The First Tisha B’Av
It’s here, the Ninth of Av, Tisha B’Av. It’s right now around 2:30 in the afternoon here in Israel.
Today, we’re commemorating many different things. While some people always remember the commemoration of the destruction of the two Temples that were on the Temple Mount, there are several different things that we’re also commemorating beyond that.
And the first commemoration that we have today, that we’re remembering, is the sin of the spies.
It was on this day, the Ninth of Av, that the spies came back to Bnei Yisrael in the desert and told them that we cannot do it. We cannot take over the Land of Israel. We will not be able to do it. We’re not strong enough.
And this was a slap in the face to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, to God, who took us out of Egypt in a miraculous way, saved our lives both inside Egypt, as we were getting out of Egypt, in the desert. Supernatural miracles everywhere we turn.
And yet the spies, who were the greatest rabbis of the generation, made a horrific mistake, and told the nation of Israel that we would not be able to be victorious.
And our sages tell us, Chazal tell us, that the people of Israel went back to their tents in the desert and cried. And the answer HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave, said to Bnei Yisrael, “You cried tears of nothingness. There was no reason to cry. I will give you something to cry about.”
HaKadosh Baruch Hu turned to Bnei Yisrael and says, “I gave you the land. “Aloh na’aleh,” let us go up and conquer the land, and you take the words of 10 men who go against me, and you cry over that? You cried “bechiyah shel chinam”, you cried for no reason. I will give you a reason to cry about.” And we are paying for those tears till today.
Both Batei Mikdash, both of the Temples, were destroyed on this day, on the Ninth of Av.
And many other tragedies befell the Jewish nation in the month of Av, and specifically on the Ninth of Av.
Have We Forgotten What We Were Praying For?
And for years, I was fasting, obviously, according to what we have to do, but I always wondered to myself, “What are we fasting about?”
Jerusalem is free. We could walk to the Western Wall. We could walk through the Old City. What are we praying about? What are we fasting about?
And then several years ago, I realized that my words of, “What are we fasting about? We can go to the Kotel,” is exactly what we’re crying about.
The idea and the fact that the Jewish people have become complacent and have said, “We’ve gotten the Kotel back, everything’s great”, is a tragedy in itself.
The Kotel Was Never the Goal
The idea that we’ve forgotten, we’ve taken our eye off the ball, we don’t know what the endgame is anymore. We think everything’s great, and this is what we have to get, this is what we’ve been praying for, for 2,000 years. No. No.
And the most dangerous mistake that we make is exactly that. It’s the idea that we can say we’re at the Kotel, things should be wonderful, we shouldn’t fast anymore. That is the tragedy. That is the real Tisha B’Av.
The Kotel is not our endgame.
When we prayed, and we sang, and we cried, and we bled to the words, “Im eshkachech Yerushalayim, tishkach yemini”, if I forget Jerusalem, I forget my right hand. When we say the famous song that we sing, “L’shanah haba’ah b’Yerushalayim habnuyah”.
While it’s wonderful that we have Yerushalayim, and it’s wonderful that we have malls in Yerushalayim, and it’s wonderful that we have the Knesset in Yerushalayim, and the Supreme Court in Yerushalayim, and many different things that show Jewish sovereignty over Yerushalayim, the prayers and the songs that we’ve sang for generations were not about those things.
The “L’shanah haba’ah b’Yerushalayim habnuyah”, next year in the built Jerusalem, was talking about the Beit HaMikdash. It was talking about the Temple.
And for those of you who went to shul today, and you read the Kinot, the Lamentations, of the tragedies that were bestowed upon us over the last thousands of years. The tragedies, and you read inside a text, and you feel like sometimes you’re living the prophecy.
When it says that the nations will not recognize your right over the Jewish Land of Israel, and certainly not over Jerusalem.
When it says they will erase and they will ask, “Where is your God? Why will we murder you and destroy you?”
When we read the Lamentations of the world keeping silent and saying, “L’ma’an Tzion lo echesheh”—for Zion’s sake, I will not remain silent.
