Nine Days - Discovering The Simcha That Comes From Aveilus

2:45 But there seems to be an added dimension: the simcha of the rebuilding of the Beis Hamikdash. Not everyone will be zayecha to that. In other words, it seems that there's at least the possibility. That a Jew who chas v'shalom is not avval Yerushalayim will be here in the state of the rebuilt Beis Hamikdash in Yerushalayim Habenuyah And will somehow be able to experience the simcha of the Beis Hamikdash. But this too is quite ponderous because what does that mean? It's like could it be that in the Mosham Hashiach when the Beis Hamikdash will be rebuilt? When Kohanim are running around and bringing karbanos When the Kohen Gadol comes out of the Kodesh Hakodashim on Yom Kippur Could it be that there will be a Jew that will not experience the simcha of the rebuilding of the Beis Hamikdash? Is such a thing possible? To try to understand a little bit for us what these things mean, especially today We'll take a deep dive into the notion of grief.

3:54 You'll forgive me. This is a. For me, a lot of the things that I'm going to share with you today are deeply personal. Grief is a grief is an emotion. It's an experience that comes with a tremendous amount of unpacking. What I'm sharing with you today is really things that I learned from the loss of my grandmother. And who I was privileged to be exceptionally close with, a second mother to me. Obviously, not a mother, but a second mother for sure And I'm drawing mostly from the wellspring of that experience to try to glean some sort of insight into what this chazal means. What's the vulnerability of grief? You always have in yeshiva. You always have a boy that will come to you, and most of the time. Baruch Hashem, it's a It's a grandparent that they lost while they were in yeshiva. So I knew they were sick. We didn't know how soon it would be. I didn't have time to make it back. I always say the same thing.

5:09 It hasn't really hit me yet. It hasn't hit me. That loss hasn't hit me yet. There's a sort of A dullness, a numbness that first occurs when we hear that tragedy has struck. Grief is not an automatic expression. Of what we're going through, grief is something that one achieves. Actually, it's something that has to settle in, and that we have to acclimate ourselves to. And often, we have to invite grief in. Because grief itself is an exceptionally vulnerable experience. And so, what we naturally do when grief approaches, even though we might not be doing this on a calculated, conscious level. But what most of us will do is we'll keep grief at bay Because there's a certain reality to grief that we don't want to encounter. You see it sometimes with Chassid shalom when somebody is burying a parent. I remember quite clearly we had a boy in yeshiva whose father passed away while he was in yeshiva, and his father was being buried here in Eretz Yisrael. He had a younger brother.

6:19 And it was very interesting to see the brother also ended up coming to yeshiva. Baruch Hashem, I was privileged to be close to both of them. It was very interesting to see the way they approached the kivura. As you're sitting there with these two boys Eighteen years old, nineteen years old, seventeen years old The experiences were so radically different. One boy was—I wouldn't want to sit in judgment of the way they experienced it. So I do want to be careful with my lashonos. But one boy was clearly more numb to the experience. There weren't any tears or any visible emotion. Whatever was going on was certainly packed away real tight. The other boy was much more vocal in terms of what he was experiencing, and I'm not here to say that one is better or worse, but it was clear that one was working towards grief and the other wasn't. There's a vulnerability to it. I understand why a person in that state wouldn't want to express the reality of that moment.

7:20 I remember my grandmother passed away during COVID. The tragedy was so exceptionally deep. Not only because she passed away from COVID. But because it was during COVID, nobody was able to be with her. The most anyone could do was be with her via Zoom. And that's obviously a tragic thing for her to pass away by herself. But also, none of us could go to the levaya because we all lived here. My grandmother lived in New Jersey, so only my aunt and her immediate children were able to go to the levaya. The levaya on Zoom was so distant. It was so hard to actually be present. The loss was profound, but the experience of it was a distant type of experience. And I thought that I had processed the loss. I really thought that I had processed the loss. And then what happened was that over It was such a tragic time that the people who make matzevas, what they call them in English, tombstones There was such a backup that it took almost a year and a half to get a matzeva because we were so exceptionally busy making matzevas left and right.

