12/08/2024
A Chasdidic Rabbi once said, on Yom Kippur I don't want to eat, and on Tisha B'Av I can't eat
The laws of the three weeks
come to remind us to participate in the sorrow of the whole society.
And not stay focused on the joy of our life through our routine and pleasures.
Like in my personal life, when everything is bad and I'm in a period of depression, I can't sleep, eat or work. Not because I plan it or want to appear pityful, but because my situation really concerns me, so is in the life of the nation or the world, if I care about the situation, the worry of further destruction and disunity, I simply cannot stay in my routine or enjoy life.
Keeping the Halacha is what defines us as a community and this is one of the reasons it is important to keep it, but in my opinion it is not the main reason to keep the Halacha of the three weeks or the nine days.
The main importance of the laws of abstinence is indeed important in order to remember to participate in mourning, but the question is whether I feel the mourning for the Temple, for the essence of life, for social injustices, for the rift in the unity of the people, for the personal pain of everyone who is currently suffering as a result of the consequences of The national situation.
It is important to observe and ask myself whether it hurts me more that I didn't do my laundry and that I'm forbidden to eat meat, or the main focus and pain is in the essence of the matter as I mentioned above.
If we merely observe these laws in a robotic manner without considering the national or personal pain of the other, we have missed the whole point.
As Rabbi Hasidic said, on Yom Kippur I don't want to eat, and on Tisha B'Av I am unable to eat.
Those who mourn for Jerusalem will rejoice in it's joy.
Unlike the whole year when you have to fight our sadness, these days wr have to give place to feeling the energetic cloud of sadness and surrender to it. Because from empathizing with God's pain, which is the essential pain of the world, and from focusing on what builds a strong life and society and what destroys it, we will be rebuilt and redeemed.
Our redemption depends on focusing on the pain of others and of society as a whole.The less we will focus on our own pain and concentrate on society's pain as a whole the sooner we will all be redeemed.
And as long as we are focused on our personal pain, we move further away from understanding the root of pain, that is, the spiritual pain of all pains.
To get closer to redemption, we need to look at the root of the world's pain. On God's pain....