Tisha B'Av: Explanation of the Kinnot - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

Kos you simply have unbroken text in which has 100 pages and one does not realize that these are separate compositions uh you will notice in the kyos that there are actually 46 kyos but that is because one of them is repeated in the evening and in the daytime so these are 45 distinct poems the majority of them uh were written at least least in the ashkanazi custom were written by a single author and this is the very very famous iCal poet RAB Alazar not elzar R Alazar hir uh the word kher is a bit obscure khier is often connected to the name korin a bomb for the eyes because his words brought so much comfort but it's very clear as well that his father seems to have been named khier because the name in the acrostics of these poems will often say elazar BBI kher uh who was he was a tremendously prolific Pyon uh he wrote much of what we say the extra things that we say in the Y thear were poetry that he wrote he wrote the majority of kenos in fact he wrote many more kenos that are included in our in our Kos uh he wrote uh many many prayers Pim for all of the shabas of the Year literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages who was he so there is a big big according to was actually aana he was the of RAB Shimon so his father was actually RAB Shimon and perhaps the word KH would refer to R Shimon brought so much light uh to people's eyes but many many other Aron point out that historically tosas is very problematical and even tosas is understood as simply saying that AER was a gilgal he was a reincarnation he had the spiritual essence of RAB Alazar RAB Shimon but he actually lived much later uh he lived uh around 500 years after theban so if theban of the bay sheni was in the year 70 reab Alazar ker lived in the uh 500s the 600s and the like now one has to understand a little bit of what was the historical situation in the time of Rev kher because in his Pim we often sense not only a tremendous mourning over theb bikash but connecting it to all of the Soros that were going on at the time rebelar KH lived in erisel and erisel at the time was under Byzantine rule that was the eastern part of the Roman Empire and uh the Roman Empire had recently converted to Christianity it had been a pagan Empire and as bad as the pagans were the B mikdash the destruction of betar certainly we didn't have it easy uh but when the Roman Empire became Christian uh there was a fanatical hatred of the Jewish people that is the period of time which didn't even happen during the Romans in which the Sanhedrin was discontinued that was the period of time when there was no longer koses that was the period of time where the Jewish settlement in ER Israel was almost totally decimated which explains why the talid ji had to be completed much earlier than the talid bav and that is why it is truncated and the N is not clear because the whole community of er Israel was under tremendous tremendous persecution in which people were literally being slaughtered and nobody was living around jerus the whole Jewish settlement was in the Galil which is why more accurately the T ji was not a product of Yim it was a product of of Taria reab Alazar kher is living during these times he is living during the times when there was a beet Sanhedrin he's living during the time when there are virtually no yeshivos in ER Israel at all in which the Torah is hanging by a thread paradoxically in B which was not under Byzantine rule B was under the cenan rule again Persians uh they weren't great either nobody was ever great for us but nevertheless there was the ability to learn Tyra the ability ability to build yesos and as it were KES gave us a place where we were able to continue to grow but rabar likei many many many years earlier is experiencing a tremendous tremendous Corban and his Keynotes therefore are reflecting the idea that theb bik was not just a past event but it was happening again and again and again the Corbin of Torah the Corbin of of of the physical presence of am Israel uh his his his compositions are very very complex in fact there's an Ezra in coelis that is actually critical of RAR saying that his puim are too difficult to understand in his ptim you have so many Illusions a single word will allude to a medish you actually need books and there are books that are me they try to decipher oh this word is referring to a whole medish a whole Kaz a whole Yi Etc the ezzar was critical because the ezzar said if you didn't know all these MIM you wouldn't be able to figure out what the meaning is but even that they say that during the Byzantine era during much of the Byzantine era Jews were allowed to Davin but they weren't allowed to study Torah and as a result he actually had a general idea of sneaking in a lot of Torah learning into his ptim because the soldiers let people D and they didn't let them learn and and and the like now just to give you an example we're going to start with the first of the morning ptim which is number six uh shavas and let me just talk about that just a little bit the original Min of pu was very very different than the way we say it today originally it was actually part of kar it was part of the repetition of the Shon meaning before M before the end of M they would say a single paragraph then they would say another paragraph before then before and then by the 14th of which is they would literally recite many many kenos before they would go on into Kazar now what happened was eventually the kenos were moved to after daving because the list got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger originally it may have been three or four kenos when it became 40 or 50 Kos they thought that was too much of a hepic but as a result the first Kina is actually a half the second half of a first half that we no longer say that was part of shon uh you need to know a little bit about a a is your Mo's Lamentations and a involves uh peric Al is written in the form of an olive Bas every person begins with olive to T and B gimmel doid are also written in Olive Bays but they're slightly different peric alif is the only Olive Bay that is simply in order Al to B gim reverses the pay and the ion the pay is before the iron that's an anomaly iron normally comes before pay but why is there pay before iron so kazal say that is part [Music] of they worshiped with their mouth Idols that uh they weren't paying attention to their eyes their eyes could see that the idols were sheero hi they acted with their mouth what they didn't see with their eyes pero is a little unusual because in addition to the pay before Theon it is also three alive bases three of three of B Etc perid goes back to a single Olive Bas but the p is before Theon parake is the only peric that is not written as an olive base it is but it also has 22 so right so it has the number of suum of the alas but it is not written in the form of the alive Bas the medish tells us that the reason why there is an olive Bas is as if we come to Hashem and we say that we are suffering so completely from Olive to tough from A to Z but by the time we get to the last peric we are so dis oriented we are so confused we are drunk with Soros that we can't even think straight we don't even have an olive Bas anymore everything is a bable now here is a thing to notice you will notice that the first word of of k6 is shavas shavas is the 15th p in the fifth peras the first 14 wrote