8:45 About, but this was an exceptionally long period of time, and until we were all able to get there as a family to be there. Anyway I always assumed that I was going to speak by my grandmother's levaya. First of all, I'm most of my family is not religious. So I'm the de facto ruff of the family And also it was like that was like I was the oldest grandson. She was mine. So I was invited to lead the hakama samatzeva. I could not get a word out. I there was so many unfelt feelings that I didn't even realize were there. It was, and I was sitting there, and all my cousins were there, and extended family had come in, and my father was standing next to me, and he was just rubbing my back because I couldn't get a word out. And I myself in that moment, as this all was happening, was.

9:41 If I'm being honest, I was standing in judgment of myself. Wow, I didn't even know this was inside of me. Because grief is such an exceptionally vulnerable experience that sometimes we have to experience it over and over again until we get to the true depth of the thing. We're used to saying, and there's an element of truth to this. We're used to saying that the reason we're not Misaval Yerushalayim today is because of how good we have it. And I certainly think there's a tremendous amount of truth to it, but more recently I've started to think about perhaps we're not misaval Yerushalayim because of the vulnerability that would come with being misaval Yerushalayim. It's like Lomashul. I heard I heard that tomorrow's hafganoet Tomorrow's hafganoet or tonight's hafganoet. They keep switching the dates. It was supposed to be Monday, then it was Tuesday. My father messaged me and asked, "Are you going into NCSY call all tonight?" I said, "No, tonight I'm here in RBS in the Bei Shamir."

10:47 So he said, "There's a talk that maybe they're going to march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem." So I said, "First of all, I know Eretz Israel. I know Israel. Is nobody in that good shape? The people that are marching for judicial reform Maybe they were in good shape when they were in Savah when they were in the army, but now it's thirty, forty years later. They're well out of shape. They're all like. You ever meet that Israeli taxi driver, and he looks, he has like a shape to him. He's like a. That guy was once like the greatest soldier. A lot of those guys have crazy stories. I was in Lebanon behind enemy lines. Nobody knew I was there. I'm looking at this guy. You're driving the car with your stomach. I know you're doing it. These people are not marching from Tel Aviv to Eshelim. But.

11:35 The idea that a yid could walk today from Tel Aviv to Eshelayim is a spectacular thing. For us to encounter the grief of what we don't have is exceptionally difficult. Not just because we're used to an amazing world where we have something that's unprecedented in human history. But in a more rich type of way, it would be acknowledging a tremendous amount of loss that still exists. And who amongst us really wants to get there? I remember the first time I really encountered this I was on the roof of Yeshiva Hakotel with Rav Moshe Weinberger Shlita And he was vibrating up there, and there was a whole chevrah And I was in—if I'm being honest—I was in seventh heaven. There was Rebbe on the rooftop of Yeshiva Hakotel The whole chevrah was there and singing and dancing, and I think Shlomo Katz was playing guitar, and it was like a really beautiful moment.

12:30 And the kotel is in the background. Reb Weingartner starts to speak. And he starts crying about the blata that's sitting on Harabais And how it was so coev. It was so painful to him to watch what was still happening on Harabais. And it occurred to me in that moment that I had become so accustomed to being satisfied with what Rebby called the table scraps of what the world was willing to give us. I was at the kotel yesterday morning for my brother had a hanachas tefillah for his son and I took my son because my son had his misibat sidur. So one of the beautiful things that we have in this country is that when a girl gets bat mitzvah, when a boy gets bar mitzvah, when there's a misibat sidur and misibat chumash, we could take our children to yishalayim. Take our children to Kever Rochel, we could do things. So I said to Mikey, when you get your sidur, I'm going to take you to the Kotel.