And for years, it was very hard for me to fast and understand the tragedy.
But the tragedy, I don’t want to say it’s worse, it’s different. And for those who really feel it, it should be more painful than the past, and I’ll explain why.
In the past, we would look up to the heavens and say, “HaKadosh Baruch Hu, God, please save us from the nations of the world who are murdering us. Please save us from the people”– Thank you, Mary, for sharing. “Save us from the nations of the world who are murdering us.” The pogroms—what they did to us. The Spanish Inquisition. Titus, who went through Jerusalem and raped Jerusalem and murdered Jew after Jew after Jew, and defiled the Temple in every way, from bringing a pig into the Temple, to defiling with the worst of sins.
And today, if you go into Rome, you could see Titus’s arch, where they marched the Jews under that arch as to say, “God, you lost.”
So we’re back in Jerusalem, right?
Save Us From Ourselves
Well, I think perhaps last week, the last two weeks, were a lesson that God was trying to teach us, and that, yes, we’re back in Jerusalem, but no, we’re not back in Jerusalem.
And what’s so painful is while in the past, we look up to the heavens and say, “HaKadosh Baruch Hu, God, please save us from our enemies,” today, I feel that we have to say, “God, please save us from ourselves.”
We haven’t learned from the lessons of history. We’re dependent again on foreign nations who have never come to our rescue. And the best of our friends today—just as Jewish leaders who went to the United States during the Holocaust and begged of the president and of the State Department, “Bomb the train tracks to Auschwitz.” And the State Department gave back a statement that “We will remain neutral in our speech and in our actions.” They will remain neutral as Jews are burning and being gassed and being shot in the millions. And yet we don’t learn the lesson of history.
Thank God that for the last X amount of years, America’s been great to us.
Thank God that the British government has been great to us. Thank God the French government has been great to us.
But we haven’t learned the lesson of history.
We cannot, we should not, be dependent on foreign powers who have never stuck up for us in the past, who stayed silent in the best-case scenario.
And we’ve come back to the Land of Israel, to a land that we’ve yearned to return to for 2,000 years, a land that we are the indigenous people of, a land that our religion and our culture is completely dependent on. Everything from the blessings we make that mention Yerushalayim, to the specific laws that we have as Jews in the Land of Israel. Our whole being as the Jewish nation belongs to and is dependent on the Land of Israel.
And we were kicked out 2,000 some years ago by the Romans, who ransacked Jerusalem and ransacked an area that was called Judea, and changed the name from Judea to Aelia Capitolina and Syria Palaestina. And they changed the name in an attempt to strip us of our historical, national, and religious rights to both the Land of Israel, to Jerusalem, and of course, to the area called Judea.
So we’ve come back, and we’ve gained sovereignty over the land that was occupied from us, that we were expelled from. We’ve gained sovereignty over the land in which they murdered us. So we’re back, and we see the buildings, the leftovers, the things that survived from the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel.
We’ve come back for the first time in 2,000 years. We’re able to utter the words, “The Temple Mount is in our hands, “Har HaBayit b’yadeinu.”
And the world challenges us.
Not only does the world challenge us, the world condemns us. The world condemns us for coming back to a land that we have never given up on in 2,000 years. Wherever Jews were scattered to in the four corners of the earth, in our prayers, in our blessings, in our dreams, even if they beat us, even if they shot us, even if they gassed us, we never gave up on the dream to return to Zion.
And 70 years ago, that prophecy, that dream, became a reality, and against all odds, we came back to our land, the Land of Israel.
And just 50 years ago, even though the Israeli government was not even planning on taking over the Old City of Jerusalem, and it wasn’t even in our playbook, God would have none of it. He said, “Children, banai, bnotai, my children, I have brought you back to the Land of Israel. It wasn’t an easy ride.” Yes, of course, you should take over Jerusalem.
But between 1948 and 1967, there was a foreign power in Jerusalem, the Jordanian was in control of Jerusalem.