a which the first word of every paragraph was the fifth was the first word of the fifth par but originally the first half is part of the so therefore for the first 14as it started etc etc etc and by the time you got to Bon you did 14 of them the rest of the P starts from PK 15 which is shavas and then it goes 16 in other words every single St begins with the word in the last per and then the next line it goes in reverse order uh four suru is from per and then there are three from per Etc Sosa Etc and then you go 21 so the way it works is 333 2 one uh ending always with peric Alf and since everything begins from the 15th because the first 14 were already Inon that's why we begin with the letter s for the other PR and the like the 15th letter of the alipas so this is actually a second half of aat the first half we no longer say although you can find it in older it was said in and this is a very complicated style but this really introduces uh the whole theme of Tish theik the the suffering of the Jewish people the fact that those who we thought would be our friends deceived us caused us to die there are many many MIM that are alluded to in this Kina but um they are more explicit later on so we will defer the discussion of some of the Illusions to kenos that are are more elaborate and more explicit so we'll start okay we're going to go to uh 10 yud we know that from the the time of David H when David made plans for the building of the B mikdash which he was not able to build he divided the khanim all of the different kohanim into 24 mishas 24 groups and uh the principle was that each week of the year except for the shal when all the Kim came a mishmar did the Ava for one week so in the course of a year the mishis had two rotations the mishmar in turn was divided into a B for every day of the week right so any given day you were a mishmar and you also a member of a subdivision which was a b of uh the gar tells us and it makes a point that the the names of the mishmar are names in they they are recorded that the mishmar on duty on the day of theb bikash and the day of Tish which was a m shabas it was a Sunday was shita it was the year after shita the mishmar was a mishmar called y that was the family name but that name is a deeply symbolic name because if you simply look at the words no y that means god is fighting against his people or alternatively people are fighting against God they have rebelled against God and that was a Corban now after theban B mikdash and particularly after the Corbin of betar that was around 60 years later so there were no Jews living in yusim at all they were banned from Jerusalem they all went North and the 24 mishas all went to the Galil and that is why you will see that their location is all around the Galil now this could not have been bis mikdash bis mikdash Kohan intended to live near yush but after theban of betar they had separate cities but it's important to understand that the concept of a CO knowing his mishmar and the family mishmar living together happened for hund remained for hundreds of years even after the Corbin this was one of the most powerful zikes in which if you were a Coen you knew your Mish you knew the day that you would be doing a in theik that it is recorded from the early that there was a in Isel every chabas because chabas is when the mishis would change the new mishmar would take over in the afternoon they would reite a mish for the particular mishmar when did the mishmar discontinue when did we lose a connection when did we stop knowing what was the coen's day of AA many say it was during the time ofar himself that during the Byzantine persecutions the concept of the mishmar became forgotten and in many many ways this was an experience of a second Corban in which keeping the sense of the kohanim gave us a connection to the B mikash and then it was lost and that is why this is a Kina that is interweaving two themes of AAS at the same time on one hand it's talking about the bikash where the kohanim could no longer do the AA but then it talks about their EG Exile from their place in the Galil now that didn't happen the same time because P after theb bikash is when they went to the G so basically what RAR is doing is he is combining a past events hundreds of years earlier with the present reality of his time in which he sees it as a continuity of the Corban and that is why he talks both about theb bikash and the Exile of the mishar From Galilee from the gal which occurred hundreds of years later because that was the end of the sense of kohanim being intimately connected to the of so we'll start the next was the next one number 11 Y and here again unless otherwise noted these are all by RAB Alazar kher uh this this is the story of the death of King Yoshi who is King Yoshi all of us know that one of the great righteous Kings of is was and thear Bros tells us did not want to get married because he saw with rues that he would have a Russia and the told him you're because you don't have the rights to look into the future you have a Mitzvah of per of arivia so who was very very righteous indeed got married and he had a son and that son did become a great great Russia Masha who became a king at age 12 and had the longest rule of any king of am Israel 55 years and during his time ER Israel became Muka with although there is a teaching that manasha himself personally did Chua at the end of his life that's what it says in but manashe was not able to reverse all of the that he created within Isel he became a righteous person but he created in an environment of and at that point it was decreed in sh that although the B MDES wouldn't be destroyed for a long time but that is when it was decided there has to be aanal Israel is not worthy manasha had a son amine amine was just as bad amine followed in the ways of his father though things were going downhill it looked like there was no hope for am Israel the Nim gave mus nothing happens but then amine had a son and that son was Yoshi and amine died young so yoshio became king at the age of 8 years old he was a the child King and for reasons that we don't always understand yosh's heart turned towards aish his rebi was is the father of and was and the first thing Yos did when he was eight years old he ordered that the B Mikes had been neglected because people weren't serving a him there was a b Mikes but they weren't doing anything there should be fixed up should be renovated and as they renovated the Bas of mikash they actually found a safer Torah some ma foram learned that that itself was a great miracle because manasha had destroyed all the C Torah others say no there were C Torah but the miracle was that the safer Torah that was found in a Subterranean chamber was open to a particular and these are theim of the in that if you don't do CH there's going to be a and Yos as it were eradicated the Yos brought Isel to Cha and at that point the Nim thought perhaps in the Merit of am isel's Chua through Yosh we will be not just that the B Mikes would stay but that there would be mashia there would be maybe Yos himself would be Mash of it and this would be the but Yos did not do all that he thought he did because it says that although externally people were not worshiping Idols but behind closed doors they were laughing at him behind closed doors they were mocking him they continued to do a b and as a result although he was worthy of being mashia the generation was not worthy of escaping theban what