Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Birth of Moshiach and Preparation for Tisha B'Av

[Music] okay hi everybody thank thank you for coming U actually goodes you know even though uh we're entering the nine days and there's a great intensity of mourning uh number one the month of a they even say whatever it's Babylonian arig and as a name of means father and this is actually a month in which Hashem cries over our suffering and his suffering just as a father suffers when their children suffer so this is the month of a in which God is our father that will hold our hand as we go through uh the agonies and the torus of theban uh and of of course we also call it of of the Comfort this is and we know that the tells us that all of the fast days commemorating the destruction of the mikdash including Tish will be days of s and Sim days of joy not just the fast will be canceled there will actually be days of yam days of yam and even this year who knows even this year it's that there will not be a fast of the nth that we can be Z to the ban bikash and uh and that's not just the building but the revelation of God's presence the sh the restoration of Prophecy the feeling of intimacy to Hashem all of this is theoretically within our grasp it is within our potential to bring this Redemption and yat that indeed uh that should be uh that should be the case of course Schwab had a little a nice deok the in a different direction when the month ofar comes we increase our when comes we reduce our so would point out that the issue is sometimes you do more sometimes you do less but you never bring it down to zero it doesn't say right there's a a norm of you turn the SP more and you turn it a little less but Sim there has to be all the time and in fact this is an interesting paradoxal say I'm sorry the indications I'm sorry oh I'm sorry yeah yeah yeah okay let me stop in the middle of the sentence I'm sorry I didn't mention our dedications for shimel ala and mayor Ben Leora they should have is and in addition uh the year was dedicated for to andan again May the of the family supporting T May these have have have an Al okay so going back so the interesting thing is say that nobody can have prophecy prophecy does not rest on a person unless they are see you might ask so many prophecies are Prophecies of Destruction y writes the book of a talking about tragedies and and deaths and starvation and he's getting prophecies from God but you can't have prophecies unless you're B so what's going on when the navi's prophecies are so negative and so devastating and the answer is in ways we don't really fathom that yes there are tragedies and over the tragedies we cry but we also have a that runs the world and on some level whatever God does is is going to be Lova even though we don't understand it and therefore simultaneously there is the joy that brings prophecy even as the na'vi experiences in a most powerful way the devastation of must have been when he wrote otherwise he wouldn't have been able to write he wouldn't have gotten the prophetic prophetic messages so we know that the shabas before Tish the shabas always goes by the name shabas K and the shabas of vision and you know the reason is very simple because the ha Torah that is read the shabas before Tish is the first peric ofi which begins the vision of called we often name shabas after is because the the although there are many reasons but the actual basic reason is because the talks about before the day of God that is great and awesome so similarly shab but the kosim say the following idea that on shabas K one should try to have a vision in their Mind's Eye of what the world would look like with the basa mikash with the revelation of God's presence you try to picture it now of course that's a very difficult thing because we never experienced it to remember it in any way but you try to imagine use your imagination to Envision a world of mashiach a world of gula so it becomes real to you you B re used to talk about this a lot and when it becomes real to you you can then get into the mourning and the Aus of the difference between the world as it could have been and can be and will be versus the world that we actually have so this is the world of envisioning as a Prelude to beel Al to mourn remember the famous statement at the end of the mishna Inus if you mourn over Jerusalem with sincerity you will Merit although I'll come back to this later you will Merit and experience the Sim the Sim is commensurate to the Aus and therefore the idea is shab we try to imagine what we once had and what we don't have and that creates the foundation for what we will have call so in this connection I I want to share with you a very interesting thought from R do Sal you know the had the rash University who was nter more than 25 years ago but one of the great great g a little controversial in the ISA world but still a very very great a great man in fact I I you know he he used to give I mean besides his regular shorum he used to give amazing y the site of his father he would give a four or five hour Shear so I remember when I was a bucker in Israel I was I was young but uh the older guys uh would travel to New York which they were not allowed to