Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Why Tu B'Av is the Happiest Day of the Year

[Music] okay everybody thank you for coming and uh tonight's share is a reform sponsored by for a force leima for bryan and yehuda malka may they have refused israel and in addition for again we very much appreciate all of the sponsorships ibana wants to thank those who already contributed to the charity drive raising funds for distribution for families in need for the upcoming upcoming yomtovim 100 of the money goes directly to the recipients uh so far uh the drive has only reached 10 percent of the goal there's still plenty of time hashem and those wishing to participate can contribute to the link in the youtube description box or go directly to the website and we're entering of course the yamim narayan season and uh the mantra of this takufa is truvat filaud stalker mavira nisrollah zera repentance and prayer and charity take away the evil decrees so it's certainly a time that we should focus on that stucco for those that are in need so i thought today i would depart from the usual format of talking about the parsha because we do have a very important day coming up thursday night and friday it is the 15th of and the mishnah tells us that it is the happiest day of the year the mission says the two happiest days of the jewish year are yom kippur and kamisha asar biaf now the mishnah does not say why and the gemara entinus explains this warren tina says first of all yom kippur is obviously a happy day that itself is worthy of no jim kipper is for sure a happy day that's very precious we don't always think of it that way we think about it of a day of you know all sorts of deprivations and i can't eat and i can't sleep and you know i got to be in show all day and it's hot and then whatever it is my back is hurting by the end of the day but yom kippur is joyous it is sublime day of forgiveness reconciliation one as it were has a soul washing a soul cleansing in fact that people ask me sometimes you know is it appropriate to wish people ate some color should you have an easy fest now you might say well no you're supposed to have a heart fat supposed to suffer but i thought once you know i don't know for sure that maybe there's a difference between tish above and yom kippur you know tish above is about suffering it's about deprivation it's about grieving so tissue if you don't wish somebody at some cow have a hard fast okay meaningful fast but okay but yom kippur maybe the point is very different the fasting of yom kippur is not about suffering the fasting of yom kippur is about trans transcendence like i don't care about food i'm with god i don't need all that other stuff and that's why yum kippur part of the point is not to feel hungry in fact one might even say you know you'll notice that the pseudomofsecus before yom kippur is supposed to be a festive meal before tishberg this year was different because it was shabbos before tish above pseudomap sequence is very simple you dip your bread in ashes or matzah and you have a hard-boiled egg because the point might be that on yom kippur we don't want you to be hungry we want you to kind of not be bothered with food you've transcended yourself you've gone beyond physical limitations by the way derek another reason why you have to have a fancy yum kipper meal is because yum kipper is a yamcha it's a holiday and holidays require a soda but never yom kippur is a fast day i can't make it soon on yom kippur so it's brought down the sauda of erabium kipper is the yum tif meal of yom kippur the yumpta meal that's why it could be with a tablecloth and you know like a yum just meal amish in fact i've even heard i've never seen that some people have a minute that they actually set the table on yum kipper i don't just mean a tablecloth but they actually put dishes cutlery goblets without any food because they want to set the table like a yum chef meal even though they're not going to have a yumptif meal on yom kippur itself so yum kipper is a joyous day in fact even the english word i'm not sure if this is intentional i think rabbi sax lover showman pointed it out you take the word atonement and you divide it into three words it's really great at one meant you're at one with god i don't know if it's intentional but it's kind of a it's almost like a hebrew russia you would make on lashana kodesh you know we normally don't make it in english but here you have a dresha atonement is being won with that so that's beautiful and that's a thought we should keep in mind yom kippur is fundamentally a happy joyous day but the gemara asks what's so special about the 15th of why is the 15th above such a great day now the mishna describes a custom that existed during the 15th above those of you that may remember american comics although i think all of you are too young for it but there used to be a comic a little at lil abner which had a day called sadie hawkins day where the women would chase after the men and choose their husbands well to be of wasn't exactly that but it was somewhat similar the women would dress up but not in fancy garments everybody borrowed the same simple white garments not too embarrassed not to create income differences and they would be like dancing and the men would kind of choose who they'd want to marry i think to myself sometimes how different uh the judaism of ghazal was from today's religious life i mean imagine you know people talk about there being a shidduch crisis so let's imagine you have a creative shotgun that would say i have the answer to the of crisis all the women should gather it on soccer whatever whatever it would be and the men should sit around watching them and the men should choose whichever woman appeals most to them that would be great i can assure you this shot can be put in haram uh