happened at that time was parro who was an ally of the Jewish people he was not an enemy pyro noo wanted to wage war against Assyria Assyria is north of er Israel and he wanted to Simply go through ER Israel with his army not to wage war against the Jews but simply to go to Assyria but yoshio said he's not going to allow that because Hashem promised if the Jewish people do thez a foreign sword shall not go through your land and that doesn't just mean he learned a of but even a of a peaceful Nation that's trying to fight somebody else will not pass through so he was so in his righteousness and in the righteousness of is that he said we are worthy of the Divine promise so he told no yahu warned him he says we're not that worthy we're not under madrea don't do this let him go but yoshio says Nope we are righteous what happened in the plains of megiddo parro entered and at this point par was not entering to be peaceful par was entering to conquer and to dominate and Yosh tried to fight the armies of Egypt at megiddo and his body was pierced with 300 arrows like a Civ and he was dying the great great sadic yoshio died and the L hador the scoffers of the generation wanted to know what was he muttering in his last words maybe he's cursing out God maybe he's cursing out the Nim and no his last words were sashem God is righteous Mari because I have rebelled against his word this by the way is a in the first per essentially borrowed it he lifted it from y's final words the fourth peric of how the gold is dimmed is actually not about the bikash this was Yu's eulogy for the M Yosi that he later Incorporated into a because he understood with rues and that the death of yah was the final Hammer blow the final nail in the coffin that would result in the this was the last real chance now the Corbin didn't happen till 22 years later the days of s who was yosh's son but throughout that time the MIM were not good the people were not good some the were and sometimes like he was a and the people were without Yos there was no real ability to have chuva and therefore how is the gold dimmed was incorporated in and indeed the rabar KH brings a teaching and we can almost Trace everything to Mid but this is a teaching that we don't know uh we we have no mocker for but it must be a medish that is lost in the Merit of Yu being mid the righteous Yos with the letters of the alive Bas the 22 of the alive Bas Hashem delayed the bikash by 22 years because being Mas the righteous is a great great because when you feel that the sikim uh are things that are are are those that keep you alive spiritually then that itself is a closeness to AES so uh here in this Kina rabar kher graphically poetically and tragically describes the death of yoshio but again the key to remember is that this is not simply the death of a great person as righteous as he was this was considered to be the final nail that guaranteed that there would be a Bas on go to number 13 yimo and here rabar KH very beautifully takes the word four chapters of three chapters of begin with the word means how could it be but you can actually divide a into two words a CO we know that makes many many promises to soem says yes andar says that at the time of theban we turn to am is and we say a CO where is all the co Hashem that you've given us and he goes through a list of 13 beautiful Prophecies of comfort of strength for example a says to Abraham all your children will be M will be will have great multitudes or all of the different Bros and where is it just to show you one example inside as to how one has to pay very very careful attention uh if you look towards the end it says [Music] AO Where is the K of the conversation of the 60 ancient letters what are the 60 ancient letters has 60 letters in it if you count from Shalom and it begins in the Torah when the Torah introduces it says so shall you bless so see poetically how this is expressed where is the co of the 60 letters that are supposed to protect us and now we have been totally destroyed and decimated do say that the word has this composite meaning means how could it be but it also means AO where is the co of your all of your promises and and finally it connects it to adish when adish ate from the said to where are you and that doesn't mean that Hashem needs to know where they are the aisher certainly knows where they are but essentially AA what has happened to you where are you holding look at what you've become so it's all connected a how has it happened AO where is the co of all of your promises that are Karem but the answer is how is it happening where is the co a Hashem says back to us where are you where are we where are we holding you know the pan says we say to Hashem why are you doing all of these things but says back but you don't seem to know why did you do all why did we do all of these things right so the AO goes through the list of the positive Prophecies of comfort and strength that begin with Kar hasem a CO okay we go to uh test Zion 16 and if the star of yoshiyahu is a tragedy that happened in the Corban Bas Reon we now move to the Corbin Bay sheni in the hands of the Romans and we know that the Roman general who actually destroyed the second basa mikdash who later became emperor uh is Titus titto of Russia and Titus as you know even erected a triumphal Arch celebrating his great accomplishment there's said to be a minog that Jewish people in Rome do not walk under that Arch that has that famous picture of the Jews and chains carrying the manora on their shoulder and here RAB alzar kher discusses a passage in the gumar and in the medish how titos actually entered the kesak he basically thought in his arrogance that he vanquished God and he comes into the house of Hashem he extinguishes the nid the eternal light that never goes out he then enters the kashim which only the Coen is allowed to enter but not only does he enter the kashim but he spreads a safer Torah on the ground and he has fornication with a prostitutes on top of a safer Torah in the kak and when he stuck his sword into the Paras the curtain of the K blood came out and titos with his arrogance concluded he killed he mastered AES and the pon is amazed how could Hashem allow this how could Hashem not do anything How Could Hashem withraw his hand so to speak to let such a vicious happen in the world even if CLA isra is worthy of punishment even if we're not deserving of Gul but how could such a thing happen how could not be concerned for the desecration of his name and then titos took thousands and thousands of Jewish boys and Jewish girls back to Rome together with the Treasures of the BAM mikash and he was going to use them for immoral purposes prostitution homosexuality and the gamorra records that a number of the young children jumped off they went into the ocean they drowned rather than using these again there's some question about are you allowed to commit suicide prevented but nevertheless this is the Misa that is recorded we know that the gamar does tell us that titos had a very Anonymous end that he said that when there began to be a tremendous storm on the sea Tito said to God ah God you only have power on the sea yamu but on land you have no power that's why I could destroy the B mikash says fight with me on land and we see how powerful you are Andes said about tias I don't need to fight with you on land I could take my most insignificant creature a tiny in in a gat and that Gat will be enough to defeat you and it is