KLM: How to Bond with Hashem on Tisha B'Av - The Moed of Empathy with Rabbi Asher Baruch Wegbreit

your Museum [Music] I want to welcome the members of yibene to the sheer which is uh let's say live in Israel and uh if there ever was a situation um let's say in the land of Israel where you feel the need for Jewish unity and uh you know uh and the the loss of not having the uh the base of migdash and a chamfoyage this year but I have a very um encouraging story to tell you at the end okay so let's start with this I have a lot of things I want to do it's not going to be very long share I'm going to proceed quickly however I want to cut tackle some major things okay after all Tish above is a moaid which means it's a holiday it's a spiritual time it's a time of opportunity and growth tremendous opportunity and growth and that's not just my idea reviews said that he found that one can accomplish more on Tish above than Yom Kippur did you hear that it's incredible that means there's unbelievable opportunity embedded in this very difficult day with that in mind I first want to tackle uh something that's probably the hardest aspect okay we know fasting for 25 hours in boiling hot uh weather is not easy but spiritually speaking emotionally speaking the kinos the Lamentations the the series of uh poetry of sorrow and pain that can be very difficult to sit on the ground and read them hours and hours and and the the people who are Adept in Hebrew will say that the the language is so poetic and so complex that they struggle with it and even if you have the wonderful translation of art scroll whatever it is at a certain point it gets hard and especially when you're sitting on the floor so what I want to do is opening opening goal is I want to give you a picture or a structure of the kinos that I think is not only a guide to connect to them better it will also help you achieve the purpose of the day okay it's really based on the structure of apha uh by urmia that's step number one so we're gonna tackle kinos through a deeper understanding of eha Lamentations that's step number one step number two is there are many Mitzvahs this is a moate it's a holiday it's a designated time and once you're doing all these you might as well uh attain full connections so we're going to go through kind of quickly we're going to go through the various Cabanas for Tish above okay and then I'm going to end with a story of hope all right that's the game plan so let's begin is a little bit easier if you when you go to show in the evening and you drank it and you prepared for the fast and you go to the show and you're you're full strength at this point and you hear is such a hard touching niggan right The Melody of aha is very touching and some of the Bali Corey the ones who read it even come to tears themselves and it's Tanakh it's the it's divine it's divine prophecy so the words of your Mia are indeed you you can connect for sure you can connect on some level but I want to offer you something I just found that's going to help you connect on a whole other level the rampal of which we base a lot of our Torah on the wrong house says there's nothing more painful to the Mind than a lack of clarity confusion and things not being um organized a lack of organization is frustrating to the mind that wants to attain truth and clarity very very challenging thing so I found this country I would love to give the person uh credit here I'll at least show you uh you know who you are I kind of doubt it's on here but I kind of doubt he's watching uh right now but you never know but he this country is what why can't I give him more credit because as many holy people uh throughout the generations he didn't want to put his name on this but what he did was there's five chapters five parachim in Ahab he gave you an overview of what the main purpose of each chapter is and through that we're gonna we're gonna see I I look at his this I look at it as he's showing us how your meow and Navi how he himself guides us to approach Tish above and the destruction okay so I'm thrilled about this because I think your mind that thirsts for this type of clarity and I think it will help your experience of AKA we'll discuss how to apply it to the kinos Okay so the first chapter oh and let me give one more backdrop about that I would like to suggest a like subtitle for Tish above if I may I'd like to call it the moaid of empathy you hear that the moate of empathy now we know that Hashem empathizes with our pain uh and struggles because it says emo enochibitsara uh the divine presence of Shem says I'm with them in their in their pain and agony now it's our turn to have empathy in the other direction so with that in mind this Mahaba explains that the first peric focuses now here we are we're going to extend out of our you know simple human uh human focus on this all right the first peric says the Mahaba is this it's focusing on the pain of Zion is yerushalayim with the divine presence there okay the city of yushalayim we mention it in our prayers and when we uh bench for food and everything it's all over the place the The Dwelling Place of hashem's Glory so the first chapter is from the pain of Sion because that City now realized it now recognizes its desolate of its inhabitants and listen and it it describes you shalim which is the same as Sion in this context as someone who's been banished like a banished a banished woman okay that's the first chapter looking at the destruction the pain the suffering from the perspective of the city the city of Sione with the divine presence how it looks at what just happened and where did the inhabitants go that's the first chapter okay that's already teaching us something about empathy second chapter the five chapters the pain of Kinesis Israel of Claudia Israel the pain of the Jewish people as a whole now the the pain here is not yet the physical pain and the suffering we're not there yet what we're talking about here is the disgrace and humiliation of the