13:29 Because of all the havka note, everything got changed last minute. So I only took Mikey and I said to him Dafka, you are the one that's coming Because it's for your mission. And I took him over to the kotel and I said, 'This is a great moment to daven. You have your sitter, and he put his hand on the wall, and I took a picture. Come move on, because if it's not on Google Photos in eleven years from now, then it didn't really happen. It's not the best part of Google Photos. That you get to wake up in the morning and say what happened on June 11th or whatever it is 2015 when the kids were still little, like it's a beautiful thing.' So I took the picture and afterwards I said to him, Mikey, what were you davening for? He's six years old. He's a little beautiful boy, and he looks Obviously, Mashiach. So I was like, good. That's good. That's a good thing to be davening for. It was so beautiful. Your heart is so full in those moments that it's difficult to process how little the kotel is.

14:28 And obviously I don't mean to belittle Chas v'Shalom the fact that we have Of course it's amazing and it's wonderful and it's a place that's malle tfilos and that is there's a reason in Kabbalah spoken about at length why that wall of all the walls was the one to survive But without getting into any of that, we're still so exceptionally far from where we should be. For his mishpata sidur, I should be able to take him on to Harabayas, and there should be Kohanim, and there should be Levim singing, and we should walk up the steps, and there should not need to be a police force wondering if Jews are mumbling under their breath Kriyas Shema or not. We talk about the racism that exists today. If we would go, I'm a halacha aside, if a yid today goes to Harabayas and he mumbles under his breath, they could be arrested. It could be removed from the Temple Mount because a yid is not allowed to daven.

15:18 Imagine such a thing in the world today, in two thousand twenty-three, with the liberal wokeness of the world, that a yid is not able to go to our holiest place in the world and say Shema Yisrael, Hashem, Lekinu, Hashem Echad, without being arrested. So we're still exceptionally far But who wants to think about that? And all the shmuzin, and rightfully so, our shmuzin of positivity, and it's a shmuzin of dayenu, and let's celebrate what we do have. Let's be positive that we do have, and let's celebrate every small victory and every inch that we got in Eretz Yisrael is amazing, and only a yid today could be so. How shall we say this? I don't want to say Chas Shlom anything badly about yid in the three weeks and nine days, but only a yid could be such a. It has to be perfect that we wouldn't celebrate everything that we have in this country.

16:08 And yet, if we are being honest with ourselves, we are still so exceptionally far. We're still very far from David Malchus of Meshichah. We're still very far from a Malchus that's shining out to the entire world. That there's a Rebbe in Shalalim, and that we are here for a reason. We're very far still from Diri B'Tachtanim, though we've come a very long way in a very short amount of time. But there's a vulnerability to it. What exactly is that vulnerability? There's two vulnerabilities that I can pinpoint that I think are important to recognize. The first vulnerability of grief, when it comes to any loss, we'll talk about the loss of a person. Is first the physical loss. There was a person that was, and now there's a person that wasn't. So there's a gaping hole in my reality. There was something, and now there isn't, and life has radically changed because of that. There's a lack of there was this person in my life, and this what they meant, and this what their availability was, and this was my experience around them.

17:15 And now they aren't They aren't. I had a I have, Baruch Hashem, a wonderful talmud who lost his daughter Special needs child Very young And she passed away. It was not expected. And they used to go visit her in the home where she was because she was very disabled. And he spoke about not going on Sundays now to visit her. In other words, there's a part of the routine. It's what we do on Sundays. We go, we make that phone call. When my grandmother passed away, my mother would speak to my grandmother every single day. So it's like Do you call? Who do you call now? Where does that phone call go? There's a time every day if my grandmother was in America, so nine o'clock, four o'clock here. Every day the phone would ring or my mother would call. What's in that place now?

18:10 So we try to put things in that place, but nothing really could ever possibly fill that void. Who Mamish just passed away a couple months ago, she was a hundred. She's a hundred years old. My grandmother's sister. My family, Baruch Hashem, the women at least have tremendous ereichas yamim. Not so much for the men, but my daughters are doing okay. That phone call became a phone call to my aunt. But it's not the same. It's not exactly the same. There's a whole loss. Even if we, you know how like they always say, we expected it, but even when it hits It's unexpected. It's like we knew it was coming, but nothing could have prepared us. Because life, in a certain way, has certain systems, and we relate to those systems. When there's a person that is no longer present in that system, the entire system changes. I remember my rebbe.

