"Every night in my dreams I see you. I feel you. That is how I know you go on … Once more let us open the door … There is some love that will not go away” (CD)
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| Let us mourn today, and rebuild tomorrow! |
Perhaps, the one day a year that remains far from our understanding is Tish'a b'Av. We are told that it is a day of fasting.
Why?
Because both the first and second Beis ha'Mikdash were destroyed on this day.
Many people, especially children, struggle with this concept. They ask, or perhaps only think, "What's the big deal? Why should I mourn for a building that was destroyed over 2,000 years ago? What does it mean to me?"
We never saw the Beis ha'Mikdash. We cannot grasp what we have lost since we have never experienced it.
So why do we mourn? Why must we fast?
There was once a couple who remained childless for many years, yet awaited Hashem’s intervention and salvation with complete and unrelenting faith. In due time, Hashem heard and answered their tefillos, as the woman became pregnant. The couple was overjoyed and filled with elation, while they patiently anticipated the birth of their child. However, when the woman went into labor, she was met with difficulty and danger. The most experienced and reputable doctors were called, and then the top surgeon was dispatched. Finally, the husband was ushered into the doctor’s office and given the most dreadful and heartbreaking news.
“Your wife is in a very dangerous situation,” the head doctor painfully explained. “We are at a point where we may not be able to save her life. The only way that we can preserve her life is to allow the baby to die. You have to make the choice. Either you choose the life of your wife or that of the child.”
With this, the husband let out a piercing and agonizing cry. How many tears did he weep for a child? How many tefillos did he pray with incessant fervor to merit this boy? Yet, to enable him to live he must allow his beloved wife to die. How unbearable the pain!
“Let my wife live!” screamed the broken a husband.
The woman heard the noise from within the labor room, and realized the desperation and bleakness of the situation. She wanted to know exactly what was going on.
The doctor entered the room and told her, “You are very weak, yet the baby is healthy and big. It is not possible for you to deliver him. We must surgically remove the baby in order to sustain your life thus killing the baby.”
The wife trembled and said, “You cannot do this! I give you no permission!”
“But your life depends upon it!” responded the doctor.
The wife adamantly cried, “I must do what is proper in the eyes of Hashem. I refuse to take my life at the price of the life of my son!”
The doctors tried unsuccessfully to convince her to reverse her decision. They told her that she had her entire life ahead of her, and that her husband loved her. She had to make the decision on behalf of the both of them, they would say. Yet, she refused to be persuaded. All she ever wanted was to have a child to survive her.
She was ready and willing to give her life for that of her son.
There is no describing the cries and screams. The woman knew that her minutes were counted. She called for her husband, and said, “I am going to pass away as is the way of the world, and it is the design of man for his heart to forget the pain. Yet, there is one request that I ask of you. This boy that I am giving birth to will never see my face. Tell him about me. Tell him how I suffered for him, how much I love him. Tell him everything I did for him until I gave him my life. Tell him that I want him to follow in the ways of the Torah, and that this would give me the greatest of pleasure and merit in the World Above. And tell him that on every yartzeit he should learn to give merit and lift my soul.”
As the woman completed her words, the baby was born and she tragically passed away.
The boy lived with the memory of his mother – her image set before his eyes at all times. On her yartzeit, he recited Kaddish as tears streamed down his cheeks. When he grew older, each year he would close his store on that day, gather a minyan to learn Mishnayos, and he himself would learn all night and lead davening during the day with a broken heart.
Yet, the years passed and his emotions cooled and diminished. But, he was still loyal in observing the yartzeit, although he no longer closed his store or gathered a minyan to learn. And, even though he lead the davening, his davening was cold and expressionless.
Before evening, he went upstairs to visit his father, yet his father refused to see him.
The son shook in fear and asked, “Father, why do you hide your face from me?”
The father responded rebuking, “I was in shul, and I heard your cold davening. Is this the way a son davens for his mother – for a mother who in her death gave him life?”
The application of this moshol could not be any clearer. Chazal remark that the Beis ha’Mikdash is also referred to as a Mishkan since it served as a mashkon, collateral, for the sins of Klal Yisroel. It was through its destruction that we were saved, as Rashi relates, “Hashem unleashes His anger on wood and stones.” Rather than annihilating Klal Yisroel, he destroyed the Beis ha’Mikdash. The least we can do is observe the time period of its ruin by davening for and lamenting it! Would it not be only proper for us to mourn its destruction and pass along to our children this sense of indescribable loss – one that both they and we have never merited to see, yet through it we live today? Does the Beis ha'Mikdash not deserve at least this much?
The Navi Yirmiyahu states, “For I have heard an outcry like that of a woman in labor, in pain like a woman giving birth for the first time. It is the voice of the daughter, Tziyon, for she will wail, she will wring her hands, 'Woe is me, now, for my soul has been wearied by the killers.'” From here our moshol is vividly clear. A woman in labor has given her life to protect her son from death. Is it not appropriate that her son mourn her loss? Is it not a sacrifice worthy of mourning?
(Translated from Ma’ayin ha’Moed)
We may have never seen our holy Beis ha'Mikdash, but if we would only realize how it gave us life!
Let us keep it alive - let us bring it back alive!
Say to yourself ten times today:
"Hashem, I am sorry that Your Home was destroyed - because of me! Please give me the strength to help rebuild it!"
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