do they would leave Yeshiva you know a you awal you know away without leave to be able to hear of salivic Shear in New York and this was a fairly serious violation for a lot of reasons leaving Yeshiva to go to New York was serious and going to a salvic was serious because he was Wu and Wu was Modern and it wasn't officially the hash of n Isel so uh whenever the guys were caught so to speak they had to go to the rosesa and kind of you know beg forgiveness for their big infraction so the story as I'm told is where rman would call them in you know give them muser about they shouldn't do this how could they do this then he would always ask him afterwards can you tell me over this year so there was so Ric in truth had a lot of hidden admirers who could not automatically in the polarized yiva World they couldn't always admit they were admirers but they were they were hidden hidden admirers he was a great great go and really a very very righteous man as well again he uh but he pointed out the following observation if we look at the AAS the mour that you have for a private individual you always find the direction starts off very very strict and it gets progressively more lenient with the passage of time so we have Shiva right I don't even leave my house Etc I don't wear shoes Etc I sit on a low bench very very then after Shiva it's a little bit more relaxed shim the 30-day period I can go out I can wear shoes but I don't go to weddings I don't do Simas and the like and for most relatives like a a sibling or a spouse even and uh even a child amazingly enough after schim there's no longer any mour only for a parent father and mother you're in the level of mourning for for a whole year but that's also much more lenient than than shoan so the whole trajectory of AOS is from that which is more severe to C to that Which is less severe right you're going from the to the cow when we look at the various an ments and that our and Jewish communities over the centuries have followed in order to commemorate the destruction of the B mikdash you find a reversal of direction we first start with the three weeks and the truth is amongst farim there's no such thing as the three weeks basically I mean they keep the fast of Tas but there are no restrictions until until the month of of okay but even among ashim our restrictions are not so bad you know we uh uh we we don't make weddings we don't listen to music again uh AC capella I'm not going to go into all the variations for some reason people seem to have more shilas about the three weeks than any other time of year can you do this can I do that can my son take music lessons my my kid take swimming lesson got you know every every configuration that goes on uh but whatever it is we have restrictions during the three weeks then we get toes the nine days and things are stricter you know no laundry you know Etc and by the way I saw someone gave me a biography of Rim kki very good biography and I was just leaping through it and I noticed two pictures I I don't know why that that really really struck me because I think we could be from these pictures very very interesting one is that uh he's sitting with his granddaughter right before the nine days and she's trying on his shirts you know you know how you're not supposed to wear freshly launder clothes so if you have a bunch of shirts or whatever it is so the custom is we put on the shirts before the 9 days even just for a minute or 3 minutes and then it's no longer freshly laundered right so it's a whole thing you got to try on your shirts that you're going to wear during the nine days because even if you wash them before Roes unless it's shabish you you don't wear freshly laundry so he had this little girl of around like seven or eight and she was wearing these big you know shirts in front of him so first of all I found that very very very interesting because I would figure B BR G would take the position that for a girl to wear a man's shirt is a Prohibition I'm I'm serious people would raise I'm sure would raise the question oh girls are not allowed to wear men's clothing so I have an I don't know what conclusion to dri but I have an interesting precedent in the photograph that you can have your grand a man can have his granddaughter try on his shirt so that was interesting another thing I found interesting was they just had a picture of a letter that Rim wrote to his future wife Bak then became kvki uh when they were engaged when they were K and kala he wrote her a letter and you can actually read the letter now that itself is very very very fascinating because there was a biography the making of a godal about rakov ketki and that book was written by one of yov sons kamki and that biography was banned and condemned and you know withdrawn from circulation part of it was because it mentioned that raren Cutler wrote a letter to his uh kala when they were engaged and that was trafe how could you possibly say such a thing but now I see I have photographic evidence that Rim kineski did the same thing so just opening the book at random I had these two pictures that I thought uh was was very very interesting okay but going back to the main point excuse the digression so you see how it's working here