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1 Av 5762 - July 10, 2002 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Opinion & Comment
Mourning on Tisha B'Av is the Only Solution

by Mordecai Plaut

This is another year we have to mourn the destruction. With all the truly wonderful things that we have experienced in recent generations, with the vast increase in wealth and the tremendous growth of Torah, still the overall situation of Jews throughout the world is bleak enough today that there certainly is no one who questions the need to mourn -- as some did in the early exuberance after the founding of the State of Israel more than 50 years ago.

Despite all our present problems, there is no doubt that our greatest political and social problem is the Churban, the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash and with it the proper order of national and personal life in service to Hashem. Without the reconstruction of the Beis Hamikdash -- and all that it implies -- life is not as it should be, and it can never really be as it should be without the Beis Hamikdash, and the service there of the Cohanim and the direction of the nevi'im and the Sanhedrin. That does not mean that there cannot be interim improvements, but it does mean that we should never lose sight of our long-term goal, and especially on Tisha B'Av, which is explicitly dedicated to this.

The real and complete solution to these problems lies within ourselves. We must reflect on what we have done and how we can improve, especially with regard to the things that Chazal identify as having been among the causes of the most recent destruction and golus: a proper appreciation for Torah and its function that requires us to make a brochoh before learning, and correcting our shortcomings in interpersonal relationships that come from baseless hatred, including loshon hora.

This does not mean that it is futile to seek interim improvements in the world around us including political and military efforts, but it does mean, emphatically, that it is futile to look there for any permanent solutions to the social and political problems of the Jewish people.

This is the fallacy of the Israeli Left. Having -- on ideological grounds -- rejected the definition of our situation as golus they assume instead that it is potentially messianic, and that there are solutions to all the problems of their State of Israel. They continually ask, for example, "What is the alternative to Arafat?" presuming that there is or must be some alternative that solves things, "once-and-for-all." But this is not so. We have to be willing to accept long-term stress and conflict as our lot, though that does not lessen our determination to minimize the problems as much as we can.

The Americans are also laboring under this misconception, as seen from Bush's speech and his insistence on a complete Palestinian solution. They are constantly looking for a fix for the problems in the Middle East. The American "can do" attitude is that all problems are solvable, given the will and the resources (that is, money) to solve them.

We agree that our problems are solvable and that we should solve them as soon as possible. However we do not believe that their solution has much to do with money. It has everything to do with ourselves and our relationship to Hashem.

"Whoever mourns Yerushalayim, will merit to see its rebuilding."


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