recorded that a parasite or some type of insect entered titus's nostril and it became like a tumor and uh it actually says he he had excruciating pain for a number of years and the only time that this Gat stopped uh knocking in his head is when he heard the sound of a blacksmith so thear records if it was a non-jewish blacksmith titto paid the guy money if it was a Jewish black smth Tito said it's enough that you see the downfall of your enemy but eventually this parasite got used to it and it kept on knocking titos eventually died when they did an autopsy in Rome they found that the N had grown to the size of a bird and it had metal copper Claws and an iron beak and this was the death of titos aesu tells titos I don't need to fight against you you are so insignificant that the smallest of my creatures can destroy you there is one thing about Titus though that Titus did say a very interesting thing he is of course known as a Russia a m a m a blasphemer one who did the Unspeakable the unimaginable in The KES Akash but Josephus who was a Jewish man who was actually a witness to the Corbin he had been a Jewish General he had surrendered to the Romans and he's somewhat like our Benedict Arnold Josephus quotes tetus as saying when tetus is looking at all of the fighting that there is with within the Jews themselves Tito said at one point so so says Josephus perhaps I don't have to destroy the Bas on mikash if I wait long enough the Jewish people will destroy it themselves again we don't know if tius actually said this or not but this just shows you that the sin of am Isel during the bayen was so apparent that even the russos was able to see it and he knew that that would be a cause of the of theban so this is z remember what the adversary did in the holy of holies okay we're now going to go to uh yourest number 19 19 and this is what is called a it is based on a in Daniel where Daniel's prayer Daniel was uh in B during the first Corban We Begin every day with this to you is righteousness and charity upon him and to us there is only shame we have been so to speak complaining until now we've been talking about sorrows and suffering and Punishment and Hashem and we've been saying Hashem why why why why do you let this happen why don't you step in and stop it and of course that's what we think about anti of but in some ways that may give a person a wrong attitude that may give a person that may give a person ESS complaints against the justice of God so after a relatively long Litany of all the things that have gone wrong we now have to declare that God is righteous and God is merciful and all that has happened to us is because of our Aus and in fact even in hashem's punishments the is is much much greater than the punishment we know at every levah when a person loses a relative there is what is called sad in which you justify the righteousness of God's Den it comes from IV when IV does all of these sufferings goes through all of these sufferings I says hasem gives and takes May the name of God be blessed and we say this to this very day so this is a long in which all of the that he's done for us and all of the ways we did not repay that uh that with with our mitzvos and just one point if you look at the very end of the uh capital of the Kina so again there's a reference that's a little obscure says to you hasem is Charity righteousness for the 900 years that you kept your anger intact and was not expressed and we have B upon him and therefore we ask hem to have mercy on us again so there's always an obscur your reference what is the 900 years in which God's anger was not expressed so the mforum explained that this is a close approximation if you think about the number of years from the time the Jews left till the B mikdash we know that the B mikdash was built 480 years after that's in the book of Mal that's in the book of Kings we know that the first Bas of mikdash stood 410 years so 480 plus 41 is 890 years that's almost 900 years and the EMS is the Jewish people were not deserving to even leave mitzan we were on the 49th level of impurity the Egyptians said or the angels of Egypt said why should the Jewish people be saved on the they too are Idol worshippers like the Egyptians so for almost 900 yearses kept us alive even though we didn't have this of and for that 900 years or the 890 years your anger did not get expressed until the Corban there is another Point here as well if you factor out the years of traveling in the desert it turns out we were in Isel before theban 850 years because you have 480 I'm sorry I'm sorry 440 and 410 because just from the time we entered erel that's 850 years this too has a great great significance we read in this morning when you have children and grandchildren and you will be in the land a long time and you worship idols I will destroy you Rashi points out from kazal that the gatria of is 852 years that had we remained in erel 852 years of a there would have been no possibility of our recovering Mah you will be utterly lost and therefore God brought the Corban two years earlier not 852 but 850 so it turns out that that which looked like aan I why is Hashem so mean he brings theban earlier than he had to for it was precisely thatb that created the possibility of GAA so when it says here Hashem waited X number of years it's not only referring to the fact that he waited until a certain point to destroy that is R but the fact that he did it earlier and not later is also R because had it been 852 years that would have been and the gatri of would have been you would be utterly destroyed so this is our in which we're Mel on ourselves the righteousness of yeah we go now to 21 and 21 is a is the first P first Kina that we have that is not authored by rabar AER in fact this is anonymous we really don't know and this describes the death the martyrdom of the 10 great sages of am Israel these are called theug malus and there are many many different poetic and midic versions of their death you may recall that in theer we recite this during the mus but not this one we have a different a different p and there are many sh in terms of the story between what we yum Kipper and what we say Tish some of the rabbis are different and some of the details are different as well another thing you need to know about the as is that although poetically it is described as if they are killed one after the other in fact they did not live in the same time they were killed over a period of 100 years and some died one point some died after the Corban some died before the Corban some died in the Barba Revolt at betar but withes saw that although these were deaths that occurred at different times and at different places and they didn't occur right at the same time and not by the same Emperor nevertheless they were connected there was a shay that Hashem wanted to take the great sadim from the world because we were not worthy of being protected as it were the presence of sadim in the world creates protection this is an importanta now in the past few years we've lost G who by and large with some exceptions had they lived a long time over a hundred years old and one might wonder you know why should I cry so much you know a person lives 104 uh people die I mean it's not like somebody was taken as a young person but one has to understand that the death of a sadic isn't simply oh I've lost the sadic or the sadic is not here it makes our very existence much more precarious much more dangerous much more