Jewish people if you've heard the expression t Faris Israel to pharis ISRO the the I love the word deferis in Hebrew and in English the Splendor of Israel splendorous Israel the the people the Jewish people in splendor and Majesty so the second peric is is bemoaning the loss of majesty and glory of the people the kings that you'll find this in the text the king and and the the royalty the noblemen the nobility this the the actual nobility in political terms the nobility in spiritual terms are exiled the disgrace and humiliation of the Jewish people a people that were bringing so much good to the world they they were unifying the whole world mankind with their creator there was in the world was God conscious at that time in incredible levels the wisdom the wisdom that emanated out from these noble people and now they're utterly disgraced that's the second chapter again first chapter the the the the the this special spiritual City looks upon its desolation second chapter the glory the from glory and Splendor the people end up in utter disgrace let's go to the third chapter the third chapter is so Jewish in the most complementary way okay and this is something that you really when you when you enter into and embrace the Torah as the word of God then you can understand this and when you understand who is Shem is vis-a-vis us then you can understand this what's occurring the Third pericarden the Jewish people are not raising their fists in anger blaming Hashem and they're not blaming the best they're not really blaming the Babylonians uh or the Romans they're not blaming them they're blaming themselves they're justifying what took place as Divine Justice that's a hard one to swallow for many of us but let me explain that um we're doing now until M mitts of the Parsha and next week um we were going to do the following okay the the Mitzvah of being mats Dien mean justifying hashem's Justice like on very difficult events so it's a pussic in davarium in echa where it says listen carefully Here Comes The Secret of why they didn't put the blame on anyone except themselves and it I promise you they weren't looking at themselves as hapless victims they had the courage to take responsibility that they were at cause why is it because the says and I'm just gonna clap I'm just gonna paraphrase for now the posix says says Moshe Rabino you know in the name of Hashem you should take to heart which means you should reflect not superficially don't look superficially at what's taking place when bad things happen to Jewish people commune with your heart look a little more deeply because you know a certain fact that will make it clear that why it must be something part of a part of us it says ready it says this is the pasig it says just like a father disciplines his son I mean discipline disciplines his son I'm not talking about all the abuses of that today okay no one is advocating that I'm certainly absolutely not but but the in the in the concept of the Tory and Torah says just like a father disciplines his son so too does Hashem your God discipline you and in a posse commission it clarifies that because he loves us right so the reason that they know there must be an explanation for the suffering and the difficulty is because they know this is coming from their Divine parent of harakamim the compassionate hashem's discipline is compassion as us all tell us what we had done was worthy of more than a destruction of the base of mignus that was merciful because as it says uh Hashem took out the Wrath on the on the stones in the wood but the point is this the Jewish people in the third peric uremia is conveying that every everyone is recognizing Hashem wouldn't do this to us he loves us he wants us to feel Splendor and Glory he wants a close connection he would never do this unless this was the best way to educate us to heal us to get us to improve to wake us up and Shake us up that he's only doing that as a parent who loves us so much so the third peric of Lamentations is the Jews recognizing that this is a result of how we acted towards each other how we ignored the Shem didn't act properly towards Hashem towards our fellow Jews towards etc etc etc you know the famous uh joke it says you know um if God didn't write the Torah whoever did was really was a anti-semite right because there's so much criticism and rebuke and Punishment right what's going on here right so we say it is Hashem who wrote the Torah and it is the actions and directions of a father who loves his uh his um his princes and princesses oh let's just put it put that the father loves all of mankind deeply right but uh okay so that's the third peric okay I'm just gonna keep reviewing so it'll hopefully penetrate a little more so the first chapter is looking at the Desolation from the perspective of Sione of the of the holy city when it was absolutely holy the second parrot is is focused on how um the Jewish people as a whole Claudius Rael um have felt a sense of humiliation and degradation from their Noble position third parrick is the Jews acknowledging that all of this tragedy is a result of their Collective responsibility worth pairing the fourth peric goes into now we're ready for details this is very interesting now in in the fourth paragraph of aeha it depicts the the personal suffering of individuals the people um starving for bread stabbings just the the you know the kind of tragedy that's uh been present for quite a great deal of our history in the fourth peric it starts to detail all this okay and the the point I want to make is the fourth parrot probably it doesn't have the same meaning unless you integrate the third chapter that we recognize that Hashem is a loving per and compassionate perfect parent you know uh no one can just take uh take the things into their own hands and and we're all Hashem does this in this sense you know Hashem is a perfect parent nothing's constraining this parent and the parents only doing it uh he didn't have to create us right so the point