And we were almost okay with that. In 1948, we danced in the streets, again, for a good reason, that we regained sovereignty over parts of the Land of Israel. But we forgot about Jerusalem.
Only several parts of the population cried daily about the fact that Jerusalem was not in our hands. The famous Nazir of Jerusalem made a vow that he wouldn’t leave his house after they were kicked out in 1948 of Jerusalem, the Old City of Jerusalem. He would not leave his house.
And in 1967, in a miraculous victory, we gained sovereignty over Jerusalem. Har HaBayit b’yadeinu, the Temple Mount is in our hands.
The Temple Mount Is in Our Hands… Is It?
And what did we do 50 years ago when God gave us in a miraculous victory, the Temple Mount?
What did we do when our enemies were terrified of us? They could not understand how such a small nation, who was just beaten bloody 20-somewhat years before in the Holocaust.
The world population was down to 11 million Jews. In Israel, I don’t know what the numbers were, but it certainly was not millions.
And six Arab nations who sought our destruction, whose statements were not talking about Zionism, and were not talking about occupation. They were talking about Judaism and annihilating the Jews.
Six Arab nations who outnumbered us by 20 times, both the numbers of the people, of the weapons, and the planes, and everything else.
And in six days, six days alone, we destroyed those Arab armies who sought our destruction. And we took over the Temple Mount. We regained sovereignty over the Temple Mount, a place where the two Jewish Temples stood.
A place where nations took over that area only after those Temples were destroyed.
A place where the Muslims in the 7th century built a mosque, and then a shrine over our Holy of Holies. Nobody denies in the world that the Temple Mount was a Jewish area with the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem.
And there was a Roman occupation, and then there was an Islamic occupation. So they built a mosque on our Temple Mount, and we’re the occupiers. We are the occupiers.
And then Israel needs to appease the world, who completely fabricates history against Jewish history and tries to delete Jewish history.
And then our own people say, “You want to start World War III?”
The same people who justified destroying Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria under a false claim of occupation, as if we occupy the Land of Israel from others. Those same people who justify destroying Jewish homes and Jewish neighborhoods and giving the area away to those who want to destroy us. Those same people who justify destroying Jewish homes with a fabricated occupation claim. When it comes to the Temple Mount, even they don’t deny that there was an Islamic occupation of the Temple Mount.
But then they say to me, “What are you crazy? You want to take a bulldozer to the mosque?”
So Close, Yet So Far
And I’m not saying that today I want to do that, but there’s the hypocrisy of our own people.
If for years, we’ve been crying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, to God, and say, “God, please save us from our enemies.” In the prayer that we say today, we say Jerusalem is empty and barren. We can’t say that Jerusalem is not empty and barren.
But there is no longer an external force stopping us.
In 1967, we should have started building the Temple.
But, unfortunately, we’ve been in exile for so long that people have become comfortable with Tisha B’Av.
They sell chairs in Jerusalem. They call it a 9th of Av chair, which is a low chair. We should never call anything a “9th of Av anything.”
9th of Av is a temporary day where we’re still crying over the fact that the Temple is not built on the Temple Mount.
There was an argument whether they should even print prayer books out for the 9th of Av because once you print those prayer books, it’s as if you’re saying, “Okay, I accept it. This will be forever.” It’s just a temporary situation.
And during the davening today, during the kinot, I was crying. I was crying for the pain of the past.
I was crying as I read the painful lamentations of our nation in the past, of mothers who ate their own children from starvation. I can’t even imagine and fathom a situation like that.
But as I was looking into the prayers, and saying to myself, “What do we want from HaKadosh Baruch Hu? What do we want from God?”
Har HaBayit is in our hands, but Har HaBayit is not in our hearts.
The person that I debated just two weeks ago called me a jihadist for wanting to build the Temple, to build the Beit HaMikdash. My own people, not UNESCO.
So the message that I get, and I want to say something else on this horrifically sad day.
Today on the Temple Mount, over 1,000 Jews went up to the Temple Mount today.