19:03 Of Parnas Shulda, who just turned ninety-six. My rebbe said When we had our second child My rebbe was like a real Brisker Landon, is a real Brisker Landon. He said Family is a din in dynamics That was his big chiddush. Family is a din in dynamics. I said, could the rebbe explain to me what that means? He said, first you get married and there's two dynamics. It's you to your wife and your wife to you, as you were saying to me. So you to your husband and your husband to you. So then you have a kid, and you think you added in one dynamic, but it's not true. Because now it's you to the child, your wife to the child, you to your wife, and then the entire system has its own unique dynamic. So when you add one child, the system has grown exponentially, because now it's the children to each other, the children vis-a-vis each one of you. The web becomes very complex. By the time you have six children, you have literally hundreds of dynamics, as every parent knows.

20:03 As every parent knows, you add one thing into the system, and the whole system changes. The idea that one person, when they pass away, when they drop out of the system, it's not the pshat that the system Like just Automatically adapts to that loss. There's a gaping hole that exists in that system. And there's no possible replacement for it, so it's almost like there's a dull void that exists forever. And we fill that void with memories. Like we, if you've ever experienced loss, you know this. You try to speak that person back into existence. If Grandma were here, she would have said X. And so it becomes a thing. You go on a rant. My grandmother She was born in America, but she spoke. She what she called Jewish, but it was Yiddish, so she would always say for the days of Dain Kapp. If we were driving her crazy, that was the most mad she could get.

21:05 Or she would say Simmer down. Now that was the most angry she could possibly get. So we sometimes conjure up these memories of that person to try to keep them within the system because the void is so very profound. So that's the first aspect of grief: the recognition that this system has forever changed in a way that cannot be fixed. The second part, and this I think is even harder Is there a geographical vulnerability as well. There's a sense almost of being discombobulated. You know what I mean? Like You're disoriented. You don't know where you are. You'll see very often people in Avellus. People talk to them. They'll go, "Have you eaten?" And especially Yidden, when we're in Avelos, it seems that the minig is to make sure that those people are exceptionally well fed. Specifically at a time where they're not eating. So it's like a wild type of experience. I was paying a shiva call maybe a month ago. A person walked in, and I think this person owns a herring company.

22:15 So they walked into the shiva house with trays full of herring. I had so many questions. How much herring do you think this person could eat? Or how many yidden do you think are coming that are going to sit And with crackers and herring, buy a Buy an avelus. It's not exactly like in America getting doggies. They just put out a tray of poppers. Herring is a probably don't know this. I notice they don't serve herring on the women's side so often. But there's a certain greasy, oily type of experience when it comes to herring. It's not exactly an aveilus food, but the man pasha brought trays of it. You see, a person when they're in that state, they're very disoriented. It's like efo ani ba olam, like how did we arrive here? There's a geographical type of loss. If you think about it in terms of Yerushalayim, in terms of the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash.

23:17 One can imagine, and we've experienced this. The truth is, everybody in this room has experienced it to a certain degree. But imagine being one of those shvatim that left Eretz Yisrael And it happens kahalvayim. It's like those stories in the Holocaust. I just read an unbelievable book. Highly, highly, highly recommended. Some of you may have read it already. I think I'm late to the game on this one. It's called *The Choice* by Dr. Edith Evanger. You ever hear this book? It's an unbelievable book. Highly, highly recommended. She was a therapist. She's a psychologist who was a Holocaust survivor herself. She went through Auschwitz and Mauthausen, and she became a tamidah of Viktor Frankl and of Carl Rogers. She writes an autobiographical sketch of her life, of her experience through the lens of a psychologist, and how to process our own emotions. An exceptional book. I finished it once. I'm halfway through the second time. I can't put it down. It's such an incisive and so many life lessons. She speaks about that she had a home. She was Hungarian. She had a home, and then one day you just don't have a home.