risky there's a of that are the worlds in this because of their Ty and that is why on one hand we have actually two contradictory ideas it's hard to reconcile them that the death of sadic takes away sh from the world and it makes us vulnerable at the same time we say the death of a sad is a kapar for the world sadik but the EMS is it may not be a contradiction because it is not the death alone that it's a kapara but if through the sadik's death I realized how much was lost how much was taken away and then I resolve in my own life to do whatever I can in whatever little way to be precisely because I'm aware of the fact that we need sh that then becomes a that could be mat the world I'm not going to go over all 10 they are enumerated here but uh the first three are very well known uh we have R shim gel who was the n ofel and by the way this is there are a few R but this is the r that is the father of rasi the author of The Mish R's father is one of the assar har Mal he was the N ofel RAB Isel was the Coen God and there is the story that uh that this is not actually mentioned here but in the yam Kipper version of the story it is said that the death of the 10 Martyrs was a kapar for the 10 tribes that were involved in M because the tyus says you take a person and you sell him you kidnap a person and you sell him you are of Misa so the 10 are connected the 10 that were Mo and rim was the first to die but then RAB Ismael was so beautiful so handsome that the Caesar's daughter begged to keep him alive her father said no so instead she asked that his face should be peeled so she could keep his facial features on on some type of uh base and that the father was perfectly happy to do and as his face was being combed with iron Combs again this happened with RAB AKA as well when they reached the place of the Fillin he cried out because how could he lose that right to serve hasem or that privilege of serving Hashem within there is one passage here again it's so we're not it mentions though that after raban shim was executed Decap itated RAB is took his head and he put his mouth on his mouth and he put his eyes on his eyes and he said how could the beauty of Amel be taken away and people ask the obvious question RAB Ismael was a Coen G Coen Coen G A Cohen GLE is not allowed to become t with a dead body how is RAB isma allowed to be Mame himself and you know there are different answers that are given uh one of the answers is that RAB is is already T like the is already T because he's in a building and if there's a dead body in the building he's T and the it is if a Coen is T there is no is for him to become T again now the question is whether we pass him like that that's not so clear but at least according to the rivid you would have an answer another answer is ran shim was the N of and to honor a n there is no limit just like a m Mitzvah if you have an unattended Corps that nobody is taken care of the co is Mame so for a Nasi no matter how many people are going to take care of him it's never therefore according to this a CO is allowed to be Mame uh for a n is again had to learned this exactly the next is rabi Akiva all of us know the story of rabi AKA how he was an Amis till the age of 40 but then he devoted himself for 24 years and his wife let him do this she said not only let him she encouraged him to do it and he became the greatest of the gdan and he dies Al kesem and he said all of my life his said to him Tyra is this the reward for Tyra and RAB AKA said all of my life I wanted to fulfill the p with all of your soul heart with all of your and now I have the opportunity of giving my life forem and it is said that even the angels in heaven went to the Almighty and they said this is the reward for your T and answered keep quiet this is my thought don't question me the Shah kades gives this explanation the Tyra says originally God created the world with theid barim he then saw that the world could not survive with strict D so he combined and ra that's why it says but that is only true for most people for the great sikim of the generation Hashem still gives the and that was hashem's so when hasem says says are judged by my in strict D even RAB AA doesn't make it but that's how sadik andar are judged then we talk about raitz the M raitz uh technically you know he was not his own rashash a maturan was somebody who translated or communicated the teachings of others but he was a godes and it mentions that the the pigs were dragging his tongue that tongue that expressed the words of Torah so beautifully was being dragged by pigs in the dirt gar actually tells us Elisha Aya who became a heretic became a heretic for many reasons but one of the reasons he became a heretic was he saw the tongue of Rus being being dragged in the dirt and that he couldn't understand how the tongue that taught Torah would be treated this way so what do we think about when we think about the AR The Cedars of L in fact the whole our street across the street AR is named after the that are called Aran The Cedars of Lebanon they protect us with their strength with their Torah with their righteousness on one level it's Tish so we mourn not just the destruction of the mikdash but we mourn the death of the the death of which is even greater than the but we then have to resolve that if we live in a world of shama of desolation we have to our pun Madre try to make up try to build what it is that we've lost I just want you to go back for a second one of the is r and very famous story it's based on that he was wrapped with the saer Tyra around him sponges that were wet with water were put on his heart to delay his death so he would suffer the burning they set it on fire but they wanted to slow up uh his death so he would he would suffer and as he was being burnt to death he told his t him in his final moments of life that I see the parchment of the Torah burning but the letters of the Torah are flying up to shamay the Jewish people or many can be physically destroyed although we will never be totally physically destroyed but the will always be here there will always be be the Holiness of Tyra that will sustain us that even if the physical safer gets burnt the letters of Hashem that those physical SW represent will never never be destroyed uh the next few SOS we're not good to say I'll just say a few words about them outside these areos these are not from RAR these were written many many years later and these are connected to the Crusades the Crusades uh the First Crusade was in 1096 that often is referred to by the Hebrew date Tatu which is 489 6 which is uh 10 uh 56 which is uh 1096 this was the this was in the time of Rashi the balas and uh Christianity was trying to regain control of er Israel but on the way as they went through France and Germany they decided to Massacre many many Jewish communities thousands of Jews maybe tens of thousands perhaps even hundreds of thousands of Jews were massacred in these Crusades because they refused to convert to Christianity uh the Mori you may have heard the mor was one of the great great Reon him the morai and his entire family was wiped out in what was called the Rin flesh massacres uh it's interesting that the Bala toos uh were both in France and in Germany but we have very very few tosos from the German communities we only have them from the French communities and it's been posited that has because the German bosos were almost totally wiped out and their sorum were totally destroyed so