That is a record. Now, when I say record, I’m not talking about breaking world records. I’m talking about a record. Listen to this record. The record is that more Jews went up today to the Temple Mount in a single day than they did in 2,000 years.
So when I was looking at the kinot today and I was reading Eicha, tears were coming down, but tears of frustration. But the frustration was not towards HaKadosh Baruch Hu, wasn’t towards God this time.
It wasn’t. If you read all the kinot, all the lamentations, and you read Eicha, there are times in the tefillah where people are turning to God and say, “How could you?” Read it inside. “How could you, HaKadosh Baruch Hu? How could you do this to your nation?”
And that’s what we read in the past, but now we have to turn inside and say, “Us, how could we? How could we receive Har HaBayit back from HaKadosh Baruch Hu in a miraculous war? How could we hand it over to those who want to destroy us?” How could we hand it over to those who are not even respecting that area, who are using that area for murder? How could we give it over to people who are bowing down to the opposite direction? How could we?
Maybe HaKadosh Baruch Hu in Shamayim is saying Kinot now and turning the Kinot that we said for thousands of years towards the “Hakadosh Baruch Hu,” why would you destroy your city? And HaKadosh Baruch Hu is now reading Kinot and saying, “Bnei Yisrael, banai, banotai,” my children, how could you? How could you give back the city that I’ve given to you, to those who want to destroy you?
Imagine a father giving his child a gift, a gift that symbolizes unity between the father and the child, and the child goes and gives it to its enemy, and the enemy spits in the father’s face. So how could we?
So on the same point I said, yes, Jews are going up to Har HaBayit, 1,000 Jews today went up to Har HaBayit. Do you understand that number? 15, 20 years ago, 1,000 Jews didn’t go up to Har HaBayit in a year.
So we went up to Har HaBayit today, but we have to stand in line, and we have to go in a straight line, and we cannot stop, and we cannot utter a prayer.
And who is doing this to us? We are doing it to ourselves. That is the tragedy for me, Tisha B’Av today.
We’re so close, but we’re so far.
And we’re not far because Hashem is far. We’re not far because HaKadosh Baruch Hu is keeping us in Russia or in Spain or in America or in England or in Germany. No. We’re far because we choose to be far. “Hashem karov lechol korav.” Hashem is close to all who call Him sincerely.
Recognizing the Redemption
Are we far? Are we far? We’ve seen the miracles of Kibbutz Galuyot.
We’ve seen the miracles of Jews being gathered from all four corners of the earth, literally from India to Ethiopia to China to America, all four corners of the earth gathered into the Land of Israel.
We’ve seen the prophecy come true. There are more Jews in Israel today than there were in 2,000 years. There is more Torah learning today than there was in 2,000 years.
For the first time since David HaMelech, we have an army of our own people who are defending ourselves, Jews in the Land of Israel.
And yet we’re so far away. And yet when we get to “Har HaBayit b’yadeinu,” the soldiers on Har HaBayit, listen to this, the heroes in 1967 who were on Har HaBayit, they went up to Har HaBayit and on the Kesher, on the communications, they screamed, “Har HaBayit b’yadeinu.” And you know what they did next?
They looked for the Kotel. They looked for the Kotel.
Why would they look for the Kotel?
The Kotel is a substitute. The Kotel is a substitute wall. It is not holy by the Temple itself. It wasn’t even a wall of the Temple, it was a retaining wall of the mountain itself to hold up the mountain so that the Temple could be built on top. And our heroes make it up to the Temple Mount in 1967 and say, “Har HaBayit b’yadeinu,” the Temple Mount is in our hands, and then they go to look for the substitute.
They’re not at fault. We’ve been so conditioned for 2,000 years in Galut, in exile. We’ve gotten used to it. This is our place now.
No.
No, the exile is not our place. It is not the natural place of the nation of Israel. Redemption is the natural place. “Yerushalayim habnuya,” built Jerusalem, is our natural place. The Beit HaMikdash is the natural place for the nation of Israel, not the Kotel. The Kotel is not a natural place. It is the substitute.