24:34 There's a certain disruption to life that moves your entire geography. You're shevet. You're living in Eretz Israel. They came. They destroyed the base of Mikdash. Aroyes. You're out. You're finished. And they sent us all over the world. I have a chaver who goes to Africa. I don't understand really all the halachic implications of these things. I've never really done the suge well. But he goes to Africa and he says, Mordechai, I'm telling you, these people are Jewish. He swears that they're Jewish. He mamish believes they're tribes in Africa and they're going today. And they're teaching these people Torah. There's some sort of geyrus. I'm not exactly sure how it works. I don't know exactly what their status is, but these people are like they're flying Israeli flags now. He says we have African brothers and sisters, and he goes to visit. And he's he sends they obviously they've been in Africa for quite a long time, so they sing and they dance in an African type of way. That's the culture they've been accustomed to.

25:35 And he says they yearned for it. They speak about Yerushalayim. We have an aleph. Like that's a mazoura that they have. It's clear to him that they're yidden. Again, I'm not getting involved in the prate pratem. I know that it's a complex sugya. But you imagine, like for us, what it was like for our ancestors traveling the way that they did Being displaced the way they were being displaced. Most of us grew up in America, and it was very secure and very safe. Nothing could happen. There was no need to be mobile, really. All of us here experienced some mobility. Do you remember when you first came on Aliyah? Do you remember how disoriented you were? I remember being in the Merkaz of Rama Pechamish Alef And everyone around me felt like they were speaking Hebrew. And obviously that wasn't true, but it felt that way.

26:24 And I remember craving English and I came home and I told my wife I miss English, and she's like, Are you serious? We live in Rama Pechamish. It's like the sixth town, right next to Windermere. What you can't possibly get any more. But I, there was a certain sense of disorientation, geographically, you don't know where you are. So for us to recognize that there's a void of the Beis Hamikdash It's disorienting because we have certain things that we know are clearly true. So even when they make a new highway, they expand the highway. Sixteen just opened up. I'm sure your husbands were. Anyone who goes to Shalim was very excited by this new highway. Israelis talk about a new highway. It's like we got a new toy. It's like we're so proud of ourselves. Do you see? Have you been on sixteen? That's what men say to each other. Have you been on sixteen? It's amazing.

27:18 I've saved Thirty minutes every day because of this new highway. It's like disorienting. Where am I now? I have to check on ways of sending me. You get used to driving a certain way. I remember once I drove my rebbe in Frackway. And I grew up in Frackway, and so I was taking all the side streets to beat all the lights. So I remember my rebbe said to me, Mordechai, I see you really know this town. I said, Rebbe, this is my place. I will live. I believe if I live in Eretz Yisrael for the next fifty years, it will never be like Frackway for me. It'll never be. I know Frackway. I don't have to use ways in Frackway. Even now in Ramat Beit Shemesh, I don't even know where I am right now. In the Veishamir, I went to park my car and I see there's a new city now. It used to be the end of this block was nothing. Now the end of this block is another new city. Another new city. And I'm hopeful they'll continue building. Jews need homes. My daughter needs to buy a home with her son, with her husband, with my son-in-law. And they say there are 4,500 new homes. It's a disorienting thing. Soon you're not going to know where you are. Have you been to Balad?

28:17 You've been. It's a crazy thing. We're watching cities be built. Not nice cities, but cities. But you didn't need homes, and they build very, very high today. So what does it mean to encounter the loss? First of all, the void, and second, the geography of it, the lack of orientation. So here's the big chiddush. The big chiddush is that the reason it's so difficult to mourn something. It's because mourning is the recognition that I love something so deeply. And now I have nowhere to put that love. That's why it's so exceptionally difficult. The void is not so much that the person is gone. It's not so much that I don't know where I am in the world anymore. It's that there's this part of me that I have And I don't know where to put it. So grief is unexpressed love. That's what it is, and it's in its character. To confront that void is not confronting the loss of another; it's confronting the loss within ourselves that we have nowhere to put this exceptionally powerful emotion.

