How to connect to Tisha B’av (the 9th of Av)

9th of Av 5784
Well, it’s again the 9th of Av, but this one feels different, in some way.
Never in a million years did I see myself joining a kitat konnenut (first response team) for the quaint little moshav (village) that I live in, here in Israel. Yet here I am, loaded and undergoing training to do exactly that.
I poke my head out of my daled amos (four cubits, i.e. my personal space), and the world seems very bleak indeed. Especially for my Jewish brothers and sisters everywhere. The children of Esav and Yishmael are taking off the kid gloves, and the insane secular world are fanning the flames of hatred against everyone on a scale previously unimagined.
Deep-fakes and fake-news is rampant, so much so that almost no one can tell what’s real and what’s not. I’ve even got antisemites sending me “video evidence” that what happened on October the 7th of last year was a mossad setup, and there are MILLIONS of people out there who are swallowing the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker.
There was a time, and it wasn’t all that long ago, where you could ask a Jew in the USA, that wonderful place that has been such a haven for the Jewish people for so long, “Can something like the Holocaust happen here?” and the answer, which would be quick in coming, would be “Of course not! In all of history there has never been a place that has been so good to the Jews as here.”
Factually, that’s not correct. There have been plenty of places over the course of our long history that have been exceedingly good to the Jews… until they’re not. Spain being a prime example, of course. The Jews had it good in Spain. In fact, there were several times during the history of Spain that the Jews had it good… until it didn’t. Jews were murdered and expelled from Spain on several occasions. The Jews in Germany had it good for a long time, too… until they didn’t. England was a haven for Jews as well, until they kicked them out. While it’s true that all of these places eventually brought us back, let’s not forget for a moment the bloody history that our people had. There may not be a single country in the entire world that doesn’t have Jewish blood seeped into its soil, either as patriots of the country they reside in, or it’s scapegoats, when things go wrong.

Everything in life is cyclical.

This is a lesson that Shlomo HaMelech spends the entire first chapter of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) to teach us.

(4) A generation comes, and a generation goes, and the world stays standing forever. (5) The sun rises and the sun sets, and to the place that it rose it returns…. (7) All the rivers flow to the sea, yet the sea doesn’t get full. To the place where the rivers emanate (the waters) to there they return. … (9) That which was, it what shall be; and that which was done will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun”

The lesson learned here is that history, too, is cyclical.
Why are we mourning the calamities of our past? Of what significance is it that two Temples were destroyed in Jerusalem? Why remind ourselves of the calamities of yesteryear?
The answer is two-fold.

