Tisha B'Av Additional Thoughts -- 5780

This year I noticed especially the very first Kina in the evening, right after Eicha...Z'chor Hashem Meh Haya Lanu.  From the forth verse to the end, it ascribes mida k'neged mida reasons for the woes mentioned in Eicha.  I may or may not have mentioned this particular instance before (of the common theme in both Navi and Kina that we are our own worst enemy), but this time something else struck me.

Ever since (at least) a cynical, non-religious Israeli friend in the US said to me that the real verse in the Torah was 'kesef, kesef tirdof', I have thought about how p'sukim and t'filot should read according to those who seem to have the worst problem with sinat chinam.  (And I admit these musings could be accused of being sinat chinam also; I prefer to think that they are useful in pointing out how being against people we don't like and blaming our problems on them doesn't match with the literal or moral words of Tanach and T'fila.)

One of the ones I focus on is blaming all our problems on non-religous Jews and non-Jews.  For example, in Musaf on Yom Tov, instead of 'because of our sins we were driven from our land', it should read 'because of the Babylonians and Romans we were driven from our land.'  Obviously it's all their fault...we were just innocent victims.

So when I was reading this Kina, I got the same idea.  "Slave rule over us/because of the Romans...Our skin has shriveled.../because of the Babylonians...Har Tzion is desolate/because of the goyim".  You get the idea.

If Hashem, the Nevi'im, and Chaza"l say we only have ourselves to blame, don't you think we should listen?

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I just moved to a new home, in Alon Shvut.  Strange to be in a new town for two weeks and still not have set foot in the shul, but that's the time we live in.  Our street minyan sent the Alon Shvut minhag for which Kinot we would be saying this morning.  There was one there about the hitnatkut, but it was much different from the one we used in my old town, which upset me greatly.  This one was just four short verses bemoaning the lost places and praying for a return, without assigning blame and without calling it a churban.

I think if I had encountered this one first, I never would have noticed a problem.  But even though it is much milder, I still don't think it fits the pattern for the Kinot of the day, and if there are going to be modern tragedies mentioned in the Kinot there are far better candidates, as I said in my other post.  I skipped this one just like I skipped the other.

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I haven't talked about Corona here yet, but there are many aspects of it and especially the way we handle it that reflect on sinat chinam, both in the secular Israeli political world (which should be learning from us) and in the religious world.  That's all I have time for now, but I hope to write more in the future.  Meanwhile we should all try to stay healthy, so we can make it to next year's Korban BBQ on Har HaBayit.

Struggling with Sinat Chinam -- Tisha B'Av 5780

Here we are, another Tisha B'av that we're fasting instead of bringing joyous Korbanot in Bait Sh'lishi.  Why?  As I've said many a time, and as Rav Ya'akov Love succinctly puts it, "it's still broke."  We're still doing the same sin that caused the churban...sinat chinam.  Until we 'un-broke' it, nothing will change.

It's a very difficult issue to deal with.  Nearly all of us have angers and hatreds; and as I quoted from Rav Dovid Gottlieb several years ago, no one will confess to sinat chinam because they think their hatred is NOT causeless...they find good reasons for it.  (As Rav Riskin likes to quote from Freud all the time, everyone is a genius at self-deception.)

I have that problem in large measure.  When I see people who claim to be frum, who claim the status of flag bearers of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, attacking and insulting anyone they don't agree with, from other types of religious Jews through Reform and Conservative through non-religious Jews, all the way to non-Jews for whom we are supposed to be the Light, it's hard not to reciprocate with hatred, and hard not to self-justify as being legitimate.  (I'm not just talking about what I read in the news, either...myself and members of my family have been personally attacked, including insults to my Rebbe Rav Riskin and my Yeshiva, Yeshiva University, because of our 'liberal' beliefs.)

But deal with it we must, because it is THE problem preventing bi'at HaMashiach.  In this year's webcast Kinot from YU Israel, Rav Gottlieb quoted the Sefer HaChareidim who said the reason this galut is so much longer than the first is that the sin was worse.  It seems strange, because Bayit Rishon was destroyed for the 'big 3:' Avoda Zara, Gilui Arayot, and Sh'fichut Damim.  But, said the Sefer HaChareidim, sinat chinam is worse.  Just as Rabbi Akiva said V'Ahavta l'Reaicha Kamocha is the K'lal of the Torah, meaning it's worth all 613 mitzvot, therefore the opposite, sinat chinam, is like breaking all 613!  The Big 3 plus 610 more.

Sadly, it doesn't seem to be getting better.  For the second year in a row, I have seen incidents where it seems like people want to use the 3 weeks to increase the hatred.

Last year, I heard a d'rasha on the first Shabbat of the 3 weeks, redefining sinat chinam.  Apparently it really only applies to hating the Rabbis who are leading the Torah society.  So if someone like my Rebbe legitimately, without a trace of anger, and sometimes with tears in their eyes, objects to some policy of the Chief Rabbinate they are over on sinat chinam.  BUT if, for example, someone were to hate my 92-year old mother, who's not a Rabbi, because she's not as frum as they think she should be, that's OK.  I was, and still am, flabbergasted.

This year, shortly before the 3 weeks, a number of institutions (including Rav Riskin's Ohr Torah Stone), won a lawsuit in the Israeli Supreme Court to allow women to take the same tests that men do for Torah knowledge, and then be eligible for equal salaries for jobs like mashgiacha, etc.  No, no one is trying to make 'women Rabbis' in the sense of usurping men's roles.  But according to Rav Riskin, in many/most cases a woman is permitted to decide Halachic matters just like a man.  And there are many women, especially women with Chareidi Rabbis who look down on them as second-class humans, incapable of the understanding of a man, who need a woman to turn to for Halachic questions.

And just at the start of the 3 weeks, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, attacked the decision, doubted the capabilities of a woman to understand such Halachic issues, and segued into an attack on Reform Jews.

It truly pains me to mention names like this, but it was all over the news, it was an attack on people and beliefs I care about, and it was pure sinat chinam.

(In his weekly D'var Torah for Matot-Masei this year, Rav Riskin explained more of the details, and he said that the answer to Yitzhak Yosef comes directly from the g'mara on B'not Tz'lofchad.  They weren't just young ladies who lined up to ask a question, they were learning in the Bet Midrash with Moshe, and they out-argued him!  If you say women don't have the capabilities for such learning, you are contradicting the g'mara.)

So we go through another Tisha B'Av instead of the geula.  I feel very frustrated because I don't know any better way to fight this disease.  I know that the ultimate answer, as Rav Kook ZT"L, says, is ahavat chinam, but my own reach to spread that seems inadequate.  I will continue to pray that the people I respect on the right path, people like Rav Riskin, Rav Stav of Tzohar, and the rav of my new community Rav Rimon, will gain in influence and help lead the world in the right direction. Bim'heira B'Yameinu, Amen.