he would be blacklisted from every ishiiva no yeshiva would have anything to do with him he would be called crazy there would be wall posters saying what a preacher says has happened in israel that we've come to such a level and yes and yet and yet this is exactly what the mishnah says happened this is what was done this was the judaism of the authentic masters of the messora of torisha balpack it's an interesting question you can ask what happened exactly what exactly happens that were so stricter now the truth of the matter is there are there are good reasons because the truth of the matter is that when you lived in a claudia israel that was fundamentally modest and sanua and marriage was the shame shamayim then you can have such things when you live in a generation that is hypersexual in which all the boundaries of modesty and reticence are thrown out the window in which we're exposed to uh unrestrained uh licentiousness and sexuality every single minute of the day in every bus in every street corner so sometimes there has to be a circle the wagons mentality in which we become a little stricter than we were not to be poisoned by the opposite extreme that's out there so it is true it is true there is no question that we are much much more stricter you can even say prudish we want to use that word but that's because the generation is so much inferior in all of those ways again it's an interesting thing one could discuss for another time but b doesn't matter this is the ceremony that was associated with the 15th ave it was a great day for marriages choosing but that doesn't explain why it became that way in other words what was it about today that it made it that marriage thing so the gemara gives no fewer than six reasons possibly seven depending how you interpret why the fifteenth above is such a special day so i just wanna go over the reasons so we should have a sense of all the different reasons and how they would apply reason number one is actually the most complicated because there's a big much locus we've shown him how to interpret it the gemara in tinus is very oblique and very obscure it simply says on the 15th of four words posco bow may say midborn the deaths of the desert ceased on the 15th of the deaths of the door hamidbur stopped what's going on so rashi explains this passage of the bubbly by reference to the talmud you show me this is actually a very interesting idea that sometimes you understand the babli only by looking at the talmud you show me which was earlier and the talmud jewish army says the following we we know on the ninth of that's the story of the spies right the spies came back on the eighth above and they gave a negative report and the night of the ninth above that night everybody cried not the woman the women actually were not nichole they had a muna just as they they were not nichol in the faith but the men were all niksha except for the tribe of leaving they were not according to rashi and they cried and they said we don't have faith in hashem he's going to betray us and we're going to lose and we're going to be decimated and hashem decreed number one that that night would become the night of eternal mourning until mashiach comes but the immediate short term was hashem made a gazera that this generation would wander in the desert for a total of 40 years and they would die in the desert and only the people that were under 20. in other words the gezeira was and anybody that was 20 years old at the time of the exodus would die over the 40 years and the only people the only men that would survive besides shavit levy are you sure and callief anyone that was born in the desert and anyone that was under 20 at the time of the exodus but anyone that was 20 died now that's in the hamish but to tell me you shall me takes a little further nobody died before the age of 60. now you see how it works if you're wandering in the desert for 40 years and the gazer is on anybody that's 20 so that that actually means that the people who were just 20 years old they died in the last year in other words the way it worked that you saw me describes in a very vivid way every year of the 40 years the entire generation dug mass graves or dug graves for themselves they slept in their graves the night of tishomoth i'm not really sure if they slept that night but they went into the graves anyone who reached their 60th birthday that preceding year did not wake up the next morning anyone who was not yet 60 did wake up so they kind of knew that's what's going to happen but they still had to experience a symbolic death now that means i'm working with approximate numbers and averaging you had a population of 600 000 people that had to die over a 40-year period and if you divide it by 40 that that's approximately 15 000 people died every year now that's an approximation because obviously people had different birthdays etc but that's the idea the idea is everybody died the year that they reached 60 over a 40-year period now lemai said this is much more complicated than it appears simply because they didn't have 40 tisha buffs from the caitanya marathon the miraglum occurred a year and a half after yazis withdrawing they actually only had 38 tisha buffs so i've been working on this problem for around 40 years i have not been able to completely resolve the arithmetic here uh there's something that's i'm missing but be it as may the general picture is fairly clear everybody dug their grave tissue above night they slept in their grave anyone nobody died before the age of 60. but you did die if it was uh you had reached 60 in the preceding preceding year now so it turns out in year 40 of the desert the last tish above in the desert there would be approximately fifteen thousand people left of the old generation they dug their graves tishaba of night expecting of