We see even from the teachings of Chazal that our structure of mourning must remain limited to what is practical

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number of years ago, I spent the summer break as the rav in a prestigious girls camp outside the Tristate area. Campers came from all over the country and made for a wonderful blend of girls and young women. At the onset of the Nine Days, I delivered a presentation about making the Churban meaningful and relevant, citing various maamarei Chazal and classic sources.

As I headed back toward my cabin, a young lady who was perhaps 14 or 15 approached me and respectfully asked if she could pose a question about my speech. I assumed she needed some more encouragement and ziruz on the topics I had touched upon, but her question completely threw me for a loop.

“Why was the Rav talking about all the mundane things we lost as a result of the Churban?” she asked. “Why didn’t he speak about galus haShechinah and the tzaar associated with it, and our need to mourn for that?”

I responded with the first thing that popped into my head, and asked her if she even knew what galus haShechinah meant, especially as I had recently seen from Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz ztz”l that even he didn’t feel he was comfortable enough with the concept to speak about it.

I politely explained to her that for most people like myself, if we cannot make the Churban relevant in a relatable manner, we will come away with nothing more from the Nine Days than unlaundered clothing and an increased longing for fleishigs.

Maybe one day I will merit to reach the lofty level this girl was aspiring to. She certainly had good intentions. As for the rest of us, maybe we need to start someplace else.

WEsee even from the teachings of Chazal that our structure of mourning must remain limited to what is practical.

The Gemara tells us about a group of perushim (exceptionally pious individuals) who wanted to outlaw eating meat and drinking wine all year long due to their mourning over the Churban and the role of meat and wine in the avodah, until Rabi Yehoshua told them that according to that logic, we should also never eat bread, fruit, and water, because they too were featured at different times in the avodas haMikdash.

This, of course, would be impossible to impose on the entire tzibbur. As a result, Chazal instituted various takanos as zecher l’Mikdash, the most familiar of which is to leave an area unfinished on the entrance wall of our homes. Those takanos were within everyone’s reach. There was an important lesson here. Before reaching for the stars, we need to know where we are, and what we can handle.

But even within the confines of the mourning we are capable of, the fundamental question is — are we actually mourning? Do we truly feel that we are lacking?

It is evident that the more distant in time we are from a tragedy, the less intensely we feel it. This is certainly the case with a tragedy we never experienced personally. The Midrash in Eichah tells us that Rebbi (Rav Yehudah Hanasi) was able to darshen the pasuk “bila Hashem v’lo chamal — Hashem swallowed us up and had no mercy” 24 different ways. Rabi Yochanan, who lived sometime later, darshened it 60 ways. The Midrash could not possibly be telling us that Rabi Yochanan was a more prolific darshan than Rebbi, the quintessential teacher of Klal Yisrael.

Perhaps the message is that since Rebbi lived that much closer to the Churban, he couldn’t bear the pain of darshening the pasuk any more than 24 times, as the Midrash tells us that after he finished expounding the pasuk, he needed comfort. Rabi Yochanan, on the other hand, lived later enough that the impact was diminished for him, and he could maintain his composure to continue darshening the pasuk more deeply. He was able to see the pasuk as a piece of Torah to darshen, like any other pasuk.

In our world, anyone old enough to remember the horrors of Churban Europa tends to have a much more difficult time discussing what happened, even without all the graphic detail. For later generations, on the other hand, we have entire sections in bookstores and courses in schools on Holocaust education. It is much easier for us than it could ever have been for those who personally experienced it, if they talked at all. They lived in that world. We didn’t.

SO where do we begin? There is a cryptic but perhaps very significant Gemara in Bava Kamma (59b) that relates the story of Rabi Eliezer Ze’ira (the humble one) who was taken to task by the Reish Galusa for wearing black shoes, a public display of aveilus for the Beis Hamikdash reserved exclusively for those considered to be a gavra rabba (a great person). The Reish Galusa was unfamiliar with Rabi Eliezer and assumed that he was a show-off.

After being thrown into solitary confinement for his presumed haughtiness, Rabi Eliezer had no choice other than to notify the Reish Galusa that he was indeed a gavra rabba in his own right. The Reish Galusa challenged Rabi Eliezer to prove his prowess in Torah, which he did by asking the Reish Galusa the following question. If someone damages unripe dates of another’s field, how much must he pay? On the one hand, they are not mature yet, and he shouldn’t have to pay their eventual value. On the other hand, he shouldn’t just pay what they are worth today, for eventually they will become ripe and very valuable.

The Reish Galusa was stumped and asked Rabi Eliezer what the halachah is. He answered that we evaluate the price of a field with unripe dates compared to a field that doesn’t have any dates at all, and pay the difference.

Why was this halachah, of all things, so significant that it entitled Rabi Eliezer to go free and get the Reish Galusa off his back?

Perhaps there was a hidden message here that Rabi Eliezer was trying to teach along the way. True, it is impossible to decide what the worth of these dates is on their own. But one thing is for sure. A field without dates is not the same as one with dates. What was his point?

After the passing of the Chazon Ish, the Brisker Rav said, “Until now we lived in a world with the Chazon Ish. Now we live in a world without the Chazon Ish.” Even those of us who were incapable of evaluating the Chazon Ish’s greatness knew that we now lived in a different world. And it diminished us all.