The First Lesson of Cyclical History

First and foremost, because if it happened to us once (and we only wish it happened only once) … it can happen again. But here’s the rub: WHY? Why did it happen to us? Why have we been “targeted” by “history” to be the poster child of calamities?
It’s because of one thing: we forgot to connect with the King of Kings, who we know as “Daddy”. The Torah in Devarim (Deuteronomy) spells this out for us in no uncertain terms, HaShem brings us to a land, allows us to flourish there, and we do. For some unexplainable reason, we 1/5th of 1% of the world’s population (presently) shine out in ways that are inexplicable. We become wealthy, we become powerful… and power does something to a man, unless he recognizes himself as just a servant.
We don the trappings of power, get all of the things that a person could want for and lose the most fundamental of things along the way, our relationship with our creator. “I deserve everything I have. I worked hard for it”, well, the first part is debatable, the second less so. There are plenty of people who are wealthy, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with deserving it. There are many people who work just as hard as you, some maybe even harder, yet they don’t “get” the blessings that you do. Why is that? I don’t know. The question of “Why do good things happen to bad people, and vice-versa?” is a question of the ages, to whom even Moshe Rabbenu couldn’t fathom (according to the majority of opinions in the Gemara in Berachos). The bigger problem, says the Torah, is that we forget along the way just Who it is (Devarim 8:18) “who gives us the strength to do chayil”
Or we don’t, we don’t get the power, we don’t have the wealth, we work very hard just to try and cover the expenses of our day to day… and we complain about it bitterly. To ourselves, to our neighbors, to G-d.
Or maybe we’re middle class. Maybe we’ve got a good balance of things in life, but we’re just so busy living life, that the avodas HaShem we do gets boring and lost along the daily grind.
Sometimes, it’s not even that. It’s those other people. It’s the frummies. It’s the modernish. It’s someone looking for another chumra (stringency) or maybe someone who is looking for a bigger kulah (leniency)… that’s what the source of all of our sorrows comes from. If only everyone was… just… like… ME… it would be a perfect world! (No, it wouldn’t. Ask your wife, she’ll tell you.)
The bottom line, my friends, is that there is only ONE measuring stick for a person, and one alone, and it’s this: What is my REAL opinion of MYSELF, as seen through HASHEM’s eyes? That’s it. That’s the entire measuring stick. Do you want to know how you measure up? Open up the Torah, the Shulchan Aruch, and make yourself a Rabbi and ask them to tell it to you straight. Don’t explain to them anything. The need to explain usually means that you realize that you’ve got a problem in this area.
Let me let you in on a closely guarded secret: No one is perfect. I’m not. My Rabbi is probably also not (although he’s much closer than I am, and that’s all I need). The greatest sage of the generation? Also, no. We are not angels, and the Torah wasn’t given over to the angels, as chazal tell us. We all make mistakes. We all sometimes mess up and do things bad, and that’s ok. “A man cannot truly stand on the words of Torah until he has stumbled upon them” say our sages, ob”m. The only being in existence who IS perfect is HaShem. But he made us despite this recognition. That’s ok.
The problem is when we decide that “I’m good just the way I am”. Oy. That’s when all of our troubles start. This attitude is an “I can do no wrong” attitude, and it is the beginning of the end.
All of the generations that went through the destructions of our history, all of them suffered from exactly this problem. Remember! “There is nothing new under the sun”. A “moreh heter” attitude (one who permits themselves to do anything) is me making up a new measuring stick for myself, which, of course, no one else can measure up to but me.
Go through the prophets, read the histories. Our downfall has always been when we make our own measuring stick by which we measure everyone else, and – for some odd reason – no one else can measure up to. Then, I can even justify myself for behaving the way that I did (and do), because after all… they just aren’t of my standard.
And we have successfully repeated this process throughout history, ad infinitum, and I wish ad nauseum. Aren’t we sick of this? What have we gained from it? Even more so, what have we lost because of it? We all read of the calamities of the destruction of our people throughout history. Don’t blame HaShem for any of it! He told us that the world is set up in a certain way, and that our choices will affect the outcome.
The bottom line? (And this is something that each and every one of us needs to say to ourselves, and before HaShem) “It is all MY fault”
What do we stand to gain from saying this? (preferably repeatedly)
That brings us to the second lesson of history being cyclical.

The Second Lesson of Cyclical History

That is: the good things come around too.
Why is there no Beit HaMikdash today, ask our sages? Because any generation that didn’t merit to see the Beit HaMikdash is like the one that destroyed it. But here’s the key lesson: we CAN change. We CAN become the generation that merits to build the Beit HaMikdash, just because we haven’t doesn’t mean we can’t.
The loss we are mourning today, the 9th of Av isn’t just the what was, but even more so the what-can-be!
I can sum up this entire lesson with the words of the prophet Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) in Eicha (3:40-41) “(40) Let us search our ways, and research, and return unto HaShem. (41) Let us raise our hearts in our hands, to G-d, who is in the heavens”
If each of us looks, searches and researches, who we are, where we are today, and where we are supposed to be (measured by HaShem’s standard, not mine); if we internalize this and open our hearts up to reconnect to HaShem with contriteness and feeling.
If we realize that everything that happened to all of the generations can (and – chas v’shalom- will) happen to us if we don’t change our measuring stick, and start living up to the One that matters; if we realize that if we do that, if we succeed in this task (and that the only one who can do that for me IS me), we can bring back HaShem’s glory to this world and actualize it.
If we do that, then when we say Yirmiyahu’s prayer at the end of Eicha “Please return us, HaShem to You, and we shall return; renew our days, as the days of old” we will merit to see the fulfillment of our prays. Perhaps even today.