another we were cold and cruel to one another we were callous to one another so how are we gonna fix it on tish above don't talk to one another it always was bizarre to me if there were day of the year that you'd think here's the when you leave everyone must say hello to everyone nobody leaves the parking lot and you greeted every person in the room but it's the opposite keep your head down don't make eye contact don't say hello no shayla why after all is in the way out come on brothers nobody ever said before so it occurred to me with this i end the normal behaviors you greet everyone but savior panama's you know what that means that you're also greeted the savior part of my host normally we're greeted normally we're acknowledged normally we're validated normally someone says hello to us it makes us feel we're a somebody normally someone gives us a bracha shall malay then but tonight and tomorrow tisha b'av it's the opposite you know why we don't give a shalom because we don't get a shalom we experience what it feels like to be an outcast to be lonely to be isolated to be estranged when you go through 24 hours and nobody looks at you and nobody says hello to you nobody asks you how are you doing nobody greets you nobody smiles at you you know what it's like after those 24 hours to live like that not for 24 hours to live a dad to live in a perpetual state of loneliness of alone so maybe maybe that's why the halacha for these 24 hours it's not just that we have to hold back from saying shalom but we also live without being said to us though we are meant to walk out of tishop of knowing what it's like to feel alone to feel ignored knowing what it's like to feel isolated to know what it's like to sit entirely alone so tonight and tomorrow we don't fix the problem we sit and we cry and we mourn and we breathe we feel such personal remorse i know i do such pain and shame for how poor we've been making sure that people of all ages we've disconnected and lost contact to struggle and suffer you feel so alone so alone statistics and data they don't lie and if we want to avert the next tragedy of those five percent or the hurban of even the 95 we don't think about or contemplate that worse but still these lives are for bonus tomorrow night right after tish above we've got to lay the cornerstone of the besan by making sure that nobody feels about that by calling or texting or emailing or knocking on the door or offering an invitation it's amazing new research was just published with an article last week what we think is so insignificant what difference will one text make what difference is one invitation one email is not gonna change their life new research shows that when someone feels alone a text message can save their life a text message does more than any drug or pharmaceutical therapy we have that in our fingertips god gave us these devices they're in our pocket what's holding us back text checking thinking about you you're alone you want to come over you want to get together how was your week how was your tisha bros 10 tisha both and to break not only the fast of food which should be a more painful fast to break the fast tomorrow night by giving for inshallah and emails and texts to light up not only locally everywhere we know to think of people who are bad who are all alone and even before you break your food fast before you take that first sip of coffee send that first message take a moment a moment in time you could mama save a life there are so many harbaunos that we can't prevent and stop but there are that we don't want to be sitting here on the floor next year crying mourning talking about there are funerals that we don't want to attend or officiate or ship a calls we don't want to pay and it's in our fingertips to avoid them by simply breaking that fast and making sure that nobody ever feels bad again if it can be found in the back of the article or in the books [Music] [Applause] a video [Music] there's is [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] us [Music] a [Music] is [Music] ll [Music] foreign [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] is oh [Music] is [Music] m [Music] just to remind you of the schedule tomorrow morning there are three chakras in yemen 6 15 and 7 45 of course kingdoms will be recited without explanation the nine o'clock chakras will be followed by an introduction and explanation of kinos who will take us all the way to the early min is a children's program from three to six we have videos films being shown throughout the afternoon year the second minute is at 7 15 between marvel where blumenthal will share words of inspiration to escort us out of tish above 8 15 is marv when the fast ends tomorrow evening at 8 40. we continue with the first king king of zakar [Music] foreign [Music] foreign um foreign [Music] i'm foreign tonight foreign