Rabi Eliezer was saying to the Reish Galusa as follows: Although you maintain that only great people have the right to mourn the Beis Hamikdash in a manner that you feel is ostentatious, the truth is that every single Jew has the ability to appreciate the fact that the world is simply not the same without it. And we all have a license to mourn that.

This has got to be our starting point. One does not need to be on a lofty spiritual level to appreciate what Yirmiyahu Hanavi responded to the Greek philosopher who asked him why he was mourning mere sticks and stones. He challenged the wise man to ask him a number of deep questions, and to the philosopher’s great surprise, Yirmiyahu answered them all instantly. The Navi explained that all of the chochmah in the world radiates from the Beis Hamikdash. Whether it is philosophy or any other discipline, Beis Hamikdash is the source of all wisdom. With its loss, we are all smaller and a lot less wise.

Do we not all pine for solutions to our myriad crises, from tuition to shidduchim and everything in between? Do we not suffer from the loss of the open miracles that we once had on a daily basis in the Beis Hamikdash to solidify our emunah and bitachon? And without the Beis Hamikdash, the gates of tefillah are more difficult to pierce, and we are bereft of prophets to reveal what Hashem wants from us, especially in the difficult and trying challenges of galus. Who can’t identify with that? The world is definitely a very different place.

Rabi Eliezer Ze’ira was not only giving a hint of what aveilus of the Churban is to the Reish Galusa. He was sharing it with all of us. It is something we can feel, and something we are mandated to put into action. And perhaps it is appropriate to internalize the feeling that we are indeed in a different world.

That is where it all starts.

I recall a conversation I had with an aveil during his shivah for a parent. He was describing his ride to the airport as he was escorting the niftar to be flown for kevurah. As the car was making its way down the street, he had a surreal feeling as if the trees weren’t really trees, the cars weren’t really cars, and everything around him was almost otherworldly. Such is the world of an onein, an aveil. He is in a different world, and nothing feels the same, nothing is the same.

Rav Chatzkel Levenstein ztz”l approached a bochur in his yeshivah who, during the Nine Days, was organizing an itinerary to visit kivrei tzaddikim during the short summer bein hazmanim break in Eretz Yisrael after Tishah B’Av. He was disappointed that the bochur was engaged in such activity at that time of year, despite the boy’s explanation that he was hardly arranging a trip to an amusement park or such.

The Mashgiach asked, “Would an aveil during shivah be doing such a thing?”

To the Mashgiach, the Nine Days were exactly the same as aveilus. When one is in that world, nothing else matters. Nothing else exists. He is in a different world.

Chazal, in addition to the adopted minhagei Yisrael over the years, instituted halachos and customs to give us that otherworldly feeling for this short period known as the Three Weeks, Nine Days, and Tishah B’Av itself. We are not in the same world of music as we are the rest of the year, nor are we as indulgent in our eating practices. Our focus should be elsewhere, and not on finding viable substitutes.

On Tishah B’Av itself, our entire world order is suspended. This was not intended as a punishment, but rather as a favor. How else could we feel the loss of what we don’t have, as long as we are walking around in the same world as always? The Mishnah Berurah quotes what earlier poskim have taught us, that on Tishah B’Av we don’t gather in groups. Even those who have the custom to visit the cemetery on Tishah B’Av should go alone, or with only a few acquaintances.

We must strive to create this otherworldly ruach in our homes. It is told by children of Rav Moshe Soloveichik (Rav Chaim’s son) that the atmosphere in his home during the Nine Days was so thick you could cut it with a knife. It simply felt different. My own chinuch as a child had its powerful lessons as well. Whereas all year long, the radio was frequently on in the kitchen, either for news or other benign entertainment, on Tishah B’Av the house was quiet. Nothing else was happening anywhere, no news, no games, no talk shows.

I recall one particular year when the Russian Soyuz space program performed a joint docking mission with NASA at the height of the Cold War, something that was assumed to be extremely significant at the time. As much as my brother and I wanted to follow the historical event in real time, it was a non-starter. Nothing else mattered or existed on Tishah B’Av.

One of the most impactful experiences that has stayed with me throughout my life is from my time in Camp Torah day camp in Boston (a division of Congregation Chai Odom) before I was a bar mitzvah. The director, Rav Dovid Moskovitz shlita, would have us all stop singing Bircas Hamazon upon reaching u’vnei Yerushalayim, and we would recite those words slowly and with a sense that the Three Weeks are a little different from the rest of the summer. For a precious few seconds, we were in a different world.

When we become greater still, maybe we will have a handle on galus haShechinah, too. In the meantime, let us do what we can. And doing what we can is more significant than we may realize. The Ramchal wrote that nobody should ever think that his contribution in mourning over Tzion v’Yerushalayim is meaningless and accomplishes nothing. We are mandated to make the contribution that is within our ability, and give Hashem nachas ruach seeing the effort we put in.

We are living in a different world during bein hameitzarim. Rabi Eliezer Ze’ira taught us that our world is truly a different place than it used to be. For this short time, we make a concerted effort to drive the point home as much as Chazal felt we could handle. It is within reach, and we have to strive to absorb ourselves in mourning the world that was.

If enough of us do it right, we will merit to once again live in the world we have been longing for, bimheirah beyameinu.

Rabbi Plotnik, a talmid of the yeshivos of Philadelphia and Ponevezh, has been active in rabbanus and chinuch for 25 years and currently serves as ra”m in Yeshivas Me’or HaTorah in Chicago.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1072)