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Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg zt”l: The Need for Tisha B’Av Part Four



To recognize that the loss of that Beis Hamikdash is really something significant, that I suffer now every minute of my life from that loss, is an absolute necessity to keep our sanity as Jews. To keep an equilibrium of what it is to be an “oveid Hashem,” of what it is to know our G-d and to relate to Him. Therefore, we must use a Shiva asar B’Tamuz and a three weeks and a Tisha B’av to make us aware again, to keep us from falling into the trap of accepting this as normal. We need to recognize that we live as an incomplete peoplehood, that we are lacking basic necessities for living as Jews, even as human beings. The world had a Beis Hamikdash, the world was able to bring Korbonos; was able to know the meaning of G-d as long as a Beis Hamikdash was there. The tremendous loss of Kedusha, the loss of awareness of the Ribono Shel Olam and his relationship to mankind, is responsible for all the horror that has since taken place. It could never, never have taken place if the Beis Hamikdosh and Korbanos were there and the people of the world were able to come and see it. None of the horrors that the generations since have gone through could have taken place the same way. None. If there was an inquisition and there was a Gerush Sefard and a Gezairas Tach V’Tat, and a Hitler, all of these are because we do not have a Beis Hamikdosh. It leaves us without the essential that we need to maintain ourselves as an “Am”.

 

But there is a sense that goes deeper yet, that we have to constantly be aware of. It isn’t only that we don’t have a Beis Hamikdosh, it isn’t only that we can’t bring Korbanos, it isn’t only that we do not have that intimacy and that immediate experience of G-dliness which the Beis Hamikdosh alone was able to give.

To a Basar V’dam in the Chomer, the bodily material form it is impossible to exaggerate loss. This is a sickness that should hurt, that should give us such deep pain. It is only our insensitivity, having become numbed and paralyzed, that we can go on for a day and not feel the inner hurt, the inner squeeze of being without a Beis Hamikdash. This should be the norm. It is the feelings of those who originally lost it, and the feelings of those today who sit with Tikun Chatzos and mourn and feel the actual loss of the Beis Hamikdash. They suffer a pain that hurts because what they need is not there. But it goes even beyond this. Not only do we accept a world without a Beis Hamikdash, a world without the Mitzvos of Korbanos, a world without all the Mitzvos of Taharah as being a tolerable world, but worse, we accept a world in which Am Yisroel is in Galus as being a normal tolerable world.

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