Love Is The Answer, But What’s The Question?

Love may be the cure, but what is the disease? It is that which caused the destruction of the Second Temple and of Jerusalem, and many other tragedies that happened in this Hebrew month, and whose trauma we are still suffering. We commemorate these calamities on the saddest day of the year, the ninth of Av, known as Tisha B’Av. The underlying disease is Sinat Chinam, causeless hatred.

However, Judaism teaches that the cure comes before the disease. Therefore the only yahrzeit mentioned in the Torah is that of the high priest, Aaron, who passed away in a unique manner on the first day of this month, the Hebrew month of Menachem Av (meaning the comforting of the Father). How is this an example of the cure preceding the disease? Aaron was known to live by the value: ‘Love peace, pursue peace, love creatures, and bring them close to Torah.’

To understand this disease more deeply, we need to unearth its hidden roots in Kabbalistic teachings. The mystics posit that the underlying root of the problem is also the cause for our existence!  It is the original shattering of the vessels in the process of creation, which allowed for the divine concealment of light, without which the world as we know it could not exist. But if the disease is still here, so must be the potential for the cure. Here’s another way to put it: In the beginning, the divine light was everywhere. But if, as in the name of the movie starring Elijah Wood from a few years ago, ‘Everything Is Illuminated,’ where is there any room for any ‘non-light?’ So there had to be a separation between the Creator and Creation. Of course, most separations are not good. Therefore our job is to do a ‘Tikun.’ Most people think of a Tikun as fixing what is broken. That is correct, but the above perspective reminds us not just to fix human mistakes, but even Divine ‘mistakes.’ As the hiding of the moon reminds us, there is a breaking built into creation. If we can have in mind that every fixing we do in our lives, helps complete the fixing of the breach between G-d and the universe, we will be on our way to the ultimate correction.

From our point of view, it indeed seems like G-d is distanced from our lives. Thus, as in the famous image of the Baal Shem Tov, we are the children learning to walk, while our parent is moving further away from us. But from the divine point of view, G-d is stepping back so we can learn to walk from our own power. An even more poignant parable is that of a teacher who stops teaching in the middle of a lesson. The class wonders why the teacher seems to have abandoned the class. Really however, the teacher is contemplating how to give an even deeper and newer lecture. So too was the destruction of the Temple, a place where G-d’s presence was accompanied by palpable miracles. 

The destruction raised a question: Even in earthly law, we are not allowed to tear down a holy structure unless it is to build a better one. So too it was with G-d: thus the book of Lamentations writes, ‘He (G-d) drew a line’ before tearing down the earlier structure. That line was like the blueprint for the next building, which is meant to be even bigger and more sacred! The silence in between is our long exile where the new plans are being developed and the new teachings are being prepared.

From this perspective, exile and redemption are not opposites, but rather stages in manifesting a vision. One may look at losses in life from a similar angle. Many of you know one of my favorite mantras- ‘If the ending is sad, it is not the ending.’ Even loss of life which from an earthly plain seems final, is a stage in the soul’s journey ‘from here to eternity.’ Surely it is a loss for those who experience the separation, but, as Rachel Goldberg-Polin put is so eloquently: ‘Grief is the ticket we pay for the experience of love.’ As painful as the grief is, the love is longer lasting, as Rachel expresses so poignantly in her book about the loss of her son Hersh.

We are now in the seven weeks of consolation, which begin with the Haftara ‘Nachamu Nachamu Ami,’ – be consoled my people. The word Nachamu is doubled to convey to us that as painful as the suffering was, the consolation will be at least twice as much. During Shiva there is a refrain we tell the mourners, ‘May the Eternal One console you among all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.’ The Lubavitcher Rebbe once wrote to a grieving mother, ‘Why do we need to include Jerusalem? Isn’t that just amplifying the grief?’ His answer was quite moving: ‘Just as we are promised that Jerusalem will be restored, so we are promised, as in Maimonides principles of faith- our loved ones will come back to life.’ Furthermore, he added, ‘Just as we are taught that the holy Temple still exists on a spiritual plane, so too the soul of our loved ones continues to exist. They above all would be sad knowing that our grief is too excessive, in time or intensity.’

Actually, this is what the time frame of the three weeks leading up to Tisha B’Av is really about. If you consider the events around the Temple’s destruction, as well as the subsequent events in the Jewish calendar leading up to Rosh Hashana, it is all about disintegration and reparation. Thus, just as in the Jewish calendar, we are promised a double consolation for the tragic events, so too in the course of our painful history, we are promised a future where time itself will be reformatted into ongoing joy, as in the words of the Psalm, ‘when G-d restores the captivity of Zion, WE WILL HAVE BEEN AS DREAMERS.’ Let us actualize those dreams right now, with thoughts, words, and actions that manifest that vision on this earthly plane, with lives that convey our love to others in ways small and large, till ‘the whole world is filled with the knowledge of G-d, as water fills the sea.’

As we know most emphatically from current social discourse, what can cause both the greatest harm and the greatest good in interpersonal relationships is our power of speech. As the late Bruce Lee said so sharply, ‘be careful how you use your words. Words can cast spells; that’s why it’s called Spelling!’

My father was known as a deaf mute. That’s why I have been trying most of my life to plant words of Torah into the hearts of our generation. Returning to the answer of love, we recently read from the Shema, ‘You shall love the Lord your G-d with all your heart, soul, and might. And let these words which I place today be ON your heart.’ Even if your heart may feel at times on ‘lock down,’ if you carry the Torah’s words close by, I guarantee that they will ‘drop in’ when the door of your heart opens up!