is this once you have that in context then we see the heartbreaking suffering uh of of individuals in Claudia Israel that's the fourth chapter and the Final Chapter is as follows is much much earlier than uh than Brooklyn it was definitely it was in the time of Lamentations oi Okay so what happened to us in the Final Chapter were in and this is this is what prayer is about in the Final Chapter we're imploring Hashem just please see what ha look what happened to us look at the disgrace look at the suffering and we know we know who's responsible but please Hashem save us because you are a compassionate father save us that's acha profound right and these these headings I think can really help you dig into AKA that's that's um purpose number one purpose number two however is this is I would I would say a spiritual Guide to the kinos to those things you're going to read many of them because you're gonna it's it there's gonna be you're gonna see there's um CEO there's there's Lamentations about Zion itself about what it's like to have a city that is emanating the presence of Hashem and has miraculous Divine Providence occurring so that's a focus in the uh in the kinos and so you can kind of draw back to think of the pain of Sion which was the the city which is the was the peak purpose of all creation okay what we can also do is see that think of the collective pain of these people that were so dedicated so so concerned about the welfare of the countries they resided in they were toiled in poverty in wealth they toiled over Torah it was always a priority they they were so giving and so caring and brought into the world through ashen's Insight charity and Justice and truth and all that right so just think of that as a backdrop when you're hearing about the suffering or or the humiliation of Claudius Rael okay then the other thing is there's all these tragedies and Etc later tragedies right tragedies that are occurring in the Crusades you know the the kinos go all the way up to the Holocaust nowadays right so you know I saw in this beautiful countries uh another point that I just want to um I feel can help you when you're reciting the kinos and that's this there's a lot of the Sham take Vengeance take Vengeance yeah you know cries for vengeance right and by the way you know you can really understand that feeling okay now we're not we're not supposed to take Vengeance on anyone okay and Vengeance has such a bad rep rap okay and for good reason all right but why are we begging for vengeance you we have to understand this this is so it's what I'm about to share with you is just so important about how you approach the Torah you know the Torah has human beings in it um but the thing is armasaur has it that these human beings are just extraordinary almost Angelic but they're not you're going to hear about their faults a lot in the Torah but they're such great people that when we see them act in a way that looks like we're acting we're really not correct I mean I I remember my grandfather his um he had a nobility about him that I you know I I I'm just giving a simple example you I know you know many people and you look at the previous generations there was a there was a royalty there so what I'm trying to say is this when they ask for vengeance it's not like someone uh you know uh uh whatever we see a guy slit our attire in the parking lot and run away ah you should blah blah you know they would that would their Vengeance was for the following they know and this is such a key principle the world was created to show that it has a glorious loving Creator and it's a good place filled with love and kindness that's that's the messaging you're supposed to get the Jewish people have become highly associated with Hashem the creator of the world when the Jewish people suffer the the whole messaging of the world is off and it's it's it's a total disgrace and humiliation to the creators aspirations for the world so if P the the desire for agendas is the fire is the desire that Justice manifests itself in the world that helps align people's when people see that crime doesn't pay right the world's a little more just when people see that they see Hashem better they're predisposed to see a shin okay so when you come into those Vengeance sections of the uh of the kinos of the Lamentations context it with this these are people whose heart breaks over the over the absolute opposite messaging about what the uh creator of the world's like what the purpose of the world's like how we're supposed to act towards mankind when you see murder and pillaging and destruction right it's just the wrong messaging it really really is so we don't blame Hashem it's so beautiful it's so it's such an emulation of hashem's selflessness the way we react we take responsibility right for our actions and yet we bemoan the results okay we're not saying oh how how could you act that way to me I don't care if my father did this we feel terrible about the impression it makes okay so that's my uh overview of this moate of Envy of the of the of the purpose of the kinos okay and I want to just highlight a couple mixes that came out in that discussion and then we'll do a quick view of the um other mixes of of Tish above and that and that'll be it in a little story so if if we see that the third peric of yermia is is justifying the din right is realizing is taking is Jews taking responsibility that we're the ones who did this right right we we caused our father to have to discipline Us in some of the harshest ways and manageable it's it's painful right so but haven't so you know what I'm all about I'm not only trying to reveal these misses to you I want you to have conscious intention so when you sit down tomorrow night and and the next day morning I once you have conscience intention to fulfill the Mitzvah of den that we say Shem we're on the floor and we're going to hear all about this we brought this upon ourselves and we know the famous statement of the talmud that any generation