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I live in tsfat but today I am traveling to Jerusalem. I am looking forward to seeing my sisters , my daughter-in law and my little grandchildren, who all live there. I hope to travel on the buses and enjoy the new light rail. Today Jerusalem is a city filled with life just as the prophet Zecharia prophesied 2000 years ago.
Thus says the LORD of hosts: There shall yet old men and old women sit in the streets of Jerusalem, every man with his walking stick in his hand for very age. And the streets of the city will be full of boys and girls playing
Zecharia 8:4-5
Yet, this coming Sunday, the fast of Tisha b’av falls and I, with other orthodox and religious Jews will be sitting on the floor, mourning the destruction of the Temple —an event which took place on this day 2000 years ago, One cannot help asking, Doesn’t this seem like an anachronism? It seems as if I, together with other religious Jews are stuck in a time warp and we are still behaving as we did for centuries, mourning the destruction of Jerusalem. We seem to be acting as if we haven’t noticed the miraculous return of the Jews to Zion and the incredible rebuilding of Jerusalem. Indeed could our behavior be considered as ingratitude?
If we consider only the physical, the external, then we can still say that the redemption isn’t complete because Jews still have difficulty ascending onto Temple Mount and praying there, and the Temple is still not rebuilt. On the other hand , if we apply the principle of Dayeinu, being thankful for every step to redemption, then our Tisha bAv mourning does seem hard to justify.
However, when we look at this period of the year through the lens of the inner teachings of the Torah and the inner work we need to do on Tisha BaAv, the picture looks very different.
The Zohar teaches us that the meaning of Jerusalem is the innermost aspect of our heart. It is the soul within us. Jerusalem is the point of holiness, the Divine presence that dwells within each and every one of us. Therefore, on Tisha b Av we mourn for the fact that the Divine aspect of ourselves is still hidden from ourselves. Our Divinity and the Divine potential within our fellow beings is hidden. Furthermore, when we look at our relationship with the Divine spark within us, we see that in the minute details of our thoughts, our words, and our actions, we don’t often place our relationship with God as the highest aspect of our priorities, as it should be.
By looking at the present through the prism of the past, we may gain an understanding of the tikkun we need to do in the present in order to rectify and correct the way we relate to our inner Jerusalem.
On this day, as we know, tragedies took place throughout history to the Jewish people, the main ones that we relate to being the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem and the subsequent bitter exile and dispersion of the Jewish people from this land.
But there was one that was prior to that and indeed is the root of them all. This was the rejection of the Land of Israel by the spies.
The Zohar relates the land of Israel as the consiousness of being in dvekut with God, in Oneness with the Creator. Just as He is compassionate so must we be compassionate. But that also means refusing to listen to the demands of our egoistic selfish personalities, which manifest as our will to receive for ourselves alone, and which is called the yetzer hara.
On Tisha B’Av, the Children of Israel rejected the physical land of Israel. Today, are we committing the sin of rejecting the consiousness of the land of Israel? If we look at the state of ourselves and the state of the world we cannot say that the Divine consciousness is at the top of our agenda. On the contrary, our inner Jerusalem is still in exile, weeping and mourning, for we are not paying attention to Her.
By each of us spending this Tisha B’Av in contemplating our inner reality and mourning the loss of godliness in our lives, we can start to take responsiblity, and thus create a vessel for the light of Divine consciousness, so it may permeate our lives and the lives of all who share our existence with us.
This podcast is dedicated in loving memory of my dear mother, Chaya bat Menachem Mendel a”h
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