there are many many ideas uh which talk about the persecutions of the First Crusade based on the concept that all of theban that happens to CL Isel is an outgrowth of the N above that because there's no mikdash which means there's no sh because we are distant from God because we haven't merited Redemption every single thing happens and in fact there's a very famous passage in some of Theos that says we do not add an extra day of M for these tragedies because all of these tragedies are subsumed in the Aus of the ninth of in fact this is what the the brisar used to quote this when people ask the brisar Rev why should we not have a separate day of fasting in memory of the Six Million Jews who perished in the Holocaust that's certainly a devastating tragedy and the brisar quoted the Kos a mo one does not add a mo for this one folds it in so to speak in the ninth of of that is one important point a second important point is that in these kenos it describes a horrendous scene which again Hally is very problematical in which the goam surround a a castle in which families are trapped and says convert or we will destroy you and it seems to be recorded that parents killed their children and then killed themselves in order not to be tortured into rejecting uh yish and embracing AAR again Hally this is a very very serious problem but there is no question that historically this did occur in which Jews not only were willing to die before would go to aod Zara but Jews actually took their own lives and even the lives of of others and when we think about the Crusades we also think about the Holocaust we think about all of the toras and we know it's because we don't have the mikdash we don't have the relationship with Hashem that there is Hester upon him in the world and when there's Hester upon him all of these things happen uh but the next thing we're going to go to is number 26 and again we're back to rabar and we're back to a medish that is describing something that happened in the first biki was given the task of being the prophets of Destruction the prophet who communicated that the mkes would be destroyed and the prophet who actually experienced the destruction and he didn't want this job he asked Hashem don't give me this job why do you give me the job that I'm the one that has to come and tell am Israel that their time is up but that was his mission in life his in fact of Schiller often points out that was a Sayes and cannot be an a person unless they're happy unless they're in a a state of Joy so how could youro be the prophet of Destruction how can you ever be a prophet of Destruction if naua can exist only in a state of sim and the answer is in some paradoxical way as broken as you are you're CER with who gives you and gives you at the same time so the med tells us that went to the and he called on Theos ab and yob pray for your people why are you sleeping why are you in your grave come and D from Israel and the medish itself is very different than the Kenan in fact one might even suspect that rabar had a different medish than the one that we know the med in says that Theos pray to hasem but Hashem refused to listen hasem said to abrah it's not enough mosu Hashem rejected their prayers and the only prayer Hashem was Mel was the prayer of RA IMU when ra IMU said the night was supposed to be with Yakov and love un switch leayer and I had made up with Yakov secret identification signs so he would know that whether it's me or or her and I gave those signs to my sister so she would not be humiliated and Hashem said for that I will bring Redemption to the Jewish people ra the ra cries for her children and hasem says withhold your voice from crying will be reward for your actions your children will return to their boundary and the explained what's going on here and had the AA and yov produced 12 tribes and the Met says he brought them onto Theos amazing things Miracles that wasn't enough Rael listen Rael basically delayed it only by by a week I mean she married him a week later what's the big deal and the B muster say that with ra we see the idea of Love Selfless Love she didn't have to give her sister anything her sister was doing something wrong to her it was wrong for Leia to take rl's place but ra had so much ra so much so much love so much of a desire that another Jew shouldn't suffer be humiliated or embarrassed because of her that she gave up something very very precious and that will be the siba for cla's Redemption because if the Corbin came because of a sin that was not deserved as Rook used to say the g will come when there's when we love even when there's love a reason that we can identify and it is that that is the now the reason I say that rear may have been operating with a different version is in his part in this PE you're going to see in this Kino you're going to see he does not assign a special role for he simply looks at a communal prayer of abov Moshe and then s RKA ra Le and B and he has a version that says it is the collective Merit of the A and the imah that are going to bring a ga for am Isel and the gor tells us that although no longer have means Hashem loves us in the Merit of the that we don't have that we've lost but there's something else that we have and that is bis ofice bis aice is the Covenant that Hashem made and that Covenant cannot be abrogated so this describes yo approaching theice Ando the medis tells us one other Unforgettable scene a scene that can riip your heart out if you think about it that as the Jewish people are being led in Chains after the Corban and they're walking over corpses and body parts but those who are still alive are being led in Chains and youri not only turned to the aice but he also turned to M Renu M raenu actually appeared in body and the people saw m raenu coming and what would you think if you see Mau coming ah our Has Come Back Our Redeemer has come back this will be like a second although we're in we'll be brought back to but alas that was not to be M was there to comfort them but he had to tell them theban isem Gaz I have to leave you now at least physically I will be with you in spirit through the tah that I taught you but it is not yet the time for the [Music] Redemption the next one 27 Again by is yet another medish involing that at the time of thean yo was wandering around in a stuper around the harabas around the temple mounts and he encounters a beautiful woman who is disheveled and in rags and in sackcloth Theus she seems to be in a very dirty filthy state but he sees a tremendous Beauty but she is fearsome and frightening to look at and he's not sure what he's looking at is this a human being is this a demon is this an Angel Of Destruction what is it and he demands to know who is this thing person demon Angel and the woman answers him I am not a demon nor am I a human being I am one who belongs to one and to three and to 60 and to 12 and to 71 and and again it's very enigmatic but she explains I come from one that is a who is unique in the world that the whole world didn't believe in Hashem and he was the one person who taught about Amun and Hashem and I am connected to three those are the three of us generally AB is and yob and I'm connected to 12 these are the 12 shim and the 60 are the 60 myriads the Myriad is 10,000 600,000 Jews that left mitan and the 71 is the Sun hedrin and what this basically is is this woman as it were is nothing less that the representation of the Jewish people that took in this Vision at