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By Rabbi Daniel Glatstein
A Mother’s Cries
The Midrash Eichah relates an incident that is
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ship, anxiety, fear, uneasiness — whose family has not been profoundly affected? We all know people who are no longer with us. Loved ones, gedolei Yisrael, all of us were touched by the pandemic. Some people were at death’s door and recovered, but they may never again be the same. People lost their livelihood. Almost as if adding insult to injury, we had to fast and cry, sit on the floor and mourn for a building that we have a hard time relating to and that was destroyed more than two thousand years ago. And yet, let us try to understand: How can a Tishah B’Av like the one we had in 5780 be even more meaningful and more impactful than any Tishah B’Av we have ever experienced? Does a Tishah B’Av in a time of tzarah allow us to connect with the soul of the day in an even more profound way?
JULY 15, 2021
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ver the destruction of the Temple that was torn down and trampled upon, I shall lament with a new elegy every year. These are the words of Rav Eliezer HaKalir in Kinnah 24, in which he laments that he will compose “a new elegy,” a new kinnah, annually. What does the mekonein, the composer of the kinnah, mean by the phrase, “a new elegy”? Nothing new has happened; we already know the story. It is static; the details don’t change. Why must he compose a new hesped every year? The recent Tishah B’Av that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic was a very difficult and painful day, coming after months of isolation and fear. It had been as hard a period as many of us have experienced in our lifetime. There was a time when many of us thought that while our parents and grandparents lived through history, we were just looking back at it. But now, we, too, lived through historic times. Global pandemic, health crises, financial hard-
also found in Maseches Sanhedrin. A broken woman who resided in the same neighborhood as Rabban Gamliel had a young child who suddenly died. She would cry over her son at night, and Rabban Gamliel would hear her cries. Whose heart would not melt upon hearing the cries of a woman, especially a woman crying over the death of a beloved child? And yet, the Midrash adds a startling point: Upon hearing the sobs of the woman in mourning, Rabban Gamliel would recall the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash, and he would cry along with her. He would cry so intensely that his eyelashes would fall out. The talmidim of Rabban Gamliel decided that the woman must relocate, and they facilitated her move to a different neighborhood. What is very curious is that Rabban Gamliel, hearing the woman cry, would remember the Churban HaBayis. How did the woman’s tears remind him of the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash? Rav Gifter says that we can derive a fundamental principle from this Midrash. Rabban Gamliel, with his discerning ear and sensitive heart, was able to trace back to the shoresh, the root cause of this woman’s suffering, which is also the root cause of all suffering — and that is the Churban Beis HaMikdash. Thus, Rabban Gamliel was not crying solely for the one single woman’s personal plight; rather, he cried for the cause of all suffering. In a world of a Beis HaMikdash, in a world where gilui Shechinah is manifest, suffering is no longer extant. The Mishnah at the end of Maseches Sotah likewise apparently attributes all deficiency, even b’inyanei gashmiyus, all that is lacking in the world in physical phenomena, to the Churban Beis HaMikdash. The Gemara states, “Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says that Rabbi Yehoshua testified: From the day the Temple was destroyed there is no day that does not include some form of curse. And since then, the dew has not descended for blessing, and the taste has been removed from fruit. Rabbi Yose says: Since then, the fat of fruit has also been removed.” The world plummets daily, even from a physical standpoint. But this downward spiral was precipitated from the day the Beis HaMikdash
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Is the Churban the Source of All Suffering?
