Rabbi Tomar Zino | CHAZAQ Tisha B'Av Marathon

I want to thank Rabbi Gavriel and Chazak for making uh this event. Sadly, we are here again sitting on the floor. But, we through this that we'll speak about in a minute. From the ashes, we will get up. At chatzos today, we will sit on chairs. Our sages teach us Mashiach is born on Tisha B'Av. It's a very, very sad day. We mourn, but b'ezrat Hashem, our mourning will turn into yearning. I want to discuss what the feeling of what today should be moving into all the wonderful speeches we have today. We're not mourning just our Temple. It's not just a building. It's not just a fancy shul that burnt. It's a state of being that we were with Hashem and the Shechinah. This began with the sin of the spies, one of the most famous stories. I don't want to get into the details of the story that we know very so very well. But, I want to get into one feeling and one thought that we can take away. The Jews saw miracles of Hashem. The splitting of the sea, the 10 plagues, the manna. And then 10 Jews complained and said, "But, it's true, Rabbi. It's true." That's what everybody says. "It's true, Rabbi. What did I say wrong? It's true. Proud of the governor. And those people believed them. The Jews believed them. And Tisha B'Av was already destined to become from that day. I'm missing me again explains a lot of shalom. That that means on that day a person had a wonderful life. He had a wonderful set up set up for him. But he threw it all away because he let someone's negative idea come into his mind. Hashem promised that it's a land flowing with milk and honey. And yet somehow they understood differently. Understood that we're going to fail. It's not going to be a good place for us. The opposite the midrash says they saw funerals there every second. And that was for their benefit so they shouldn't get caught as spies. Everybody was busy with funerals and they looked at it oh you see this is a land that buries its inhabitants. This is a horrible place to live. So they interpreted something that was for their benefit as something that's negative. And that happens to us in so many different ways. That Hashem makes us with a certain last name. Hashem makes us with a certain amount of wealth. Hashem makes us with a certain amount of skill, height, weight. And we can all take these things and say wow. Hashem put me in this situation to be successful. He commanded me to be successful. I'm going to be successful. That's what Hashem told me to do. The land will be flowing with milk and honey. And some people come and say no. You're only going to get married if you're 6'2 you know, 175 lbs. 200 205 lbs. If you anything above that, so then yeah, you're not going to make it, buddy. Sorry. You're only going to get married if you know, you you you you have a nice degree from college. Yeah, then then you'll be able to find somebody. You're only going to be successful in business if you're in this field, that field. To go and do that, you're not going to be making it. Oh, you're only going to be a kham if your last name is from this and you grew up in Yeshiva all your life and and we tell each other all these kind of things saying how it has to be only like this and then you'll be successful. You know what that breeds? And and and that's that's just from people talking. Imagine from what we see and consume from social media. How we have to be in this cookie-cutter mold. You have to look like everybody else and be wearing what everybody else is wearing. You have to be a certain way. This pressure, social pressure. What that does to a person and how it kills his emunah. How a person thought I could make it and then he sees everybody else is not like him. And he's like, well, the odds are and maybe it's not going to work out for me. I don't know. And you take if you take that feeling even deeper if you start identifying with that feeling even harder to the point where a person can become depressed. How a person I can know somebody who's 35 years old sitting in his basement with no job. He got divorced, so he's not married. And every day I have to speak to him about, "Rabbi, I'm contemplating taking my life. What's the point of living already?" You can you can get to the point where the person's like "Why am I doing all these mitzvahs? What what what is the point? Maybe I should throw it all away. Maybe maybe all I'm buying is not worth it, God forbid." How could it be that a person come to such a point? You have such a beautiful life. What do you mean? Hashem's commanded you to be successful and he put you in this situation, that means you could be. Why don't you believe that? Because some people told you not like that? That's the Khurban Bayit HaMiqdash. The Khurban Bayit HaMiqdash is not the Romans conquered. It's not Oh, we failed in military school. Oh, that's why we lost. We failed in believing in ourselves and we let a few people tell us that we're no good. And that feeling manifested itself so strongly to where Hashem says, you lost yourself. I I cannot have a temple with you. I cannot have a home with you. We need to go