Do We Still Feel the Loss? A Shabbos Chazon Reflection

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Shabbos Chazon takes its name from the vision of the Navi Yeshayahu — Chazon Yeshayahu. It is a call to look at the world with the proper perspective, to see it the way Hashem wants us to see it: to read the events around us as a direct message from Heaven. If we had the power to transform Tisha B'Av into a day of joy, now — in these final days — is the time to make the effort.

Two Kinds of Mourning

There is something strange about the way we mourn as a nation.

With private mourning, the halachos grow lighter as time passes. A person loses a loved one, chas v'shalom; after seven days the laws ease, and again after thirty. I felt this personally when my husband was niftar on Erev Yom Kippur — an exceptional case, because Yom Kippur itself removed the shiva, and Sukkos that followed removed the shloshim. It was as if Hashem were saying: you have been through something very hard, and I gave you time to grieve, but now normal life must resume. Sometimes Hashem — the greatest psychologist of all — gives us less time than we feel we need. We want to keep grieving. But there are halachos, and they tell us that life goes on: Ivdu es Hashem b'simcha — serve Hashem with joy again.

National mourning runs in exactly the opposite direction. As we move from the Three Weeks into Rosh Chodesh Av and toward Tisha B'Av, the restrictions grow heavier: no meat, no wine, no laundry, no bathing for pleasure. Why should a private loss get easier while a communal loss gets harder?

The answer lies in how deeply we feel it. A private loss needs no prompting — the pain is immediate and personal, and Hashem must actually tell us, Eis livkos v'eis lischok, that there is a time to weep and a time to laugh, so that we don't remain stuck. But a communal loss is different. Even though we say the words every day — Uvnei Yerushalayim ir hakodesh, V'sechezena eineinu b'shuvcha l'Tzion, Es tzemach David avdecha — and even though the chosson breaks a glass under the chuppah and we declare Im eshkachech Yerushalayim, do we truly feel the loss in the depths of our hearts? The stringencies of these days exist precisely to help us feel what we might otherwise only recite.

Consider the scale of what we lost. Imagine, today, a missile falling on Har HaBayis — the entire world would erupt in outrage. Yet when the Beis HaMikdash was destroyed — a place all the nations once came to admire, sending their own offerings — the nations rejoiced. They built arches of triumph to celebrate the churban. And what became of that "civilized world"? The same silence returned in the Holocaust. At least there we know of chassidei umos ha'olam, individuals who tried to help. At the time of the churban, when millions of Jews were killed without the slightest compassion, we don't even have those stories.

Bein HaMetzarim: A Corridor of Tragedy

Megillas Eicha describes Klal Yisrael's pursuers overtaking her bein hametzarim — in the narrow places. Chazal identify these as the days between the seventeenth of Tammuz, when the walls of Yerushalayim were breached, and Tisha B'Av, when the Beis HaMikdash was destroyed.

The parsha hints at the same corridor. When Moshe Rabbeinu rebukes Am Yisrael at the start of Devarim, the Torah lists the places where he spoke — bein Paran uvein Tofel v'Lavan, v'Chatzeiros v'Di Zahav. But there were no such places. They are hints. "Paran" recalls the desert from which the meraglim were sent — on the seventeenth of Tammuz. "Tofel" recalls the day Moshe Rabbeinu broke the Luchos — also the seventeenth of Tammuz. Two catastrophes, cheit ha'eigel and the sin of the spies, each unfolding across a span of twenty-one days from the seventeenth of Tammuz to Tisha B'Av. The Kli Yakar adds the imagery of the calendar itself: the mazal of Tammuz is a scorpion that strikes by turning backward — as Yisrael turned their backs on Hashem — and the mazal of Av is a lion, the enemy that came and devoured.

And yet, even here, there is comfort. When the Luchos shattered, the broken pieces were not discarded — they were preserved in the Aron HaKodesh alongside the whole set, and buried only before the first churban. Recall the exchange between the Jew and the Greek philosopher who scoffed, "Why cry over broken stones?" The Jew answered: "My wisdom, my purity, everything I am — it came from these stones." The message from Hashem is clear: I see how broken you are, and to Me your broken heart is the most precious thing of all.

"Eicha" — We Were Never Meant to Carry It Alone

Three prophets cried Eicha, each in a different key. Moshe Rabbeinu — Eicha esa levadi — how can I carry this people alone? Yeshayahu — Eicha haysa l'zona — how did the faithful city become corrupt? Yirmiyahu — Eicha yashva vadad— how does the proudest of nations now sit alone and weep?

The simplest reading begins with Moshe's word, levadi — "by myself." Picture the young doctor left alone in the emergency room, told to ring for help the moment he needs it. Instead, overwhelmed, he tries to do everything himself, and the patients die one after another. That is Eicha. The meraglim failed for the same reason: they did not trust that they were not alone. Chazal even find it in the letters of the word — the aleph of Anochi, faith in Hashem; the yud of the Aseres HaDibros; the chaf, the twenty generations to Avraham Avinu who planted greatness in us; the hei, the five books of the Torah. Eicha is what happens when we drift from all of it, until we are left, in the words of the Megillah, like a widow weeping in the night.

