Tish'a B'Av 2 - Kara alai mo'eid

In past years, I've often found myself enjoying Tish'a B'Av.

Due to the somber tone of the day, it never feels quite right engaging in personal activities (especially before midday), except when absolutely necessary. This lack of distracting activities enables me to delve deeper into the kinos, review the aggados of the churban, or work through Medrash Eicha - activities of the type that I'd like to do more of but too often find myself being diverted by other things. The fact that my learning increases on Tish'a B'Av is also slightly ironic. It seems to me that this reflects a sad truism of life, that often family and friends allow relationships to be relegated to the back burner, until illness or death, R"l, causes them to come together. Once the crisis is weathered, they depart amidst wishes of "May we only share simchas together", but often do not follow up on their resolution until the next time of trouble.

In a similar vein, I've sometimes wished that Yom Kippur would come more often. This date once a year forces us to closely examine our actions and to manuever through the long vidui a total of 9 times, communally confessing to a litany of sins, some of which are major sore spots in my personal avodah. I'll make resolutions to take concrete steps to improve my actions, and will succeed in executing them for short periods of time, but too often my plans become forgotten over the course of the year.

Last night, I read an interesting understanding of the idea of "Kara alai mo'eid", the verse in Eicha that serves as a reason not to say Tachanun on Tish'a B'Av due to its status as a "mo'eid" (a word that literally means merely "designated time", but is nearly always used in the sense of a festival). R' Shlomo Wolbe in Alei Shur (I 2:23) quotes R' Yeruchem Levovitz who notes that there two types of mo'adim, mo'adim shel kiruv, such as Pesach, Shavu'os, and Sukkos, which commemorate our being brought close to God in different ways, and mo'adim shel richuk, such as Tish'a B'Av, which commemorates our being thrust away from God on several distinct occasions. Tehillim 145:17 states that God is close to all who call Him in truth. This truth can either be a positive truth, if one's recent actions have brought him close to God, or a negative truth, if one's actions have distanced him, but as long as he recognizes what he is, so long as he calls to God, God is close to him. In this sense, even the extreme exile of Tish'a B'Av can be a time for growth and connection with the Divine, as focusing on how we have caused God to remove His presence from our midst can be precisely the method through which He returns to us; all one must do is think about his actions and use the special characteristics of this unique nadir position on the helical structure of the Jewish year to its utmost potential.

Emor 1 - R' Zechariah ben Avkulos defended

In the story of Kamtza and Bar-Kamtza (Gittin 55b-56a), the question of what to do with a korban sent by the Roman emperor that had a minor blemish was brought before the Sanhedrin HaGadol. The first proposal was to offer the korban, despite the prohibition of such stated in this week's parsha, due to the real political concerns that the Romans would take their refusal to be an act of rebellion. However, R' Zechariah ben Avkulos rejected the possibility, as people might not realize that the reason why the blemished sacrifice was offered was due to the extenuating circumstances that existed. After the gemara sets forth another proposal that R' Zechariah ben Avkulos shot down, Rabbi Yochanan sums up the incident by stating, "The humility of R' Zechariah ben Avkulos destroyed our Temple, burnt our sanctuary, and caused us to be exiled from our land"; because R' Zechariah was unwilling to take the bold step of suspending a halacha for reasons of national survival, disaster ensued.

What was R' Zechariah ben Avkulos thinking? He must have realized the danger that a rejection of the Roman sacrifice would cause!

R' Zalman Sorotzkin, in Oznayim LaTorah finds an answer to this question alluded to in this week's parsha. In explaining why one is not allowed to accept a blemished korban, the passuk states (22:25):
"ומיד בן נכר לא תַקריבו את לחם אלקיכם מכל אלה כי משחתם בהם מום בם לא ירצו לכם" -
"And from the non-Jew, you shall not offer the bread of your God from any of these (species of blemished animals) for their corruption is in them - a blemish is in them - they shall not be accepted for you". R' Sorotzkin suggests that the corruption and blemish referred to in this passuk is not the disfigurement of the animal, but rather the spiritual disfigurement caused by the sins of avodah zarah and murder (see Devarim 4:16 and Bereishis 6:11), and that the subject of the last clause of the verse is not the sacrifices being accepted by HaShem, but rather the attitude of the nation in question being positively inclined towards the Jew.

Hence, the verse can be read as a warning that one should not accept korbanos for political reasons from nations like Rome, as, even if the Jews were to weather one crisis by accepting a blemished sacrifice, it would still only be a matter of time until the Romans laid the land waste anyway, and this small respite would not provide sufficient reason to violate halacha.