here the 3 weeks is fairly lenient then it gets upgraded during the N9 days and then they're actually special for the week of Tish right the week of Tish is going to start Mo shabas the actual week of Tish and then there actually is an upgrade at the time of the sud where we sit on the ground and then the crescendo of morning is Tish above itself so it's very very interesting when it comes to private Aus we go progressively more lenient with the passage of time when it goes to toward AAS over theb B mikdash we get stricter I'm sorry we get more yeah stricter and strictor and stricter culminating in tishu why is the movement of the Aus different in the two cases soic says AOS has a spiritual and psycholog iCal Dimension and the concept is different for private versus b m when God forbid a person suffers a private bereavement their life is often shattered they don't really know how they're going to go on they lost someone they loved about love someone they cared about tremendously how can I move on how can I rebuild my life how can I get past the grief not in the sense God forbid or forgetting the one you love but understanding that on some level you have to compartmentalize it so you can go on and and and live the life that God wants you to live because as long as we're here as long as we're alive God has a purpose for us to be alive so part of aot is to hold your hand so you move from Devastation to be able to re-enter the regular world so for Shiva don't even leave the house we're going to come and support you and help you in whatever way and then like somebody who has to stick their toe in a cold pool of water we want to take you to a place of normaly again you know it's interesting that in the Dynamics of morning sometimes a person doesn't want to get over their grief and there's a good reason because it's almost as if they're losing the person forever in the sense that they're they're no longer connected in that intense way they want to hold on to at least the sorrow and the grief and are they betraying the one that they love by not thinking about them always so it's a complicated Dynamic but God wants us eventually to get back into life and Aus is a beautiful deep mechanism to restore us to some level of normaly after trauma with unfortunately we have the opposite problem how many of us are so devastated over the loss of the bam mikash that we can't get out of bed in the morning this might be a new excuse for guys in Yeshiva you know he ask him why why didn't you come to ding so devastating I just didn't have the energy I was overwhelmed with grief over theban well you know you can always try an excuse but I I have a feeling uh it's probably not going to fly very well after all we don't appreciate what the B Mikes was we never experienced it how do you explain now the generation that experienced theban understood what it lost we are like people who were born blind people people who were born blind can't understand color how do you explain color to somebody who was born blind people who were born deaf how can they truly understand what music is We don't know what the basa mkes is we don't know what it is we missed we don't know what it is that we're supposed to even desire so our problem is not that the Corban is so devastating for us that we can't go on our problem is our life is fine fine the purpose this is rough salivic the purpose of mourning over the base hamikdash is not to get us out of our Devastation but to get us into a frame of mind where we hope that as we increase the external symbols of AET perhaps something will penetrate in our hearts so consequently the direction of the aot moves in opposite ways the Aus of the individual is to get you out of your grief the Aus over theik is to get you into the grief and that's why it goes and the hope would be the hope would be Theus the external behaviors of M are they awaken they arouse the pineus the inner State and that's why sometimes I mean as said said a few moments ago now everybody is kind of very very concerned about the hak details of the 3 weeks the nine days what can you do Etc and of course H is important obviously we need to know what the Hal requires of us but sometimes we get so involved in the details of these that we're not thinking of the larger picture you know they say by analogy of scham and ARB before yam Kipper was once crying and somebody asked him why are you crying he says you know I get so many questions about the technical details of the fast which of course are important but nobody asks me shilas about shua about the process that we're spiritually supposed to go through people just forget about that this is the classic example of not seeing the forest because you're focused on individual trees and individual trees are important but there's also a forest here and so instead of like looking at looking at the 3 weeks and the N9 days as an obstacle course that we have to get around and I want to do this and this and that you know my mother-in-law is coming I I don't mean to make fun that's always my mother-in-law is coming from America you know the day before Tish you know can she bring me my gifts you know people think about this and that you know uh all sorts of things uh but