Why the night? By day the sun rises and hope feels natural. It is at night, alone, that the full weight of loss descends. And our tears are doubled, because we lost the Beis HaMikdash not once but twice. Yirmiyahu saw the second loss coming. He wrote the Megillah — in the order of the aleph-beis, because the Torah is our very language of thought and speech — and sent it by his loyal student Baruch ben Neriah to the king. It was winter; the king Yehoyakim sat warm beside his fire, took the scroll, tore it, and threw it laughing into the flames. Offered the chance to do teshuvah, he chose the opposite.

Why the Second Beis HaMikdash Fell

Chazal give many reasons for the second churban, and my husband, zichrono livracha, used to gather them: they were lax with the sanctity of Shabbos; they neglected krias Shema; they left the schoolchildren to play instead of bringing them to learn; they lost bushas panim, the sense of shame that is one of the three marks of a Jew — baishanim, rachmanim, v'gomlei chasadim; they flattened all distinctions, showing no respect to scholar or worker alike; they gave no rebuke and accepted none. Worst of all, bizu talmidei chachamim — they disparaged the Torah scholars and rejected the authority of Torah itself, splintering into rival sects and factions until sinas chinam consumed them. The Biryonim would not even heed Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, who had to be smuggled out of Yerushalayim in a coffin to save what lives he could.

But what is the root beneath all of it? My husband traced it back to Har Sinai. When Yisro advised Moshe to appoint leaders of tens, hundreds, and thousands, the people answered enthusiastically — Tov hadavar asher dibarta, a wonderful idea. Rashi hears something troubling in that eagerness: l'hana'aschem — it was for their own convenience. They should have said, "But from whom will we learn Torah — from you, Moshe, who gave himself over for forty days and nights, or from lesser teachers?" Instead they welcomed intermediaries who would make things easier, teachers to whom one could, so to speak, offer a bribe. In that preference for the comfortable over the demanding lay the seed of everything that followed — the eigel, and eventually the churban.

The distinction matters. With the eigel, the people sought an easier avenue of worship but soon returned to Hashem — a failure of judgment, and so the punishment was limited. The meraglim were different: their failure was a failure of emunah — chazak hu mimenu, "they are stronger than us" — a refusal to trust, and so their cry of bechiya shel chinambecame bechiya l'doros, a weeping fixed for the generations. The first Beis HaMikdash fell over wrong actions, avodah zarah, which can be corrected. The second fell over broken trust — in Torah, in its teachers, in one another — and that is why this exile has stretched on so long.

What Is In Our Hands

So what does Hashem ask of us in these final days?

Feel the loss. Bacho sivkeh balayla — cry, but with real tears, not the empty tears with which our history began. As Yeshayahu urges in the Haftarah, rachatzu, hizaku — wash and purify, not with water but with genuine longing and regret. Rabban Gamliel, hearing a neighbor weep each night for her lost son, wept until he lost his eyelashes; when asked why, he said, "She cries for a son; I cry for something far more precious." Imagine how different our lives would be with one Beis HaMikdash, one Kohen Gadol, one shared authority — how much of today's division and hatred would simply dissolve.

Count your blessings. Yada shor konehu — even an ox knows the master who feeds it. Hashem renews creation every single day, mechadesh b'chol yom tamid maaseh bereishis, working countless miracles we barely notice. We are like the widow in the parable whose husband was away for years. One woman kept his picture at the center of the table and told her children he would surely return; the other took the pictures down and gave up. Only the first still felt his absence every day — and only into her home could he return to joy. We are that first widow, keeping the memory alive, our doors ready for Mashiach at any moment, as the Chofetz Chaim kept his garments prepared.

Guard your speech. In the second perek of Eicha the letter pei precedes the ayin — the mouth before the eye. Chazal read this as the sin that unraveled everything: people spoke of what they had never witnessed, spreading rumors they had only heard secondhand. This is the whole inyan of lashon hara, and rectifying it is among the surest ways to undo the sinas chinam that Tisha B'Av mourns.

Do teshuvah, and trust that you can. Ma yisonen adam chai — why should a living person complain? As long as we are alive, there is purpose and there is a way back. Chasdei Hashem ki lo samnu — His kindnesses never cease; chadashim labkarim — every morning brings a fresh opportunity. And why? Rabba emunasecha — great is His faith in us. Hashem trusts that we can make amends. When the lower waters wept at being pushed down to earth at creation, Hashem promised them nisuch hamayim, a return to the Mizbeach. So too our sincere tears will carry us back to Him.

From Sadness to Joy

Strip away the many reasons for the churban and one remains: sinas chinam, and beneath it the way we held the Torah — learning it, yet without feeling its sweetness. Al ozvam es Torasi — the land was lost not because Torah went unstudied, but because its joy went unfelt. So when we say Birchas HaTorah each morning — asher bachar banu mikol ha'amim v'nasan lanu es Toraso — let us feel the pride and privilege of it.

The rebuilding is in our hands. Hashem has given us the tools and He trusts us to use them: Rabba emunasecha. May this Tisha B'Av be transformed from the deepest sorrow into the greatest joy, when Mashiach reveals himself and HaKadosh Baruch Hu brings the Beis HaMikdash down from Heaven.

Have a wonderful Shabbos.