course that since they had reached 60 they would die lo and behold the next morning they opened their eyes and they were alive what happened how could they be alive so they thought maybe we made a mistake in the date maybe it wasn't the ninth above maybe it was the eighth above so they slept in their graves the next night the next night the next night the next night the next night until they saw on the 15th a full moon because on the 15th of the month you see a full moon so then they realized wow the ninth above passed by and we didn't die so which was the so so what happened so according to uh one opinion in total hashem granted an amnesty on the last 15 000 people that they did not die in the midburg and when did they realize that hashem gave them that great miracle and that great hazard it was on the 15th of us now this is quite astounding because it seems this understanding of pascubo may say midbar seems to contradict the hamish itself i mean the hamish itself says the only men from that generation that entered irish israel who were 20 at the time of the exodus were yahushua and colleagues according to this interpretation yoshua and colleagues and 15 000 of their closest friends i mean how do you understand that i mean now you're telling me fifteen thousand people have entered so some people understand well they didn't die on tish above but they're still eight months because remember mosh roberto dies next adar and we cross the jordan in nissan so we have around eight months so over the next eight months the fifteen thousand people died uh naturally in a way of course that that seems to me to take away the big symbols what's the big symbol of to be of that they didn't die then i mean they died over the next eight months but okay but some learned that they actually did die before they entered eric israel in that way now i do want to point out that some learn now remember this is rashi's commentary based on the ushel me for the enigmatic phrase in the gemara puskubo may say midbar the badly does not give the explanation so i do want to point out that other rishenam actually have a simpler explanation of pus kubo mesa midbar and it basically means the last group died we sat shiva for them and what is the seventh day from the ninth to five the fifteenth above we got up from shiva so you see it's two very different understandings according to one interpretation the simcha was fifteen thousand people lived who should have died according to the other explanation everybody died who should have died and we finished our mourning process we got up from shiva and that was the summer okay so those are two interpretations on the phrase in the bubbly pus kubo messe midbar the deaths of the desert stopped on the 15th above okay those are two shut him but okay that's simple number one i'm going to go in chronological order a little bit the gummar itself does not present him in chronological order but just for simplicity i'm going to go in the order of the historical event historical event number two is act three of benott solafruit that's a play in 3x if you remember we read a few weeks ago that was a man who died in the desert and actually he did not die as part of the miraculous he died for his own sin and according to khazal he was the guy that gathered the wood on shabbos whatever it would be and because he had left ex mitzrayim and he was 20 at the time he was entitled to a portion of land in erits israel but he died in the desert so his portion would be inherited by his heirs in addition to whatever portion they would get so the problem was salafra did not have any sons salafra had daughters the halacha was known that a son inherits a father and even if there's daughters the son gets the urusha but it was not clear if daughters have a right of inheritance if there are no sons so this was a lawsuit so to speak between salafrad's brothers and salafis daughters salafrad's brothers claimed that because there was no son the brothers of the decedent should inherit lovely's daughters were arguing we are still uh children and therefore we should have priority over brothers moshe didn't know the halaqah moshe asked hashem and hashem said that if there are no sons daughters inherit so therefore the portion of land that would have gone to tslavka will go to his daughters rather than to his brothers that is act one act two the brothers must have had a good lawyer the brothers make a second argument hey these girls at the time are single women now you're giving them property you're going to give them the property and eric israel that would go to our brothers is of the tribe of menasha happens to be now let's say a wife who inherits property a woman who inherits property marries a guy from another tribe what's then going to happen is that if she dies the property is going to go to her husband or to her children but her children are no longer the tribe that she came from because the children's tribal identity is defined by the father so what's going to happen you're going to dilute the tribal allotments meaning to say you look at land that's given to menachem remember half of menasha was in eric israel itself or any tribe and instead of it being solidly yehuda solidly soccer solidly the villain there's going to be all of these enclaves belonging to other tribes because single women inherited the property and married out so you're going to be diluting tribal inheritance now somebody asked me a question by email that what are they complaining about if there are single women from menasha who marry outside their tribe there will be single women from other tribes who will marry people from inaugura so menasha will get back land whatever was taken away because the same thing will happen visa be the other tribe but the emma says i i don't think that's a question for a number of