we're forgetting the major major point in fact it's interesting um I read the article this is such it's really very very evocative this um was from the 19th century uh a person who was a a German Jew like a Persian who went to University Etc so he describes his encounter with his Protestant Professor on Tish he writes that he was in a German University this goes back to the 1800s and he had a fir roommate they were in a dormatory of sorts two so they were keeping the FES of of but you know it was a long day it was a hot day and you know what do you do you know the hours go on and on and on there was no air conditioning in those days so they were playing a game of chess they were just playing chess Tish above afternoon because they had to while away the time till the fast was over so in the middle of their chess game there's a knock on the door and they open the door and they see one of their philosophy professors who was a Protestant a Christian and the Christian looks very somber and very sad and he says I've come to comfort you on your day of grief on your day of mourning he says may God restore the loss of your Holy Temple so you will feel the pleasure of his Divine I know how much grief you must be suffering today no the the the gentleman was writing this was trying was really saying how ashamed he was really because essentially you know he was keeping the he was keeping the fast of Tish but you know he was waiting it for to end he was just playing chess and this Protestant this Christian genuinely felt a sense of grief and a sense of empathy and the person said this Christian taught me what I should be thinking about and what I should be feeling on the ninth of UPS it's it's a great uh it's a great story like he was so sad he was so somber like he was like heartbroken over the B Mikes and he says I know what a hard difficult day this this says and he didn't mean because it was hot he says I know what you must be going through okay so that's something to uh something to to to think about in terms of the pattern of morning now it is interesting that even in the par of the week the there are some important ra to the notion of the fast the word a how how can it be a a of course is the first word of the book of Lamentations called The Book of a but by the way the name that give to the book of is actually saer hakos which is lamentation so the truth of the matter is that the excuse me the English name the English name of the book corresponds to the rinic name of the book it's called safer uh but we commonly call it m excuse me and first as a word how first appears in this para when mosu is saying when yro told him to appoint judges and we even read this this one p we even read in the tune of how can I Bear by myself Moshe says your troubles and your burdens and your quarrels so the medish comments there are three n who use the word mosu uses at a time when the Jewish people were at their epitome meaning the old generation that died and the new generation was going to enter erel yesi hundreds of years later when the Jews are getting decrepit and committing so many sins says and this is the how has the faithful city is called the faithful City become like a prostitute that is unfaithful to her husband that's God so MOS how can I Bear by myself all of your troubles how how has the city become a prostitute an Unfaithful wife and the final who actually experienced thean and he says how has the great Majestic City become desolate and isolated like a widow who has lost her husband so these are the three AAS the of mosha the of yes the in fact there's a direct line that connects all of the three it is from the of mosha that you get the of yes and it is from the yes that you get the let's look at the of Moshe mosu is describing a Jewish people quarrels who are divisive who fight who are polarized and Moser raenu expresses his own frustration how can I deal with your quarrels with your fighting with your burdens that's a Remis to sinat the hatred the Rivalry the polarization that K say at least was characteristic of why the second temple was destroyed so in a sense all of theban is rooted in the is expressed in Moshe but then we have yes who's making the point that when you betray your interpersonal Behavior your eventually that turns into rebelling against God as well you can't love God and not love God's children so turns from Theo that mosha emphasized to the bad the faithful City the city that is supposed to be faithful to God has become Unfaithful toes so Moshe is and together they lead inevitably to the third stage of actual Corban the city has been desolate God has left the city of course even in this first pk which is such a powerful PK lament of Y who experiences this Corban in his own lifetime it says she is like a widow so kazal point out ah she is like a widow but she's not a widow a Widow's husband isn't coming back at least in this world Hashem is coming back right now it looks like is is that's also a problem who's being personified here I mean different levels y as a city erel as a country Isel as a nation but they are like an Alman but they are not an Alman Mish because the husband will come back so these are the three AAS that are in the uh that are in