29:33 That's what's so vulnerable about this And the process of grieving is not chas v'shalom. People tend to think of these things as depressing. For anyone who's ever sat in avelus, you know that grief is not depressing; it's actually a deeply uplifting experience. The nature of the way that we're masavo, especially in Yiddishkeit, forces us to confront the loss. I remember many years ago A young man who unfortunately passed away—he overdosed. His very close friend of the family got sick. And the mother passed away. This particular son was off the darch at the time. And he had grown very long dreadlocks, and he actually cut off his dreadlocks before his mother passed away, because his mother said to him, "I want to see you one more time the way I knew you when you were a child." So, tremendous sacrifice on this young man's part. He loved his mother very much, so he cut off his dreadlocks. I went to be a shivah call. He wasn't from there, but he went. He was sitting shiva.

30:35 So he said to me that Shiva was such like he saw the insight that Chazal had into the nature of a person. He said, 'You have no idea how much I want to run away now into the world of music' Just to make myself feel better. But not being able to listen to music, sitting and telling the same stories over and over again, having the community come, it forces you into the recognition: I do have all this love, and I have nowhere to put it. It forces you into a position where you have to encounter. The vulnerability of grief—you have no choice but to lean into the discomfort. So On a deeper level, what this means is not only that I have all this unexpressed love But if I have all this unexpressed love It must mean that there is still something to love. This is the challenge of it.

31:34 Like, for example Yaakov Avinu could not get over the loss of Yosef Hadadik for twenty-two years. So we know that Chazal tell us that he lost nevuah. He wasn't in a state of simcha. He lost nevuah because he could not move past the loss of Yosef Hadadik. Why? Because Yosef Hadadik was still alive. In other words, there was some sort of intuition that Yaakov Avinu had that Yosef Hadadik existed beyond his reach. And the state of Avelus that he remained in was because on a certain level he understood that Yosef HaTzaddik was still alive. And the same thing is true for us. When we have a sense of avelus, what that means is not that chas v'shalom the thing that we love is gone. It's the thing that we love, of course, and it's still real. It just somehow exists beyond our grasp And it forces us to encounter.

32:36 A fundamental tenet of life, which is: to what degree do we value existence And to what degree do we value the life that inhabits that existence? We would never think that we are truly our bodies. We would never think that it's a ridiculous thing to think Because that would mean that if chas v'shalom, a person had less of a body, my closest friend in the world. He lost his leg to cancer when he was 12 years old. Does that mean he's less of a person? Of course not. That's the existence that life inhabits. So a person could have a diminished existence. But the truth of the matter is that life cannot die. It's not possible for life to die. Life can't die any more than salt can go bad. How could life die? If it's life, it can't die. When we speak about death, what we mean is the condition where the body borrows life from the soul.

33:38 So that condition of alive can end. But the life that inhabited that existence cannot die. A soul cannot die. That's why Yid believes in trias a meseem. Most people don't realize trias a meseem is a logical idea. If we really believe that the soul is not bound by a physical existence, then why can't it come back? It's irrational to believe if you believe in the notion of a soul that on a certain level you almost have to believe there's a place for olam neshamos. There's a concept according to many of gildel, there's a concept of tchiyas amesim of olam haba. Why should the soul be any less real because it doesn't inhabit the body? A person could take this idea to too much of an extreme and we see in the world today that there are certain sects in yiddishkeit that are taking this concept too much to an extreme. But the idea that a soul cannot die is absolutely true.