reasons first of all there is no particular reason to assume there would be equality meaning if we're losing x number of acres from our tribal allotment we're not necessarily going to make it up by other single women who marry members of our tribe who says the numbers are going to be the same that's point number one point number two is that even if the total acreage is going to be the same meaning whatever we lost from our single women marrying other tribes we will gain by single women from other tribes marrying men from our tribe even if you assume that we gain but we've lost the continuity of a tribal inheritance meaning to say that in menasha i have all these other tribes and yeah we got some land back by single women marrying menasha people but that land is in other tribal units so it's not the same we would rather have for security reasons we would rather have an unbroken territory that belongs to a tribe instead of having some of our stuff here and some of our stuff here and some of her stuff here so their complaint basically was to moshe avenue you can't allow a single woman an unmarried woman to inherit property in eretz israel and then marry outside of her tribe moshe didn't know the for that either so we asked hashem and hashem agreed this time so when one lose one he agreed with the taina of the brothers and a halacha was proclaimed that no woman who who inherits property can marry outside of her tribe she can only marry within her tribe to ensure that the inheritance remains within the tribal unit the daughters of solafud had to marry whoever they eventually married people from the tribe of menasha they could not marry anyone else a woman who didn't inherit property because she had brothers she could marry anybody she wanted but a woman who inherited property had to marry within her tribe now that's act two but what's interesting is although this is explicitly in the torah it was understood that this was a temporary mitzvah to ensure that the initial division of eric israel would not be diluted by other groups owning pieces in the territory now it took 14 years in the time of yeshua for the land of israel to be conquered and settled and divided so for those 14 years this halacha was in effect but once the division was completed in a proper way the prohibition on intratribal marriage was lifted and women could marry anybody they wanted now although there was no textual source the rabbinic tradition was it was on the 15th of that yoshua bin nunun abrogated after 14 years abrogated the restriction on women marrying outside their tribes and that is actually why the 15th divide became associated with marriage because that allowed the women to marry husbands from any tribe that they wanted to that is reason number two for the fifteenth above reason number three is also connected to marriage and this propels us in the time of the judges the time of the judges was a very difficult time and this is towards the end of the period of the judges and in safer chauffeur there's a very very sad story called pilage bhagiva and that is the concubine in diva giveawa was a town in the tribe of binyamin and this is a story about a lady that was traveling and he needed hospitality in the tribe of binyamin and he had with him his concubine actually every single person in the story is behaves in an awful way so the man is given hospitality he leaves his concubine to sleep outside in the into the street you know he doesn't really care where she sleeps i mean i'll be a loving loving person here and what essentially happens is i forgive my language she was gang-raped and she died she was not deliberately murdered but in the course of all of the abuse she quite literally passed away and it was very very you could see she was a great state of desperation before her death because she was crawling to get into the house and her dead body was found with her hands on the threshold of the house he wakes up nice and early in the morning time to go back he sees her lying down he kind of gives her a little kick and says get up you know lazy you know why are you still sleeping he discovers she was dead he is outraged what he then does is i mean the behaviors are just inexplicable he cuts up her body into 12 pieces and he sends a piece federal express ups who knows he sends a piece of her body to every single tribe of israel saying do you see the outrage that was perpetrated in the tribe of benjamin do something about it and the tribes demanded that the tribe of benjamin extradite this is actually an extradition extradite the offenders to be judged and punished the tribe of benjamin refused the extradition request and the ramban rights there's actually a critical political issue here the tribes it's like the american civil war the tribes viewed themselves as sovereign nations they they all had the same religion but they were cyber nations like france germany et cetera and they basically said hey if a crime was committed in our territory it's none of your business we will punish our own people it is not a national thing for you to get involved in it's a very interesting political issue in fact you think about this the tribes looked at themselves as sovereign nations sharing a common religion as opposed to an ami israel because there was not yet a melech there was no king they were not unified so what happened was all of the other tribes declared war mamish a civil war jew against jew against the tribe of in yemen now obviously the tribe of benjamin was vastly outnumbered but they were very fierce fighters and there were tens of thousands of casualties on both sides but at the end of the day shavit binyamin was defeated and they were almost exterminated a few hundred left a few hundred men left and the jewish people took a vow that no man will allow his daughter to marry a benjamin