the para um I may have mentioned last week so forgive me if I'm repeating it I I don't remember if I did uh R sadok Points out a very interesting observation and if I did mention I'm going to mention it again anyway because I want to add something new new to it R sok has an observation that we know that when it comes to P we have four of GA we have four terms of redemption this is in par inos and this is the basis upon which the enacted four cups of wine at the Seder right the four of ga will take you out I will save you I will redeem you I will take you unto me as a nation which is really mat Torah I'm sorry huh yeah I'll get to the fifth one yeah yeah but but but the four cups are based on the four Theon not of of of GAA and uh we commemorate each L of GAA now in addition there is a fifth Lon after the four show notes of GAA it says I will bring you to the land that I promised Abraham Y and yov and indeed there is rabby Tarone there is one opinion in the mishna that says you're supposed to have five cups and even though we don't posin like that the Mahal is great A person as the moral actually says that it's not an obligation but it's better to have five cups at the Seder and then there's a huge discussion if you have five cups when do you drink it I mean there are like uh 50 different opinions as to if you go with the how do you position iter wrote a huge brilliant essay going through all of the variations of Kishi but nevertheless the is very clear we do not drink the fifth cup and why don't we drink a fifth cup at least we're not to because the fifth cup is a reference to the Messianic Redemption it has not yet taken place and that is why ashkenazim at least far not necessarily have the custom of a Leo's cup which is a cup of wine that's on the Seder table but we don't drink and the reason is because Lei is going to announce the coming of mashia and therefore this is a cup that we're going to drink when elaho comes but we're not going to drink until eloho comes but it's on the table to remind us of Elon that's why indeed although some people pour the coast of at even at the beginning of the Seder but the best way of doing it is at the point after benching when you're going to open the door to welcome a leoi that and that's when you pour the fourth cup that would also be when you pour the fifth Cup in honor of AO hanavi contrary to what generations of parents have told their children I don't think there's any source that a Leo drinks from the cup you know you know the old story I'm sure either you've done it or your parents did it that they knock over some of the cup so some wine spills out oh see aloi drank some of the wine uh there is a Mard that aloi visits us the night of the Seder I don't think there's a mord that he actually drinks wine after with all that traveling it wouldn't uh wouldn't be that that good to uh to to drink that much so we do have in other words the four leonos of GAA plus the fifth line that's connected to mashia so ROK says we have like like a photographic negative if you remember that the oldfashioned photographic negatives we have kind of an opposite pattern because we have five stages with respect to the we have the 17th of thas which should have been a happy day think about it what would the 17th of Thomas have been it was the day that mosha rabenu came down with the that would have been a day of mat Tor essentially but because of the golden it became a day of tragedy and the like so he says sh corresponds to the first Lan of redemption the three weeks are 234 they correspond to the other languages of redemption and the ninth of a corresponds to the Messianic Redemption the fifth L Tish is conned the fifth l of redemption so he draws a parallel the four of and equal the three weeks and the nth of the ninth of is the fifth l so what does mean after all I mean they're quite literally opposites Redemption is bringing us closer and closer to where it's Israel close to GAA culminating in mashia and these leonos bring us further and further and further and further away so in what way can you correlate the stages of redemption to the 17th of tamas the three weeks and the n9th of and the answer is there's something very very profound here there are times where we feel the closeness to God those are the the joy of connection to God but there are times in which we feel how distant we are how far we are from Hashem but what's interesting is there's a certain closeness to God that you get specifically when you become aware of how far you are from aadesh was it Shakespeare that said absence makes the heart grow fonder and as I realize how distant I I am from Hashem my heart Wells up with a passion to be connected how much I miss that connection and rest assured that whatever it is we feeles multiply it by infinity and then paradoxically the further and further and further we get from Hashem the closer we are because the yearning is so powerful so indescribable you know uh rutner once said when rautner came to erel towards the end of his life somebody once asked him is there anything that he missed about little bit of a question but someone asked what do you miss about he said I do miss something about I miss the yearning to be in ER what does