34:34 The availus that we experience is because we know that the life of that person still exists. In fact, it might exist more now than it did when it was alive. Its capacity to be more expansive. A soul is no longer limited to a body after death. So the idea that the soul is somehow still there, still active, still a part of our life. But just beyond reach is a very profound idea. That's why we always say the neshama should be a melech yosher. What does that mean? What's that idea that the neshama should be a melech yosher? The idea is that this neshama is still involved and still cares about the people that were in its life. And of course it will act as an ombudsman on behalf of the people it loved in life. Why would it do anything but that? So the idea that avelos touches not Chassid Shalma, depressing place. Avelus means this person that we lost is still as real as they ever were.

35:36 And this process, this recognition, is what grounds us. The feeling of being disoriented, the feeling of that void, is met with the faith that this neshama is not truly gone. Gone in a certain sense, but not truly gone, not absolutely gone. And so the notion of avelus, when we think about it from a Yiddish perspective It's a totally different notion than the one that perhaps they have in the rest of the world. The rest of the world grieves the loss of someone, and we grieve to discover the truth that they haven't really They haven't really left. If only left to a certain degree, they're more expansive than they ever were. And there's a tremendous amount of nechama that comes from that. The nechama is, and obviously we don't say this by a shiva. This talmud that lost his daughter He posted on social media was actually very funny. He said we should make an app to rate shiva visitors because there are so many people that do such an absolutely wonderful job of coming and paying a shiva call. And then there's always that beautiful Jew that doesn't know what to say, so they just decide to.

36:53 Say all the wrong things. Like if you've ever been at a shiva and somebody says something, you're like it can physically hurt when you. They're in a better place now. Don't don't do it. The desire to say those things, even though it's certainly not our place to say those things, does make sense because it's an expression of, they're not done. They're not done. And we all share this. It's why we come together as a community, right? It's when one of us comes and we're sharing our life. You show up in the way that you show up because you're just like Hineni. We're all deeply interconnected. That's why we say Hamakom einchem eshem besoch shachav leitzion yushalayim. That's a very deep idea. First of all, that you're not alone in your avlus. That's I think I once heard that the redemption of suffering is community. That's a very profound line. If you think about it, that the redemption of suffering is community. That when one of us experiences a loss, we never experience that loss alone. Not only in our immediate community, but in the larger community of Klal Yisrael.

38:05 And also the notion of Hamakom, the notion that God is the place of the world, and He's not limited by that place. You still have a place where you belong, both within the community and within the Makom of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. So the notion of Avilos engages us in finding the reality of what actually is. And so with this in mind, we can return to this idea that we started off with of kolamis avla yushalayim zeichev irayev esimchasa. It doesn't mean that if we're not misavla, we won't be zeichev to see the Beis Hamikdash rebuilt. Of course, we're all going to be zeichev to see the Beis Hamikdash rebuilt. That's obvious. But there's a simcha that's a product of suffering. There's a simcha that's a product of grieving. And zeiche v'roya b'simchasa, perhaps we could suggest doesn't mean that we won't experience the simcha of the Beis Hamikdash when it's rebuilt.

39:06 How could it be that a yid will be sitting by Binyan Bayis Shlishi and not experience the simcha? It's impossible for us to fathom. But perhaps the idea is that right now this is why Chazal could give you the havtacha. Kolam esaval Yisraelim zoych v'iraya besimchasa doesn't mean in the times of Binyan Beis Hamikdash. It means that a yid could live with the paradoxical tension of grief and simcha at the same time. That a yid could find completion within the state of incompletion. That's what simcha is. The maral says simcha means completion, and so the word simchuk. Whenever we're besimcha about something, it means that something has been completed. At a chasma, there's been a completion of something. At a bris, there's a completion of something. When a child is born There's a we're building out this thing to its completion. Any time there's completion, we see the notion of simcha.