person this actually would have resulted in the extinction of the whole tribe and for various mystical reasons that would have been a cosmic tragedy because when the jewish people are lacking a whole tribe hashem cannot really rest because there's not a complete nation here eventually pinchas the famous pinterest who was still alive and the kohen gadal annulled their vow founded a mistaken tower and improper vowel and the tradition was that he did this on the 15th of us and that was the day when the tribe of binyamin was permitted to rejoin claudia israel in marriage and the like right so we have two marriage things one is the yeshua banun about the daughters of salafra in which women inheriting property were allowed to marry outside of their tribe and the other was the special hater for the tribe of binyamin that they were permitted to uh remarry into israel by the way a little a little interesting side point here when the sukim give these survivors of binyamin there are two different totals that are given one is a little higher than the other and the meforshim try to explain the discrepancy but one of the explanations is based on the targum yanus and benuzio that actually says that the difference between the lower number and the higher number is the lower number are those who remained in the land of israel the higher number are a few hundred benjaminites who fled to europe so as a result according to the target mianoson there was a jewish presence in europe before there even was a base amiktas this is the period of the judges this was before governor miller and some have said there was migration into england although that's not in target yenison and i remember hearing years ago and i'm trying to find it for some reason you know maybe it's not true because i'm not able to clearly find it but i haven't been looking that much that the royal family of england claims some type of descent from the tribe of binyamin in the coronation ceremony there's a brief reference to being again not yehuda that's interesting because our monarchy is and the royal family does not claim descent from yehuda but they do claim descends from benjamin now you might say that's just a ridiculous buffalo mice but the truth of the matter is based on this targum yonasan benuzio there was a migration of a few hundred benjamin benjaminites uh to europe so they could have gotten as far as uh the british isles as well very very fascinating and i think uh dan brown in one of his da vinci code stuff and other volumes that he writes i think he goes with this he goes with every unusual misa that you can come up with and he manages to incorporate it so i think he actually goes with this uh somewhere okay uh but be the message that's the uh that is the third so i gave you three reasons number three reasons for the joy of the fifteenth above i'm going in chronological order next reason uh goes back to the division of the two kingdoms of israel you'll recall under shall hammer one nation under david one nation under muhammad one nation but had a son and in the reign of a very cataclysmic event happened from what from which we have not fully recovered even to this day and that is ten tribes revolted against the davidic monarchy and they established their own kingdom to the north the story was that rakhavam was given very bad advice by his um young advisors who said you got to show the population you're the boss and tax them and order them around and the older people said be gentle be kind put yourself at their service instead of looking at their major slaves and he listened to the young people rather than the old people and as a result yeah nevada led a revolt in which 10 tribes separated and that left the davidic line a very small kingdom around jerusalem and the seviva of yerushalayim and that is called malchus yehuda and the only tribes they had were yehuda binyamin and they had most of the kohanim and lavium who worked in the bay samikesh ten tribes went with the northern kingdom the northern kingdom was known as malchus israel right to the southern kingdom is maokai the northern kingdom is malchus israel it is also called malchus ephraim because the kings of the northern kingdom were from the tribe of ephraim and uh its capital was shomron right so the capital of malchus judah was yushalayim the capital of malchus israel was shomeron and the like now evan ben nevada originally was a very righteous man and in fact he he led the rebellion based on the orders of the navi hashilani but but eventually his arrogance and his gaiver overwhelmed him and he was jealous of the fact that many of the jews of the north of the ten tribes were still going south to the bay samitas to bring corbanos so he made like a berlin wall he did not allow any migration from the ten tribes to yerushalayim he put guards at border crossings not to allow any movement and he erected golden calves to be worshipped as substitutes for the basal mintage by and large the kings of of mauka israel for over 200 years were rishoyim was you know those types of not such good people the last king of the northern kingdom was a man called hoshea benela and he decided to do a good thing he took away the guards and the barriers and the walls and the restrictions and he said anybody who wants to go to the base of mikdash is free to go govalding once again our rabbinic tradition was that that occurred on the 15th of of a great symbol accessibility to the basa mikdash accessibility to holiness that's something to celebrate but you may ask me a very logical question i said hoshea benela was the last king of the northern kingdom what happened assyria sanserif destroyed the northern kingdom and he exiled the 10 tribes this is more than a hundred years before the destruction of the temple by the babylonians more than a hundred years and those