least we don't know if this is a vision or a reality did he see this uh was it physically there that Amel was like the Widow that is bereft of her husband husband at least temporarily in which there's a tremendous Beauty and Radiance and goodness but it's covered up with filth now the filth is not only the persecutions of Gus but the AOS that we commit but the Aus are only surface deep beneath the surface there is Beauty and goodness and Holiness and Radiance that we are connected no matter how far a Jew is we are connected to aru and to the and to the generation that left MIT and to the Sanhedrin which is the source of Torah and Jero then reassures the woman that there will be a Redemption and she begs the Novi to be mispo to be mispo and go to the others that's why the MS is um many mafor actually say this was the Prelude to the one we just read about going to the others because logically it should have been in in reverse order but again what we learn from this is we learn that intrinsically even when I'm Israel is an a state of sin there's a great love that Hashem has and a great love that we have for Hashem even if we not we cannot always consciously feel it and know it and it is from the goodness that is within us that Chua becomes possible because chuva in a very literal sense means to return on one level you return to God on the other level you are returning to yourself you are becoming what it is you already are it's not about changing it's about reconnecting to what is already within a person just as this woman covered in filth and in rags and in dirt is a person of great great Beauty okay we now turn to L number 34 uh this is a p by uh RI very very well known Rudi was one of the great uh gulum in Spain during the Golden Age this were several hundred years before the Spanish Inquisition uh he was the author of the kuzari uh his name is spelled out in the AC Yehuda and we'll have another uh Kina from him I'll I'll I'll mention the biography a little later but this is referring to the story in the gamarra about the killing of the navi zakar now this is not the Zakaria of the bay sheni that has a Biblical book this is a zakara Ben and this was over 150 years before the way before the he was giving to that if they don't do CH they will be a Corbin and a gas and he was murdered by the orders of King Yash he was murdered in the B mikdash itself right next to the m he was both a Coen and he was a Novi and it was and it was shabis and it was yipper and he was was murdered and his blood bubbled like it was boiling blood and it could not be covered no matter what you put on top of it it bubbled and it percolated through for almost 200 years when thear the general of came to destroy the bikash he saw this bubbling blood and he wanted to know what it was so they didn't want to tell him the story they said well uh this is the blood of coronos it's boiling whatever it is so he sh a lot of animals obviously that didn't happen and they finally forced them to tell them that we killed a Novi we were not maab muser so he said I'm going to Plate this blood and he began slaughtering indiscriminately says 80,000 people he slaughtered to get that blood to rest and that blood still didn't rest and IU zaratan finally said to the blood really saying to Hashem do you want me to destroy everybody and I'm Israel which of course he would do if if he got the green light and then the blood stopped and the blood rested and it was able to be covered able to be buried the gar gon tells us that Naran was so shook up as brutal as he was he saw what an a was the a of killing an Navi had such a punishment that he realized what's going to happen to me for all the people that I killed and all that I destroyed that kazal record that he ran away from the Babylonian Army and he became a g he became a righteous convert so we see in many ways as tragic as this is we see number one the tragedy of not listening to Ai and what that could result in and we see number two The Power of chuva that even if a person does chuva really for the most ulterior and basis of motives in other words he basically said hey I'm scared I see they killed one n and because of this 880,000 people get destroyed what's going to happen to me who destroyed 80,000 people or more that even that type of Chua is accepted by the re and this is the Kina that memorializes that incident the next Kina is L 36 this is also VII and this is really one of the most beautiful uh poems ever written about Eric Isel uh this introduces a whole section of the kenos that are called cim zionite poems about the love and yearning for ER Israel again you need to know a little bit about VII he grew up in Spain he was which you might call upper middle class or even wealthy he B he was always a from person a learned person at but was very much involved in the political social life of Spain he was involved in poetry in literature in secular Pursuits as well and he had a very very good and comfortable life in Spain but he had a tremendous hisus a tremendous yearning to come to the land of Israel ER Israel at that time was a land that was full of poverty persecution wild animals hostile Nations did not have the conveniences that we know today even traveling to ER Israel would be very very dangerous if you recall the Kari which is the dialogue between the king of the kazars and the the rabbi is writing both sides of the story you may recall that the Mel asks the asks the asks the rabbi I don't understand you Jews you pray every day bring us back to ER Israel and you have a chance to go and why don't you go out and the answers to the king your majesty this is our shame and this is our embarrassment and this is our busha that we ask Hashem for something but it is like the twittering of birds it doesn't mean anything this is R himself talking and if you know the end of the K the story actually says the is going toel and that is what R Le did that he traveled to AR Israel great great dangers he had no money he came there poverty stricken and according to Legend it is brought down in some R Shan but we don't know if it's an actual historical fact outside of the gates of yam an Arab Horseman drove by and pierced him and he died right by the gates of yushan without ever uring in this song where he turns to C ER Israel and he says seon why don't you pray for your people for the Jews to be with you pray for those who are imprisoned in the gas but what is so unique about this song is unlike the other kinos by the way this was not even written as a Kina it was put in as a Kina but it was not written for TI of in particular all the other kenos ask Hashem for go a build the basa mikash bring mashia this goes off in a different direction this says even if the land is desolate even if we are poverty stricken even if we suffer I would want my my arms and my legs and my feet to be scratched walking on the stones of the nvim walking in the place of kadua breathing the air that even was not this is a whole new perspective he sees the of and the connection toes not only in terms of all the good things that are going to happen but as difficult as the reality is he says I prefer the poverty and suffering of coming to the land of Hashem over all of the riches and the Comforts and the decadence than I can have in the lands that are far from AES and that is the uniqueness of this song which basically says it's especially I guess for us who are to be in arel there's a certain even in thean itself that