What Does It Really Mean To Mourn For The Temple?
Adapted from Rabbi Braun’s sermon in 5767
I own a thin volume entitled Aish Kodesh that is, hands down, the most powerful collection of sermons ever recorded. It was written by Rav Kalonomous Shapira, the Piasetzna Rebbe, during his tenure as the rabbi of the Warsaw ghetto in the 1940’s.
Imagine for a moment delivering or hearing a sermon on the week before Tisha Be’av before the last Tisha Be’av in the ghetto- commemorating one churban, one destruction from within the context of another.
Rabbi Shapira poses the following question: why is this Shabbat called Shabbat Chazon? It is so named because the first word of our haftarah is chazon – it describes the tragic vision of Isaiah relating to the impending churban (destruction) of the temple, yet for the last two weeks we have read what we call haftarot d’puranuta, haftaraot of destruction yet we do not name the Shabbat after the haftarah!
His question is a decent one, but his answer is spectacular and it goes to the heart of our Tisha Be’av experience.
He quotes a Midrash on the song of songs detailing the 10 languages used to describe prophecy. One of the sages then claims that chazon, or vision is the worst of the 10?
That, says the Piasetzna, is because speech and listening cannot adequately capture a prophecy of tragedy. You can speak about tragedy or hear about it but that in no way compares to seeing it, to experiencing it and certainly not to living it.
In years past we used to believe, he says, that we had some inkling and understanding of the tragedies of the churban, but now that we are living that pain and affliction that we are we know that we had no clue at all. Only now that we have seen it and felt it do we know how they suffered almost 2,000 years ago.
Therefore we call this Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat of the vision, that great and terrible vision that captured the suffering and tragedy of the Jews.
That sentiment is right. You cannot appreciate suffering until you have experienced and seen it. Yet it raises a very difficult question regarding our observance of Tisha Be’av. Most of us have not known and currently are not experiencing that kind of suffering and tragedy- how then can we properly mourn for the temple? Bringing misery and agony upon yourself just to appreciate Tisha Be’av would be ludicrous.
Does that not mean that it is impossible for us to really mourn the temple’s loss? If so, then why bother trying?
This is a question that I have thought about for years but in reality they are not fair questions because they are based on incorrect assumptions about the nature of Tisha Be’av and our mourning for the temples. We assume that we mourn only for loss of Jewish Life, the temples and Jewish sovereignty. If that is right then the questions are good questions. But I would argue that there is more to it than that.
In the words of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, “the Jew does not mourn that thousands of years ago the temple was destroyed, but that it had to be destroyed. Not over the destruction but over the causes of the destruction! Thereby our minds are directed not so much to the past but rather the immediate present time, to put it to the test of considering whether these causes have disappeared, whether obedience to the Torah, whether the noble humanity which this torah endeavors to obtain has found realization In our Jewish spheres…
In other words we mourn because the state of Judaism was so terrible as to warrant destruction and an exile and we continue to mourn because we are in that same sorry state.
The prophet Isaiah points to a number of problems with the Jewish society at the time.
- They were sinners who had forsaken God.
- Even their worship was by rote and insincere.
- They did not practice justice and righteousness and did not protect the widow and orphan
- Even the leaders were corrupt and greedy and did not live up to their tasks and responsibilities.
That could well be a description of the state of Jewry in the 21st century. The majority of Jews have forsaken God and religion. Most prayer is rote and meaningless. We do not fully practice righteousness and justice and protect our poor. Our leaders in Israel- forget about it, sexual scandal after financial scandal.
When you stop to think about it- it is terribly depressing!
That is why we mourn on Tisha Be’av and that is why we are sad and that is something that we can relate to.