that mean I think you know many of us can identify with this you know you're in Kitz and you dream and you yearn for the day that you'll be able to come to this land and live in this land and connect to the kadosa and that's a dream that sustains you it's a dream that may even obsess you you think about it day and night and then you come and you know there are frustrations in real life you know I always uh I don't ease Dr intentionally but you know I'm the the train I'm on the train a lot and you know I hear a lot of tourists talking you know find people saying oh we're going to go to the cotel and then we we to this great Thai restaurant you know it's going to be wonderful and it's like you know fun after fun after fun after fun okay you're coming here you know you might as well enjoy it okay that's that's great but you know real life is not always so much fun and bacy here is no msia so what happens is a person can take even aous for granted the person stops appreciating Rutter's point was sometimes the yearning of wanting to be here creates a stronger connection than actually being here so in a sense from sadok says the three weeks and tiab that make us focus on our distance from God can give us such a yearning that and and Hashem has even more so much more so infinitely more so that we're really connected we're connected by our difference you I once read something again just appropo of nothing but it was an image that struck me a lot um this is from the writings of Anne Rand again this may be the first time I I've ever and this is not this is not her famous book Atlas Shrug and all that this is from a much earlier book that she wrote about communist Russia because she came from Russia and she was a part of her philosophy as as it was was because she had a an intense hatred of of what of Communism and that led her to all sorts of things so she writes about like a a you know a man and a woman who are deeply deeply connected to each other but because they were engaged in count you know revolutionary activity against the Communists they were sentenced to Siberia for the rest of their lives and They begged and they pleaded we could could we be at least and be in the same because men and women were in the same prison and the Russ said no you're going to be 500 miles apart was M it wouldn't have hurt anybody just let them be together says no so they're on the train to Siberia where they're going to be separated for the rest of their lives and you could imagine the the Heartbreak of that so the woman who was more optimistic she always tried to cheer up her lover who was subject to depression she said you know every night let's agree to look at the moon at the same time and when we look at the Moon we'll think of each other and that way we'll be connected even though we're 500 miles apart because we're both looking at the moon at the same time um I don't know say what you might about an R generally I I I always found that a very beautiful powerful image that we can be connected even though no weere apart and thisav is kind of our relationship to God in the times of Corbin and gas we're both looking at the same thing the restoration of that M which for whatever reason we're not ready for yet but we have the same thought we and Hashem and that creates an enormous sense of closeness of togetherness and therefore R sok's point is very profound the three weeks culminating in Tisha are the stages of gula that bring us close to God and an analogy that people give is that there's a difference if you're walking along a path and you're walking from a certain point there's a distinction if you're walking uh in a linear way or you're walking in a circular way when you're walking a straight line then indeed the further you get from the point the further you are but when you're walking along a circular path so the further away you get from a point the closer you get to it on the other side see I'm walking in a circle so the Mah of galut is a circular path rather than a linear one the further away we get from God the closer we're getting on the other side and that is the meaning of the statement that's Masia is born on Tish you know it's very Tish in some ways is a bit of a strange holiday saddest day of the year okay on the other hand you know we don't say because you don't say Tan on festive days y calls it a moed which means a holiday although Mo means a designated time but it's the same word for a we don't say aano because it's a y so the question is well what is it sad day or happy day and the answer is well mashia is born onsh so the maral of Prague says that this does not have to mean that the actual birthday of mashia will be on Tish mashia can be born any day of the week obviously that that must be the kabad position as well because re's birthday was on ti so what does it of course it's interesting maral was the alter re's great great great grandfather so it's interesting the maral was a pre he was before but butus thead line descends directly from maral of PR marala prag says that what does it mean mashia is born on Tish not that that's his birthday but the spiritual coak that brings much Mia into the world is the depth of our mourning and a anti we bring mhia into the