It is a sign of our suffering, a sign of our not being the nation of Israel in the Land of Israel.
Yes, it’s the place where we prayed when we could not go up to the Temple Mount, but it is not what we want. It is what they allowed us to do.
And at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, the Muslims would not allow us to go over the seventh step.
We couldn’t go into the Cave of the Patriarchs. The seventh step, can you imagine now we worship the seventh step, say, “Oh, the seventh step of the Cave of the Patriarchs.”
It is a sign of foreign occupation over the Land of Israel.
So of course, I respect the Kotel as a place of prayer, but where are our eyes? Our eyes should not be looking towards the Kotel. They should be looking up over the Kotel, on the Temple Mount.
So with tremendous hope, as I see that so many Jews did go up on the Temple Mount today, it’s changing.
I have a lot of hope for the future. Today it was painful. Last week, I went up to Har HaBayit for the first time in my life. I just posted it on my Facebook. It was horrifying for me. It was tragic. I came down depressed.
Someone said, “You can’t be depressed. You had the merit to walk on Har HaBayit.” I said, “I had the merit to walk on Har HaBayit and be treated like a criminal in my own land.”
So there’s a lot of mixed feelings here, but I am hopeful. I’m hopeful because like I said today, more Jews made it up to Har HaBayit than ever before in history since the destruction of the Temple, and I’m hopeful for that reason. My davening today, “menechem Tzion,” and to build Tzion, Yerushalayim, and God should have compassion on Yerushalayim.
MY Prayer
My prayer is no longer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu about his actions. It’s no longer “Hakadosh Baruch Hu, please allow us back home.”
We are back home.
It’s not, “Please give us the opportunity to build the “Beit HaMikdash.”
He did give us the opportunity to build the Beit HaMikdash.
My tefillah today, my prayer today on Tisha B’Av, is we should never have to fast again. Next year, we should be at the Beit HaMikdash, on Har HaBayit.
And the only prayer that I have today is, “HaKadosh Baruch Hu, ta’azor lanu, help us, your nation, your children. Banecha, bnotecha. Help us see. Help us.”
We say every day, “Atah chonen le’adam da’at,” You graciously grant knowledge to man. Hakadosh Baruch Hu, allow us to see. Give us both the knowledge and the courage to get out of this exile head, to get out of this idea of we can’t do what’s right, we can’t come back, we can’t take over what’s rightfully ours.
Help us get out of that. Help us get the strength and the courage not to appease those who want to destroy us, and not to give in because diplomacy says so to all the nations who have never acted diplomatically when it came to saving us.
Give us the strength to stand up for what’s rightfully ours. Give Bnei Yisrael the strength so that our prime minister not only doesn’t take down the metal detectors, but says to them, “You’re off. You killed two of our soldiers, our policemen, you’re off the mountain. Jews, go up and pray.”
Step by Step
We have to switch the equation. We have to change the equation.
Right now we’re worrying about what will they do. Let’s start worrying about what’s right. Let’s start worrying about what’s rightfully ours.
So my tefillah on this Tisha B’Av, Ninth of Av, is turning up to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and not saying, “Mah asita?” What did you do to us?
But rather turning and saying, “Mah asinu?” what did we do? And turning to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and asking Him to give us both the knowledge, the strength, and the courage to go to the next level.
It says in the Talmud and the Gemara that the Geulah, the redemption comes kim’a kim’a, it comes slowly, one step at a time. But each step can be clearly seen, because when it’s very dark outside, the darkness of night, when the sun comes up, it’s clearly seen. But the redemption comes kim’a kim’a, slowly, one step at a time.
We’ve Seen Miracles
In the generation that I live in, in the 44 years that I’ve been alive, I’m not even talking about those who were here Holocaust times and when the state was created, even in my lifetime, kim’a kim’a as one small baby step at a time, I have seen leaps and bounds. I have seen positive things happen to my nation that my ancestors could have only fantasized about.
So yes, I see the leaps and bounds, but we shouldn’t get caught, we shouldn’t reach a plateau.