into galut. And through the galut, there's two types of people. There's a person who his world breaks. He hits a brick wall. He reevaluates himself. And he strengthens himself. He starts himself over again. A person lost his business. He picks himself up. He says, I'm going to try again. Which happens to be most millionaires are like that. There's a person who was dating and he he found the one finally after many, many dates, after many going out with many girls, and he's happily married. And he's successful and he has a beautiful family. There's a guy who was trying to do teshuvah. He had ups and his downs and his ups and his downs. He tried this yeshiva, that yeshiva, this rabbi, that rabbi, this gemara, that mussar, this mishnah. Till finally, baruch Hashem, you see, he's a person who knows how to spread Torah like no other and people flock to him and people connect to him because of his ups and downs. And he's so very successful. But then there's the people we cry about on Tisha B'Av. The other type of people. The type of people who instead of hitting the brick wall and their life falls apart a little bit, they said, you see, my friends were right. I'm always going to be a failure. It's true. I wouldn't be I wasn't going to be successful. Look, you see where I am." And he takes himself deeper and deeper and deeper. God forbid he starts taking drugs. God forbid he starts hanging out with the wrong group. God forbid he says Mali Hayim, what's the point of living such a life? And all of that stemmed from what? Learning to accept what people said about you and you say about yourself. Maybe I'm not going to be successful. Maybe this is not for me. And for them we cry on Tisha B'Av. For this state of mind we cry on Tisha B'Av. But the crying is not supposed to be just crying. The result says we get up and we sit on chairs at 1:01 p.m. today. We have a teaching that Mashiach will be born today. How could it be? I thought I thought Tisha B'Av was all about crying. I thought it's only sadness. The Sahara wants us to be sad and depressed. Sadness that doesn't spur something greater is meaningless. There's no point of us sitting here and crying if it doesn't mean we're going to change. As the Rambam says, what's the point of the fast? For it to get our attention and do Teshuvah. There's no point. It's only yet Sahara. You know that guy who gets depressed? He goes in his basement. He watches his Netflix show eating cheese balls depressed. And then what? That helped him? If he stays there till the end of time saying this is who I am, what I am, depressed. That's going to That's That's good. We said it's good that you cried. No. But maybe if he felt that bottom and he said, I can't live like this anymore. I have to do something about it. Then maybe it was worth it to go through that low. We are all doing that today. Yes, we cry. Yes, it's very sad for all those people that we know that are far from Hashem. They have a wonderful life and they don't realize it. They're They're They're making wrong choices. Later they will realize it, but we pray for them to enter realize those wrong choices are wrong choices. And we say that if Hashem and the temple were here, we would be able to take them to the Beta Migdash and say look here. Look what it Look what happens here. The Midrash says the Romans came to the temple. They were scared. It was the first time they were they were coming to such a building where the Shekinah was. They were scared something is going to happen to them. They grabbed the Jew named Yosef Mashita. They told him, "Go inside and bring us an artifact from the temple." He went inside. He wasn't such a religious Jew. He went inside. He brought them the menorah. They said, "No, no, this is too big. We don't want to take that Take it back. Send it back. But give it back." He said to go Go back inside and get us something else. He said, "No, I'm not going." "We're going to torture you or we're going to kill you if you don't go back inside." He says, "I'm not going back inside." The sages ask, "Why didn't he go back inside? I understand he went inside to get the menorah. Well, so go back inside a second time. What's the big deal? Am I a sh?" It's different, says the sages, it's different. The first time he never went inside. The second he went inside, he had no doubts there is Hashem. They had no doubts that the Torah is true. He said, "I'm not I'm willing to die than to go back and do a sin against Hashem." Imagine we would take all of our loved ones, those who are far from Hashem, take ourselves, and in every matter in our life that we're far from Hashem we need to work on. We would go to the Bet Hamikdash, we would see its glory, its miracles, it would go away in a second all our doubts. We would be no doubt about Hashem doing the right thing. We have the most strongest Emunah, stronger than those softas who live by the Kotel in Israel. We would have such a strong Emunah. We have no doubt I'm going to do the right thing and Hashem's going to bless me. And we'd be able to give that to all our friends and brothers and sisters who are lost. Cuz