World by the depths of our yearning and the depths of our desire to bring gaula into the world right that's the co of our mourning of our AAS and and and and the like excuse me so in that connection I want to share with you a a beautiful vort from the sdon me I quoted before but I deliberately mistranslated the famous M kazal which is a mishna at the end of anyone who Mourns over Jerusalem so the way it's normally translated and this is the way I translated it before is Will Merit and will see the joy of right if you mourn over Hashem will give you the of seeing and experiencing the comfort and that is how it's always translated and if I looked at get the Arts grow I'm sure that's how they translate it but theam sopur points out thank you theam s points out that is actually not grammatical because if it would have meant anyone who Mourns over you will experience Redemption it should have used a future tense it should have said call Will Merit and see but it doesn't say it doesn't use a it does not use a future tense it uses a line HOV anyone who Mourns over jeruslem experiences and sees the joy that means even while you're mourning you may ask a question well how that doesn't make sense I understand the promise that if I mourn over Jerusalem I will will see the rebuilding of yush but how can I see the rebuilding when I'm mourning over yush so here's what theer says if you remember when Yosef was sold by the brothers and the brothers had to come up with some excuse so they basically took yosef's coat and they tore it and they dipped it in the blood of a goat and they said oh this is yosef's blood Yosef was killed by a wild animal in other words they told yakob that Yosef is dead so the PK says Yakov could not be comforted Yakov could not be comforted now why could Yakov not be comforted so Rashi brings a kazal that even though Hashem put into the world a phenomenon that at some point even if we suffer the most devastating Lo we are usually able to be comforted in the sense of going on with life that's God's gift to us that time is a great healer again it doesn't mean you forget but as I said before there is a process in grief that might be called compartmentalization that in in your mind it's always there but there are other things in your mind as well you go on but that's only true when someone is dead when someone's alive now again even though you didn't know that even if yakob thought he was dead but the Nish knew that closure that acceptance doesn't work when the person's alive it only the person's dead right this is the this is what Rashi means when he says we can't receive Comfort on someone that's alive and that's why you'll often find you'll often when there's missing children or whatever it is uh until the parents get some confirmation of death they can't go on once they get confirmation of death of course it's tragic but that gives them the what you called closure to be able to move on so here's what theam s says the Bas of mikdash has been destroyed for so many years a person might conclude hey it hasn't been built in uh almost 2,000 years then it's probably never going to be rebuilt person gives up hope but if the idea of redemption were dead if it is a dead idea I would get over it it wouldn't bother me anymore if I'm mourning over the Corban if I'm still crying over theban that means Redemption is still alive because if Redemption wouldn't be alive I wouldn't be crying over it I would have the gazer that time heals all wounds so therefore says the if you're mourning over Jerusalem in the very process of that mourning you're experiencing a joy because you know H the B mikdash is still alive because if it's dead I would have gotten over it and therefore Z you you you experience the Redemption in the very very process of your mour right this is what the the says and that is why mashia is born on the day of Tish there's a beautiful Min uh it's an old I'm not sure how many do it but the old min was the afternoon of Tish the women would clean the house they would sweep the stone floors in anticipation of the coming of mashia they would make their homes ready for the coming of mashiah by the way my uh my neighbor is uh re Mor maras many of you probably know the maras was were are a famous family unfortunately Rabon Maas was was NIS a few years ago uh but still um Mori and his children still continue her MRA of certainly a scores of guests sometimes over 100 but you know they have guests like all the time the tremendous legendary one of the great in the world I would say uh but um the that many people don't keep but you should keep that you leave a part of your wall on unpainted uh as a a commemoration of thean so in the's house they have a large area that's unpainted but on the floor they have a can of paint and a brush that they keep next to that wall to say listen we are ready to paint this you know any day any moment that the basic make this come so that's the combination of the AAS over thean but also the amuna Sha that AES is going to bring the Redemption and even on we express that we don't say we don't say a the meaning of cleaning the house in honor of the honor of Mia you know there's another old Min uh that people have uh I think people still do