Tish'a B'Av

On the night of Tish'a B'Av, following the shiur that I described in my previous post, I got into a long discussion with my future roommate Zev on some of the themes of the mo'eid, specifically based on a point that I threw in at the end of my shiur that the purpose of reviewing the history of the destruction that occurred is to aid us in correcting the causes that led to the destruction, as per the famous statement that any generation in which the Temple is not rebuilt is itself deserving of having had it destroyed in their own days. Zev summed up some of the ideas we discussed in a post on his blog. As follows is my response, which I am also linking to in his comments section.
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It would appear that the midrash which states that every generation in which the Beis HaMikdash is not rebuilt is considered to have destroyed it is predicated on the assumption that the Beis HaMikdash can only be rebuilt through Divine means - coming down from the sky, as it were, whether this is to be understood literally or metaphorically. As a support to the metaphorical sense of this opinion, I point to the attempts to rebuild the Beis haMikdash during the centuries immediately following the 2nd Destruction, most notably in the year 363, during the reign of Julian. In other words, even if the 3rd Temple will ultimately be rebuilt by human hands, until it is the Divine Will for it to be built, such shall not succeed: "For even if you had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight against you, and there only remained the wounded men amongst them, they would still rise up, every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire" (Jeremiah 37:10) This being the case, though, our belief is that that there will, indeed, be a third Beis HaMikdash, and it may very well be built by placing brick on top of brick.

When we discussed this topic on the night of Tish'a B'Av, I suggested a broad definition of "Ein mazal l'Yisroel" that could encompass a potential immunity of Israel to even the natural entropic driving forces that lead to all states' decompositions. In an essay by RAL entitled "Centrist Orthodoxy: A Cheshbon Ha-Nefesh", he makes a similar point. The laws of nature and probability that dictate the rise, fall, and ultimate destruction of nations can be suspended by HaShem when circumstances call for it. Such an open manifestation of "Ein mazal l'Yisroel" that we are discussing would only differ from our historical experiences until this point quantitatively, as it seems clear that on the qualitative level, Israel's continued existence for over 3000 years, both as a continuous physical entity and as a continuous ideological entity, is a phenomenon that has not been imitated by any nation in any region of the world that has exhibited political disunity comparable to that of the Middle East.

I agree that, looking at history until now, there have never been periods longer than mere instants during which the Jewish people has not been deserving of destruction on some level. This being the case, it may seem overly optimistic to hope, even leaving aside yeridas ha-doros and similar concepts, that we can ever truly be deserving of a more open manifestation of "ein mazal l'Yisroel". However, deservingness is not the only criterion which dictates the historical phenomena that befall the Jewish people. The idea is frequently expressed in NaCh that HaShem is not only driven to act for the sake of the deservingness of K'lal Yisro'el, but is also driven to act for His own sake. This being the case, the level at which we will no longer be metaphorically guilty of having caused the destuction may not be literal and absolute, but can also be a function of this second criterion, namely, God's honor and stature. This second criterion itself need not be constant, but can also be a function of different variables in the world, including, but by no means limited, to time. Striving to correct the problems that led to the destruction, therefore, is primarily of importance in the directional sense, in that even if we do not (and cannot) ever reach the point where we have fully corrected these problems, simply proceeding in this direction may be all that is necessary to make us worthy of the rebuilding of the Beis HaMikdash as a function of two variables.

I also agree with your characterization of Tish'a B'Av as a day governed by fate and crushing hopelessness, and thus one that is distinctly unsuitable for thoughts of repentance (at least until midday, when the day seems to do an about face and transform almost entirely into a regular fast day, on which one of the primary theme is repentance). Nonetheless, a significant theme of the day is tzidduk ha-din, accepting the harsh judgements upon us as fair, which is strongly bound to an acknowledgement of our sins that led to the catastrophes of this day - and this, itself, is the first step to repentance, although we cannot proceed any further along this path in our state of devastation on that day.

(As a side point, it recently was made known to me that my own shul on Long Island, until a few years ago, was probably one of the only shuls that showed part of the Chafetz Chaim Heritage Foundation video at night - there were good reasons why the rav, ZTzL, chose to schedule things in this manner, but I always found it a little bit disorienting, for the reasons that you said).

On a concluding note, even the days of the Mashiach do not promise eternal stability and equilibrium. I recall seeing a source that says that the Messianic era will be limited to a single millenium, following which the world will cease to exist. While there is much to delve into regarding the meaning of this statement, the point is that even the coming of the Mashiach is not the final answer to all of the world's problems (especially in light of the famous statement of Shmuel, quoted by the Rambam, that there will be no difference between this world and the Messianic world, save the single difference of Jewish political independence). Hence, even during the reign of the Mashiach, the forces of entropy will continue their unrelenting labor, bringing in their wake poverty, sorrow, sickness, death, and destruction, although kinetic constraints may still prevent these from coming to pass. In this sense, truly the only eternal stability is in the Gan MiKedem, in which the forces of death and decay are neutralized entirely.