we are Z to be in this land we take it for granted sometimes but what a great great gift even even balus even in persecution and the truth is we have it a lot physically better than R Le at it to be Mak the great gift that Hashem gave us and then be M for the ultimate Gula as well yeah the next one is 41 and this is a Kina that is written by ra of renberg R mayor renberg one of the greatest him he was the Reby of the rush and this describes the burning of 24 wagon loads of manuscripts of gamorra in Paris in the year 1242 and one has to remember this is before printing the 24 wagon loads of garas were virtually all of the farm in the entire country there was almost impossible to learn any Torah Tor shal uh because of this and this occurred on the Friday the Arab shabas of Paras in the year 1242 and because there was an that there was a remes that the Gaz was for that day not the calendar date but AR this is the Gaz against the T that promulgated it is recorded in the shal some other we him that this is a Tinus sikim that there are sikim that fast every year to this day on Arab chabas Paras to commemorate this tremendous destruction and remember renberg talks about the idea that the Torah is destroyed how can Isel possibly survive it is recorded in the and some other sources that this tremendous Corban of the Tyra was connected to another burning that happened a few years earlyer in which the rambam's works were burnt by the Catholic church because of some complaints that Jews made they were Jews some of them who felt that the ramban's work should not be studied especially the because this was integrating Aristotelian philosophy with Torah and as a result the Catholic church now no Jews burnt the r boms Farm that's a common misconception but the church that looks for any excuse said oh the Jews don't like the r boms works will burn it and there was AA several years earlier of the rambam's works and the gum said later that because of the biz in CL Israel not showing coverage for the rambam we lost we merited uh losing all of the 24 wagon loads of tyrants brought down that raboa who had been involved in the anti- ramam campaign uh dedicated his life to Chua because because of this he felt he needed to Chua he wrote the sh Chua and he wanted to go toel to Taria to ask M at the rambam's K but he died before he reached reached ER Israel so in this way R Rutenberg talks about the burning of the Torah but he includes in it the death of Etc and he makes the point that in many many ways he uses a very Vivid poetic metaphor why did is the wedding of why did give the Torah with fire as if to Sayes knew ahead of time that this wedding would end in Fire and that is why at the wedding of mat had because this would end with a and it ends with turning to hasem Mercy that we should be to keep the Torah in its physical sense and in its spiritual sense and that way the AE of Destruction should turn into the AE of building and warmth and and light uh one other thing about RI Rutenberg it's not NOA this Kina in particular R Rutenberg towards the end of his life was taken hostage and held for ransom which was a common practice among the medieval rulers and he posined he told his kahila they are not to pay any ransom for him based on the principle that when you give in into these demands it's a miss and gon then the G will keep on taking hostages and he ordered them not to pay for his Ransom he spent seven years essentially in prison although he was allowed to have visitors and he taught Tyra and he wrote Chas even after he died they refused to release the body unless a huge amount of money was paid eventually several years after his death someone did pay the The Ransom and was to be buried next to the marami brittberg let me point out that the marami renberg's own talmid the rush disagreed with his re and he said aor you pay whatever ransome you can but nevertheless this was the maram Pak and as long as he was alive that was the Pak that was followed okay we're going to do the uh next to the last Kina this is M uh this is the only Kina that we recite standing up uh this is an anonymous Kina uh it's an extraordinarily moving and Powerful it begins with the words is not Shem you don't pronounce it K but Ellie means to lament uh we should we should mourn foron and the cities and it uses two Michel like a woman giving birth a woman in the Pains of Labor that is suffering and like a Young Bride that is widowed by your husband the concept of get getting up and saying Aina is very very significant because although this is a day of mourning a day of grieving a day in which we feel that our world or we should feel how that we would feel our world is destroyed it is ultimately the Raton Hashem that we have to go on we have to live a normal life we have to do Mitzvah we have to we can't be may we can't just give up and say that there's no point in going on so standing up is this idea of returning to normaly just like after Shiva a person is supposed to walk around the block you return to ordinary life but when you return to ordinary life you don't forget about the basa mikdash you take the basa mikdash with you you have a Kina that you take with you as you enter ordinary life that even when it's not Tish we think about the Bas of we think about the G we try to be to that we should be to the G we try to live a life in which we and CLA Israel become worthy of the Gul so this is the first step towards normalization we go back into the world and after we we sit down in our regular seats and the like but we take theban with us wherever we go now the two mam are very very important because let's look at the T the mus of the Widow who loses her husband that is a permanent loss NE a person loses someone until at least they're never going to get him back again but the woman who's suffering labor that's a very different type of thing there is pain there is struggle there is suffering but in the normal course of events from that pain from that struggle from that suffering will come blessing and New Life in a way what the python is trying to do is the python is trying to Jose perception to reality our perception is that the Corbin is like a widow that lost her husband and then that's what says the Jewish people are like a widow that would suggest permanence but in reality the reality is this is not the bereavement of a widow but this is the pain of a woman in birth that out of this pain out of this suffering will come a tremendous G may we be that stand [Music] up the next one is a very short one this is the only one that we say both at night and in the morning and this is from ra shomo IB gabal the acrostic spells out schlomo he is the author of Adon among other things and this is a very strange dialogue between the the tribe of the 10 the the 10 tribes and the two tribes and that is the 10 tribes were exiled over 100 years before theban and they are arguing who has it worse the 10 tribes say we are worse off because we didn't come back and we were exiled years earlier and the second group says we are worse because we were destroyed twice and you were only destroyed once uh and the ultimate uh message is that it makes no sense to compare who suffers worse the message ultimately is there has to be unity and among Isel and the Pyon ends with the idea that I who has ra on his people will have raim both for the 10 tribes and the two tribes and there will be a time in which all 12 are going to be reunited in with [Music] the sh