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

Listen to the “Eyvus Hamoach,” the twistedness of the mind, heart, and soul that is involved when a nation can begin to feel, Rachmanah litzlan, maybe the Korbonos aren’t really that necessary after all. The loss of a sense of commitment to Hashem Yisborach, the loss of a sense of avodah, which can only be completely filled by bringing that korbon, the loss of the sense of what it is to really be able to physically reach out and show G-d that we give ourselves to You with totality and completeness. And if we don’t shed our own blood, it’s because we substitute the blood of the Korbon. But we are ready to give ourselves, our bodies, our blood, our all of us onto Your altar for Your sake.

The difference it makes that a man is able to carry this out physically, we’ve lost that. We don’t understand that, and that is the deepest tragedy of all. We’re coming to lose this urge, this longing, this yearning for an ability to express physically my need of G-d and the radical difference it makes in my daily life when I have this yearning, I have this push, I have this longing inside of me. The difference it makes every day that I live if I bring that Korbon once a year, the difference that it makes to me the other 364 or 354 days. The knowledge that I have open to me the opportunity, the desire, the wish, the decision, that I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna reach it. And you prepare for it and you come to it. And it goes, and it’s experience, and it lifts up. And the heavens open up to me. Then the using of it, and the recounting, and the difference that it’s made to me-it’s a different life. It’s a different form of existence.