that did not rebuild the base of migdash they um are responsible that it didn't get rebuilt it's as if it was destroyed in their days okay we don't see it please God tomorrow we don't see the base of migdash and so let's justify let's fulfill the midst of it didn't because as Hashem commands so have that in mind okay and the other thing I think that comes out of it is you know like I said this is a holiday of empathy right um and what we want to do is we want to share in the Yoke of the suffering that's just occurred for all these generations and especially now right so I I I see I think identifying with this suffering uh and and recognizing its current status and just there's a misfit suggest empathize and feel the pain okay third Mitzvah in what we just discussed is imploring a shin there's a Mitzvah duraisa Torah commandment to call out to Shem in times of trouble and if you look at the rom-bomb in uh mishna Tara hilkas Tinus Allah through gimmo he says the Mitzvah isn't just about crying out about the troubles and the suffering he says the Mitzvah is to recognize it's not coming about because of politics and schmolitics it's coming it's coming as a result of our bad Deeds and we should improve ourselves okay so that's the third Mitzvah is to pry out to Shem in trouble and do the requisite chuba okay again reviewing in the in the in the discussion we just had about how to approach the kinos in Echo we have three mitzvahsuka din justifying the uh hashem's outcomes number two is um number two is feeling the pain of others uh that are suffering and especially the divine presence and thirdly is praying to Shem uh in times of trouble which we're in and uh taking uh Collective personal responsibility okay that's the uh first part now I have some slides to show you I'll go through quickly I encourage um those who are listening people at yibinet um if you'll please uh email me uh at rabbiwegbrite w-e-g-b-r-e-i-t gmail.com my name will be spelled on the video so anyhow if you send me an email see I'm gonna I have a PDF that has these slides that will cover a lot of your bases on tishbob all right so let me just do this and we'll be finished shortly okay we see the screen can you see this all good okay here this is an outline of uh of tishba from before and after so we have preparing for the fast observing the afflictions of the fast mourning and reciting kinos and then after tissue that's a special KLM thing we'll do at the end here all right so let me just do this oh I have this I I have something kind of uh an exciting new terminology um last year I called it covenantations which is that you express your intention for about the Mitzvah in in the personal language to Hashem but you know that's very good the uh covenantations everyone knows what that alludes to but I haven't uh also a more Jewish Hasidic way to explain this okay I'm sure people have heard of his photos right so um the the thing of going out and speaking your heart out to Hashem it's a great thing to do because it makes your relationship with Hashem real we're gonna do mitz boat of news did you hear that mitzvoted news I'm gonna say I'll sample okay good here we go so preparing for the fast is also mitzvah the national anthem of KLM one of them is if you're gonna do this anyhow have cavana connect to Hashem experience more eternity idealize your Mitzvah okay who's gonna be drinking tomorrow afternoon drinking water eating healthy food for fast and soup and whatever it is who's going to be doing that or even from now of course we all are all who are observing the Fest gonna do that so have in mind the Mitzvah and commands us to take care of our health and I'm sorry I didn't put it here he commands us to do things to have strength to serve him okay so let me let me give you example of mitzvotedus all right so it says like this while eating and drinking you should think and feel the following Hashem the reason I'm eating and drinking now is because I love you and I want to have the strength to mourn the horben the destruction okay let's go to the next one so that's pretty fast fasting right you know I'm really thankful Robbie garfinkel et cetera to the whole idea of cavana Mitzvahs you know many people are fasting but don't realize that the fast is not even not just a mere rabbinic it's different Kabbalah it comes from the navi and it's actually a Mitzvah there I said to listen to the Nabi so just it just takes one second to have in mind the Mitzvah medivory Kabbalah to fast it's enough to say I have in mind to fast on tishop of cashier tivash and as Hashem commands I'll just give you one examples of the midst photo Deuce okay Hashem mean the pain of these afflictions Express My Broken Heart over the absence of your home on Earth the base of migdash and the world not adequately reflecting on your glory you hear that's an example there's more here again uh please just ask me for the PDF and and and I'll send it to you next morning and reciting the kinos okay so this is also part of uh uh the morning on tishaba is um is a minhog uh well it's a rabbinic commandment so it's really rabbinic uh yeah I don't want to get into all discussion of that but I will add something amazing I just saw from Rabbi garfinkel the following ready for this the awesome sofa learns that morning uh on Tish above is a mitzvah derisa how so because when our own Cohen's sons died not of interview where they were burnt and and died so the posix says their commandment you shall cry over the burning of these holy people you know the tragedy that occurred you know in the Hanukkah Michigan so he says call The Homer if you're crying over the loss of Tootsie Deacon how about the destruction of the uh Vasa migdash uh that led to the to the death of so many holy people and the expulsion and the screen of the pricing it's it's it's multi-fold so he says It's A Kava Homer it's a 40 ra argument that that is actually a Mitzvah derisive you have in mind to do it like uh the uh awesome sofa okay uh we