We should say, “Let’s go to the next step. Let’s not stop here.” We’ve seen miracles.
I feel history is repeating itself. When we got out of Mitzrayim, we saw miracles, from the 10 plagues to the splitting of the sea, miracle after miracle after miracle. And every time in the desert, in that stage, the nation of Israel complained and they said to Moshe Rabbeinu, they said, “You’re trying to kill us in the desert.” And I always ask, “How could they say these things?” They’ve seen miracle after miracle after miracle. How could they say these things?
Well, let’s stop looking in hindsight and start looking at ourselves.
We have seen miracles in our days. We have seen the Jewish nation come out of the ashes of Europe, literally being burnt and gassed and shot.
We have seen Sephardi Jews come out of the Muslim lands, beaten in some of them.
And here we are.
Here we are not only alive and surviving, but flourishing and strong.
We have had time after time, rabim b’yad me’atim, we’ve had the many come after us.
The many – six Arab nations come after us at once, and we’ve won.
And our numbers don’t add up to any kind of victory. Miracle after miracle.
Again, the courage of the IDF soldiers is not even in question. Of course they were courageous. But again, the numbers don’t make sense to explain how we won.
And our victories are nisim geluyim. They’re miracles in the open. They’re not hidden miracles, they’re right there in the open. Everybody who went to Har HaBayit in ’67 knew that they saw a miracle. Whether religious or secular, it doesn’t matter.
So we have to realize that Hakadosh Baruch Hu, God is in our corner. It’s time to go to the next level. It’s time to demand what’s ours.
Yes, we have to do things “diplomatically,”, but we shouldn’t be giving up on our right because of diplomacy.
There is no justification in the world that we should be upholding a policy that Jews can’t pray on the Temple Mount. No, there’s no justification in the world for that.
But again, the world’s not going to speak up for us. We’ve got to speak up for ourselves.
So my prayer is that we are able to see the miracles, the leaps and bounds that we’ve taken. Again, baby steps. It says the redemption comes with baby steps. We’ve seen leaps and bounds. Hakadosh Baruch Hu, I pray to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, that God allows us to see clearly the leaps and bounds we’ve taken, the miraculous leaps and bounds we’ve taken over the last 70 years. And it should be clear to us that Hakadosh Baruch Hu, that God is in our corner, and that clarity will allow us not to be fearful of going the next step. Going the next step, climbing the ladder of the redemption.
At the end of the day, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is going to have to show his presence. That is the final redemption.
The Next Step
But let’s go to the next step
The next step is asserting sovereignty over all of Israel, and all those who are not Jewish who want to live here in peace, they can live here in peace under the Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.
And the next step is asserting sovereignty over the Temple Mount. And again, anybody who wants to pray there can pray there. Our end game is not destruction. Our end game is that the house of prayer on the Temple Mount, that the Temple should be a house of prayer for all nations,
but sovereignty should belong to the Jewish nation. That’s both historically correct. They built their mosque on our Temple Mount. That’s both nationally correct. Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Israel, and that certainly is religiously correct. The Jews have never turned their backs on Jerusalem, no matter where we were in the world.
So may God please give us clarity, allow us to see the leaps and bounds, the miracles that He’s given to us over the last 70 years, and let it become so clear that that clarity will engulf us also with courage to take the steps that need to be taken so that we will not have to fast ever again on Tisha B’Av, and hopefully this day next year will turn from a day of sadness and depression into a day of celebration and joy.
And may all humanity eventually be united in Jerusalem under one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who gave the Torah at Sinai. May we all be united under that God, and be able to celebrate the building of the Beit HaMikdash, and to take off the illegal and immoral, forget illegal—the immoral occupation of another nation who stole our Temple Mount, and who is praying towards a different direction than the city that God chose.
May we be able to erase that abomination, and the Muslims too will realize that there is only one God in the world, and that their occupation of the Temple Mount is not something that even they should excuse.
So hear our prayer, hopefully that next year we will be celebrating this day and joyous on this day that this year we are still crying about.