were the lost ten tribes that have not been fully reunited with us to this very day and who they are where they are is shrouded in mystery some say there's kind of a mystical kingdom somewhere where they exist some say they were the american indians some say they're the pashtuns of afghanistan some say they're the vikings i'll tell you a humorous anti-semitic joke really it's really very anticipated but it's it's funny now in the 19th century uh there were a lot of british protestants british anglicans who were really excited about finding the lost ten tribes they really wanted because it was part of their eschatological view of of of the redemption and they felt we got to get together with find the ten tribes so they went to a very prominent british lord and they asked him for money will you give us money to help us find the lost ten tribes so the guy said no i will give you money to lose the other two it says i don't need to find the 10. let's lose the two yeah anti-semitic but kind of kind of witty but okay forgive me anyway so so there's still a lot of uncertainty regarding the last 10 tribes so the question is obvious if hoshei ben ayla was a righteous person who removed all of the restrictions on going to the temple why does his kingdom get destroyed at that point the gemara asked the question and the gemara says because he opened the gates and nobody bothered to go all the years they didn't go even though she knows the truth they had an excuse they said i can't go there's a wall there's a guard but once you don't have a guard you don't have a wall you don't have an excuse if you don't have an excuse you become accountable it's actually reminiscent of something we have today you know today hashem because of arts grow because of translations because of online classes because of youtube the accessibility of torah is really unparalleled you know it used to be 50 years ago if you didn't learn in the yeshiva you didn't know hebrew you know it was hard for you to learn it was hard to find the class it was hard to find a rabbi it was hard to find a book so after 120 years if god would ask somebody then you know why didn't you learn torah so maybe somebody had an excuse you know i didn't have a teacher that never booked didn't have hebrew i didn't have a chance to go to yeshiva whatever today on one hand we have unparalleled opportunities and that's wonderful but you understand that unparalleled opportunities creates responsibility you know you're not going to be able to say to god oh i didn't know hebrews says god said get an art scroll you know whatever whatever it would be meaning to say it's mama's the same thing on one hand the 15th of is a great great symbol because we're able to go to the temple on the other hand it turned into a tragedy in the sense that that was the downfall of malchus israel okay so that is i'm losing track that's the fourth fourth one okay now the fifth one takes us already to the second temple right the second temple the first temple the first mikdash was destroyed by the babylonians the second base i make this was destroyed 490 years later 70 years of exile and 420 years of the second temple it was destroyed by the romans in we usually say the year 70 some says between 68 and 70. let's take 70. now that was on the ninth above so it was the same day right an amazing thing even josephus notes the amazing coincidence which is obviously from god that 490 years apart the temple is burning on the same day this was noted this was the thing that people noted that but that wasn't the end of things there was eventually a second revolt by the jewish people against the romans and this was the famous bar kochba revolt barkokpo was a man his name was shimon ben kuzwa rabbi yakiva named him barkokba the son of a star because rabbi akiva actually believed that he was potentially mashiach like a star coming from heaven and initially barkokva was very very successful berkoka liberated from the romans more than 900 villages some of them were very small but he was really regaining territory barcock had many coins minted shimon bankusva nissi israel you can actually buy a barcode is not that expensive and the like and there is even some archaeological evidence that he under the guidance of rabbi akiva began to lay a foundation for the third base amigners there is some post-70 building on the side of the harabayat and some say that's connected to a third base of mikdash in the time of barkhochla but eventually hadrian retaliated with overwhelming force i mean he took legions from all over the place he removed them from europe he just sent them massive force and the barcode rebellion was ruthlessly cut short with a massacre that was much much greater than even the massacre at the time of the basa mikash the casualties in the raikkokku revolts were much greater than the harbin basa mikdas and that was the fall of beta in the year 135 so that's 70 to 135 that's 65 years after the carbon-based amiktas was the fall of beta and the fall of beta was on the ninth above one of the tragedies of the ninth above was the fall of britain and by the way all of the gizarros of rome that you can't learn torah and you can't do prismila is not after the corbin the romans destroyed the base and make this as a political action to stop a war against them but they did not make gizeros against the jewish religion after the corbyn basin which of course was a tragedy a massive tragedy you were allowed to learn you could dive and you could wear it to fill and you can keep shabbos the romans didn't care about that after the barcode revoked that's when all of these decrees came and jews were not even allowed in jerusalem jerusalem became elia capitalina which was a city dedicated to jupiter and for more than 200 years no jews could live in jerusalem and they were allowed