discussed this a lot um uh but I'll I'll just quickly read you the misspota deuce on this Hashem as I read and reflect on the suffering described in the kinos my heart is pained over the agony of my spot of my soul the spiritual plight of the Jewish people and the anguish of the screen of the divine presence okay please you can put in your own words the idea is Express what you're doing to Hashem this is the secret to fighting against Rhodes and mechanical experience speak this to Hashem speak out the Mitzvah if you will finally after the Patricia above um you know we I'm speaking to people in America and you know I you probably know that America has been called the dopamine the dopamine Nation right but now it's the dopamine Globe right right we know that um why do people have like an unhealthy relationship with the internet and things like that and they can't stop it and they're out with uh friends and family and dates and stuff and the the why is that so hard to kick why can't you just use it for its good purposes the answer is dopamine and in other words there's a sense of uh you know there's things going on that are really drawing to it so you're going to be affected by a draw to dopamine how about a healthy one as psychologists now say one of the best ways to integrate um healthy Behavior like here we're trying to achieve to Vegas to Hashem connect Hashem is to celebrate your accomplishments and I have a source I have Jehovah's he says the eight Sahara celebrates its slightest achievement against us he said you should um celebrate what you've achieved if you will with hashem's help against our opponent so I'm not even I don't even want to antagonize the SR right now but here are some of the things that if you if you'll get this PDF it's not just a PDF or if you'll review these ideas and most important they're not meant to just be heard they're meant to be lived and implemented right so if you do this even a semblance of it here are some things you can celebrate appreciate that you stopped and performed these Mitzvahs with intention and focus appreciate that you enhanced your relationship with Hashem appreciate that you extraordinarily enhanced your Eternal reward and appreciate that you grew in personal development okay try it at home uh oh I'll just end with a final little story um you look you know there's so much going on and this is meant to be um completely apolitical and I'm gonna try to express this in a political way um the um many of you recall that there was a there was a decision when there were certain protests to go to the city of benebrock and um that uh they were gonna go and they were anticipating some of the people were actually wearing like armed gear because they thought they were going to be attacked by the religious theorem and instead you know this was a kidish Hashem you know the rabbis of the city advised them you know they're your brothers and sisters you know take care of them you know some people bought drinks and things and they danced and but okay you expect me I'm the rabbi I'm gonna tell you how great the the religious Jews are what was even more moving uh was to see these people that they they're they're not hateful you know again I I'm sorry I'm gonna I'm gonna try and point the finger at like a media or something because the you know when you saw the interactions you saw these are good people and and they and they didn't act nasty in this now I'm sure there's exceptions on all sides okay but you you saw wow who's putting up this barrier between us the real one is the Yates are horror we know okay that he's just not he's he's not uh directly in front front of our eyes but so I I if you know that story there were some beautiful scenes I want to tell you it happened last night too you know my son uh to give him uh some little credit uh my son yes Sahar uh decided to go to a park in Jerusalem it's called gansaker and it is a place where they play soccer and this and that and um it's a place where many of uh the left uh are camping out and protesting in droves so he he and he's gone the other times too I wanted to go there and just you know relate to them and just speak to them so he he brought my wife you know my wife had finished work and they came to this park and the people come up and it it was so touching it was the same thing they said by the way you know what they said about my wife and yes oh you're not her 80. you know it reminds me of the story of my review green uh shlita is I took him to my you know my wife's family is not fully religious this was years ago and I took him to this event with his next-door neighbor I had um who was very very not religious and um she came she went in the van uh driving in this van and Ravi green was there and this and that and um so we all went after the event um we all went to Daven and this woman her name's Kenda she's speaking to my wife and you know you know she was saying what a nice person Robert Greene is and how they and and and my wife just said you know not so bad he's a ready not so bad and she said he's not a Brady he was wearing the black and the whole thing it's very funny so the first thing that happened is that they said you're not you're not like the other ones you know but the other thing what my wife said they're so beautiful they were such beautiful innocent people and when you have a discussion with them you know you realize you realize the these are people that are should love each other and do you know and it was um it was beautiful and touching you know so I just want to give you an encouraging Port from over here in Israel you know and I I think if uh us us Jews uh do a little more of this uh mingling together who knows what can happen maybe please God will see that Binion base of mcdosh okay thank you very much thank you welcome you're welcome yeah um thank you Rabbi thanks Barry thanks for attending all right everybody uh let's uh do our work tomorrow in Hashem should bless us all right take care [Music] oh they're not