the hardest thing today to give is understanding. Sometimes we argue and we we tell them till we're blue in the face and they don't get it. Only pon my it. And the Temple was that beacon where you give us that source of life where we able to explain to everybody not even in the brain, even in the heart. That's what we're mourning for today. But this mourning will turn into Mashiach. How? We have to turn this mourning into yearning. What does it mean to yearn? It's to really really want something. If a person really really wants success in life, just like we said all our our problems stems from the lack of a Temple, all of our successes will come when the Temple's here. Because a person who mourns on Tisha B'Av mourns how we don't believe in ourselves, how we don't believe that Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants us to be successful and blesses us to be successful. Once we start doing that, then they'll be able to put our rock, be able to say I put my stone for the Temple, for the building of the Bet Hamikdash because it starts being built in Shamayim first. And then it comes down as Bet Hamikdash Hashlishi. It's interesting how the Jews were forgiven for the sin of the golden calf. Moshe Rabbeinu interceded on our behalf. But here we are still doing Tisha B'Av ever since the sin of the spies. Why didn't Hashem forgive us for that one? Why didn't Hashem say, "I'll let it go. I'll I'm Moshe Rabbeinu will intercede on our behalf and he'll forgive us." Our sages teach us that Yom Kippur is right around the corner also. That's the day where we got forgiven for the golden calf. Hashem says, "You made a mistake? No problem. I'll forgive you." People look at it and sometimes sadly like a business transaction. "Oh, I did it wrong here. I'm sorry. Okay, everything's okay. We can move on." But Tisha B'Av, it's not going to move on just because you did a business transaction. You asked for forgiveness. Tisha B'Av, you have to change the way you carry yourself, the feeling you have inside your heart. Are you a person who's loving life and feeling that every day I wake up is another day where Hashem gives me another chance to be successful and I believe I will? Or do you live your life like Rabbi Nachman says, like exile? Like in galut where you don't know if this is what you want or not. You don't know if you is did I make the right choice? I'm just going through the flow. I guess I'm going here. I guess I'm going there. This is what life gave me, I guess. Where a person has doubts, a person's confused, a person doesn't feel happy, doesn't feel right. It all stems from our emunah. So, today, as Tisha B'Av, we have to ask ourselves, "Did I put my rock? Did I put my stone for the temple? Did I give my brick?" What's our brick? Do I believe that Hashem will make me successful no matter what situation I'm in? Do I believe that God is Baruch Hu put me with all my obstacles and all my hardships in my life? How many people complain to me, "Rabbi, if only my last name was this name. If only I had money like this family. If only I was tall like him. If only I was spoke English like him. If only I was then I would have been happy in life. That's this That's a sign. That's a clear sign we're in exile. When a person realizes that made you like this on purpose. There's a certain you're supposed to accomplish exactly the reason and the way he made you for to accomplish that. That's exactly when we fix the sin of the spies. So, next time you hear somebody complaining. Next time you hear yourself complaining about yourself. If you're ready to put the in you're going to be able to accomplish anything. Because who told us the land of milk flowing milk and honey is there. Don't let the naysayers confuse you. Don't let the confuse you. Don't let the social media put pressure on you thinking you're only going to be happy if you're a certain way. You're only going to be successful in a certain way. Cuz that when you allow that that brings in another year of sitting on the floor. Another year of hearing this person overdose. Another year of hearing that couple getting divorced. Another year of hearing the most horrible tragedies we know. And it all started when people stopped believing in themselves. Stopped believing in that they can be happy and successful. Because we know our lives are full of miracles. And we need to start really acting and believing like it. With this sage is teaching in the time of it we should be here that this we sit today and cry and sit on the floor and and hear these stirring speeches will fulfill whoever sees the one and whoever mourns for the one will be to see the building of the building of the joy of the building of the building of cook says I love you Shalom It's not enough That you will see the building You will see the joy of the rebuilding only those who cried today Will realize what they're missing out on and they will see when the temple will be rebuilt they will feel the feel the joy they will feel how the temple was restored for them in their life they will feel that I realize what it means the time of the thank you