to circle the city once a year on tish above to mourn their losses and to this very day that is why there's an old youtube minute that some people still follow that they walk around the walls of the old city now the old city walls are not the walls that were there then but it encompasses approximately the same area uh because that was the minute all the way back from then okay now hadrian wasn't happy with this massive massacre he actually issued a directive that the hundreds of thousands of corpses not be buried he wanted them to putrefy he wanted them to decompose on the ground to humiliate the jews to crush their spirits to make them despondent and hopeless but lo and behold a miracle happens we are told that the corpses did not decompose nothing was happening and this went on it's very hard to believe but because i'll say this went on for three years at some point hadrian realized that this was not working in his favor so three years and a week meaning the 15th above three years after the corbin of bazaar hadrian gave permission for the bodies to be buried and therefore the fifth simcha of toubiev is the harugay baiter were given a burial now this affected the jewish liturgy and that is a fourth blessing was added to birkasamazum the original birkat amazon had three blessings the first is hazana sakal thanking god for food and sustenance and that was composed by moshe rabbenu when the man fell the second is ibrahimovic thanking hashem for the gift of eric israel that was added by yahushua the third rakhem ending of nahushanayam was composed by david and as a prayer for jerusalem and the temple and that was the end of benching benching ended yerushalayim or maine in fact the reason our main is there is because that signified that that was the end of benching after the harugae beta were buried khazal added a fourth blessing called tatova matif god is good and god does good god is good that the bodies did not decompose and god does good that we were able to bury these bodies now this is quite an amazing insight talk about seeing the bright side of things the death of bethar was an unimaginable tragedy and the degradation of corpses even if they didn't decompose not being buried for three years is a tragedy on top of the tragedy of their debts and yes ghazal are teaching us to see look for the hashem even in the worst tragedies see in this worst tragedy that look at the miracle that they didn't decompose and look at the fact that you're able to bury them at the end of the day so there's a big lesson here to see look at your life and look at the world to see the kindness of god even when that's not obvious at all and you've got to go beneath the surface and that is yet the other aspect of the 15th above arugu baytar nitnew [Music] the final simchat of the 15th above is that it was the end of the wood cutting season what is that one of the things that eric israel had a chronic shortage of particularly when we were attacked by foreign powers like assyria babylonia was a lack of wood because they would cut the trees they would destroy forests they would set fires uh forest fires and the like that was a common military technique it was by the term scorched earth policy and the like now the base of mikdash had a need for a constant supply of wood wood was quite literally the fuel that enabled all of the corbanos to be brought and it was never a sure thing are we going to get enough wood for our wood supply now how luckily the wood that you need to use for carbanos has to be a very dry wood you don't want the wood to have a moisture in it because moisture produces smoke and etc and you want the fire to burn without smoke and the like so as a result they cut trees for the wood cutting for the coming year only in the summer when it wasn't raining for a while and they stopped cutting the wood the 15th above was the last day of the wood cutting season they would not cut wood after the 15th above and the reason is again it doesn't quite fit our calendar today that is the 15th of was around the day of the longest day of the year the summer solstice and after that the days begin to get shorter you still have more daylight than than the night but the days are getting a little shorter the nights are getting a little longer and as a result the intensity of heat diminished a little bit so the wood became a little bit more moist and a little bit more wormy and a little bit more moldy now again i i can't say that i automatically sense that here but that might be a function of global warming as i mentioned last week i think anecdotally anecdotally at least i think jerusalem has jerusalem as a city itself has experienced climate change it may not be connected to global climate change it may be connected to construction but whatever it is i'm just telling you i know this is the second time i've made the point that summer nights here used to be cold and it's been quite a few years since that's the case it just isn't that way anymore so i can just tell you that over 30 or 40 years there's been a market warming uh in the summer nights over what it used to be but okay but be it as it may hazel do you say after the 15th of of the wood is no longer cut so the 15th of was a great simcha because we were able to say baruch hashem we have enough wood for the next year that barak hashem we made it and that's why it became a very festive day we finished our job now make another observation about the 15th above and they say from the 15th ave onwards you must increase your torah learning why because you have more time at night in the day it might be hard to learn torah because people are working but at night people didn't work used to work at night if you if you're i mean today people work at night too but when you work with agriculture you didn't work at night night was was the end of