it um and this is a very old Min I'll give you the origin of it in which they walk around the walls of the the old city now on top on the ramp Parts I don't think you can go all the way around un Le I haven't done it for many many years but I I don't think it it's a 360° thing uh but people on the ground level can literally walk around uh the entire circumference of the old city now this is actually a very very old minok and this dates from the aftermath of the hadrianic persecutions if you remember the second temple was destroyed let's say the year 70 between 68 and 70 70 is the most common common date but then around 60 years later we had the Barba Revolt which was a second attempt to fight the Romans and the Barba Revolt was originally very successful uh the spiritual leader of the bar Revolt was none other than the great rabi Akiva who actually thought that Bara was mashia and how we understand that is a very difficult issue was Raba wrong was Bara potentially a mashiah but the generation wasn't deserving of it was he a false mashiach or was he a failed mashiah there are many many different issues here which maybe we'll leave for another time there is Arch there is archaeological evidence that under RAB aka's leadership they began to lay the foundations of a third B mes on the harab there's some indicators of a foundation that was laid and Barba was in fact Bara was not his name his name was Shimon Ben kusba or Shimon Ben K actually RAB AA called him Bara son of a star because mashia is described as a star coming from heaven and it's interesting why he's called Ben Kusa because Kua come comes from kazav false lying disappointment so other words his real name was Shimon Ben kba kba which is just the name kusba rabi AKA called him bar kba and after that Revolution failed they called him bariva the disappointment so it's kba kba Kiva and event so initially he was very very successful uh 900 Jewish settlements were liberated from Romans uh coins were minted the famous Bara coins that you can get not for not that much money uh as I said they began to lay the foundation of a third Temple but eventually the Vara Revolt was crushed mercilessly in betar and that also occurred on the nth of in the year 135 so 65 years after theban was the destruction of betar and that's one of the sorus of Tish the destruction of BET now that's not modern day beter but betar and if you look at the numbers in the gamar which are truly astronomical and almost certainly an exaggeration as say the destruction of beter was much more devastating than even theb bikash in terms of loss of life in terms of Destruction but more than even the loss of life the anti-religious laws of the Romans were primarily the aftermath of bar meaning after theik the Romans didn't care if Jews kept MIT they could learn Torah they could keep chabas there's no bikash as bad as that is but hadrien after Barba decided he could no longer be Mr nce guy and at that point he was absolutely determined to break the Jewish rebellion and all of the stories about RAB AA being tortured to death and the stories of the great rabbis who were killed because they were teaching Torah that's after bar more than after the bikes so the thing was that one of the things hadrien did was hadrien did not allow Jews to live in the city of Jerusalem Jerusalem was dedicated as a temple to Jupiter it was named Alia capitalina and for more than 200 years more than 200 years getting into the antine Empire y was uden no Jew was allowed in Jerusalem at various times Christians were allowed depending on whether the emperor was friendly to Christianity or not Jews were not allowed to live in Jerusalem the whole area was made into a Roman Temple once a year Adrian gave permission to Jews to walk around the city from the out side on the ninth of of to kind of rub salt in their wounds and from then that's a very old Min this dates from after the bar R there was a custom for for Pious men and women to circle the city of yusim on the nth of but instead of it being the Hadrian meaning of rubbing salt in your wounds it's a fulfillment of the vers into H him walk around Zion and Surround it so you will experience the rebuilding of the of of the city right so hadrien had one particular meaning we do the same thing but we do it uh for a different for a different reason our cavana is very very different um soem um we hope that as I said at the very beginning that the Tish should indeed even this year be a day of if we are not then may it indeed be the last Tish that will be day of fast now they tell the story about a who every year he would go to a store and buy a Kos he would buy a new Kos every year so the M Farm said him listen I'm I'm happy to sell you another book every year but now every year you're buying the same book like why why are you buying a kenos this year you bought it last year and you bought one the year before so he said what are you talking about I buy kenos I'm always sure that this is the last year so right after Tish I put my kenos and Sheamus I don't keep it ifom we're still fasting I have to buy a new one I don't keep my Kos around because I have AA I'm never going to use it again that all of our kenos will go into Sheamus [Music] here