the work so as a result 15 divide was a simpler because you gain an extra minute or two of studying torah and that's a separate you have a minute the night is one minute longer got to take advantage it reminds me a little bit of the story there was a certainly yucky a german jew was very very meticulous uh punctual exact he always followed the the exact time schedule so when he went to myrev december 4th uh he told his wife i'm going to be a little late today why because december 4th is the day that we change from the same barakah to hussein talum it's going to prolong my rift by a second i think that's going to be a little late or they say was it when they when they change daylight savings time or whatever it is so so officially the clock changes at 2 a.m something he's like changes say i mean the yucky waited like he went into the show at 2 a.m to change the clock you know you wouldn't change it uh you know before that but okay but be it as it may uh those are the different reasons why the 15th above is a time of great great simcha but i do want to point out an interesting point uh to this and that is i already made that i already told you or pointed out that the 15th of is the seventh day from the ninth above and in some ways you can describe it as getting up from shiva getting up from shiva now getting up from shiva is itself part of a ritual of shiva someone sits shiva at the end of shiva there actually is a minute you physically stand up and you even leave the house and you walk around the block this is part of it i mean i'm not going to say it's an absolute obligation but this is a time-honored custom because hashem is basically saying you have to re-enter society you have to go back you have to rejoin you can't live in perpetual grief and perpetual mourning you never forget the basa mikdash but you got to go back i mentioned in my quinos sure on sunday those of you those of you who heard it forgive my repetition that the last keener technically the next to the last kinah is the only keynote we recite standing up and we sing it to a negan and this is ellie sione fiore uh ellie by the way some people say kaylee it's not god's name ellie is a verb that means lament well it's not referring to kale it's elizion zion and the cities laments and we say it's standing up andrew absalomaczyk used to say that that's the sign that's the message that hashem is telling you that you have to get up from your mourning and you have to live a productive life get up don't stay on the ground forever but when you get up still remember the base i make this don't forget it it's not like i mourned the base of mikdash and now i can forget about it no i got to remember it every single day but i also have to go on and make a life and that's the interesting idea of getting up and then lamenting with the kinah of elizian i also pointed out that in this beautiful heart-rending poem it uses two metaphors for the suffering of zion it says she is like a woman in labor and she is like a young bride who is lamenting the death of the husband of her youth so it compares her to a pregnancy and to a widow now look at the difference in both there is great pain and suffering but the pain and suffering of pregnancy is a prelude a precursor to new life widowhood is a grieving that at least in this world will never come back so the juxtaposition of those two metaphors is the difference between appearance and reality we think of ourselves as a widow we think we've been bereft we've been we've been bereaved we've been deprived and there's no hope but in reality all of the pain is the labor pain of a woman in childbirth which is preliminary to redemption and all of the suffering will culminate in that redemption and that's why it says in icha the city of jerusalem is like a widow like a widow but not a real widow she thinks she's a widow but in reality her husband is still here after this work and he will come back to her actually he's with her even now but he'll be in a more open open way and that too is the overall message of the fifteenth above we get up from shiva and we rebuild you know say hashem made many worlds before this one that he destroyed and i remember if salvatrix used to say there was one year which he never really recovered from he was in novel three times he lost a brother he lost his mother he lost his wife to whom he was extraordinarily close and although he continued to teach for a number of years until he got ill but people i mean i didn't know him well but people who knew him well say that he never really recovered from the devastating tragedies of loss but at the end of his third shiva he asked a question why did god make all of these worlds that he destroyed why didn't he just make the right one and he said because hashem wanted once to teach us a lesson that although all of the worlds that he created got destroyed he went on and recreated to teach us that when our world gets destroyed we have to go on [Music] because hashem went on hashem didn't just say i'm finished and everything hashem does is a lesson for us and this is certainly true in jewish history in the aftermath of the holocaust people built families again the state of israel media israel heritage rail built up people who suffered so much went on built created a new world a new life and individually this is what everyone has to do you know people suffer bereavements depression despair but the message is go on rebuild don't succumb to the idea that this is the permanent condition we are killed but we are not almond mamish so i hope that all of you will get simbra out of the 15th avatar and feel hashem's love in the aftermath of the corban that we experienced and biezes hashem may this be the last ninth above there will be day of suffering and we should be certain that it should be a day of salsa [Music] yes