40:06 So one might think that in the absence of the bais hamikdash, it would not be possible for a yid to experience simcha. And indeed we see that there are halachos. Certain rishonim. Rav Asher Weiss has a tshuva on it. There are rishonim that say that since the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, we should not listen to any music. And obviously I saw a tshuva from Rav Asher Weiss that if you do that, you're going to end up listening to much worse music. So better to listen to the music that exists. I'm not Chassidish. I'm suggesting that a Yid shouldn't listen to music today. But L'marshal, when we go to Yerushalayim You go to Yerushalayim for a Chassid. You ever see they have the Chassidish singers? It's my favorite thing to go to a Charedi Chassid in Yerushalayim for two reasons. Number one, because they have four Chassidish singers and a drum, and that's the whole band. Number two is because when they're not dancing, they put on really gayish music.

41:07 You ever noticed this? They put on like all gayishim music, but they only put on the instrumentals because nobody there knows that it's gayishim music. So I am sitting in Ezra's taira And by a certain person that I go to their weddings, I am sitting in Ezra's taira, and all of a sudden I am like, and you are sitting at a table of like all people that grew up in the five towns, and like we're all sitting there, and like everyone like looks up at the same moment because now they're playing like Brian Adams or like Michael Jackson, it's like the theme song from Titanic, like everybody's like. And it feels incongruous because everybody there is chassidim. And so you're looking around, going like none of you ever know. And there's a certain beauty to that. But aside from that, the notion that there's still avelus b'yerushalayim It doesn't mean chassidushan that a Jew doesn't experience simcha. That can't be. It can't be what Chazal meant to say that ever since the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, we're supposed to be depressed.

41:58 It's not. It can't possibly be true. We see in other places, in many places, that Chazal warn against the person becoming depressed. So what do Chazal mean? I think the idea is that a true simcha cannot be attained after the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash until you find the shleimus that exists within the destruction. And the only way to discover that shleimus is to discover that the Beis Hamikdash has not been destroyed. Which part? The idea that We can't like after I lost something. There's that void. I'm disoriented. I don't know where I am in the world. So there's a state of incompletion. So the natural reaction to that state of incompletion is not to grieve Because it's too vulnerable. I want to go there. But if I don't go there, then I can't discover the shleimus that exists within the destruction. How do we find the shleimus within the destruction? The moment the thing is destroyed.

43:03 The Targum says it's not destroyed. It's it's it's still there. Bricks and mortar were destroyed. The body is no longer with us. The soul of the Beis Hamikdash was never destroyed. That's why they say that the Romans destroyed a destroyed building. As Chazal say, the Romans destroyed a destroyed building. Because we know that it wasn't the Romans that destroyed the Beis Hamikdash. It was the Gemara Hamurus. It was the lack of brechas at teira. It was sinas chinam, or all the myriad of reasons that Chazal give for the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. We know that we destroyed the brick and mortar of the Beis Hamikdash. So we know what it takes to rebuild this. The idea that the Beis Hamikdash continues to exist for us is a healing thing. It's a tremendous simcha. It means that our connection to the Eibushter is not gone. It's not diminished in any way. It's just that right now it's not tangible. It's not visceral. We can't see the Kohanim. We don't see the Levim on the steps. We don't see a Kodesh Hakadosh.

44:02 So there is certainly a void But the void is not ba'etz. The void is not real. And Adar Abba, once we recognize that the reality of the Beis Hamikdash still exists, so that inspires us to say, so then how do I bring it back into reality? It's like to give it to put it in relationship terms. It's like if the relationship is If the relationship has suffered terribly And there's no space anymore between the husband and wife. And there's no feeling of connection, and the distance is so huge that the couple feels it's not possible for us to ever come back to one another. The beginning of the process of rebuilding is the recognition that this relationship is still intact. And in a certain way, the recognition that the relationship is still intact is inspiring and it's motivating. And there's even a state of simcha that exists. If I know that I can rebuild it So then all is not lost.

45:09 The problem is that right now the way I'm looking at it is that all is lost. All is not lost. That's what Rabbi Nachman meant, I think, that if you believe you can break it, then you have to believe you could fix it. Who are you to believe that you could actually break something? You thought that you could get something to its essence, destroy it so there's nothing left of it. It's avada; it's not possible that you were able to do that. And whatever you did break, if you were capable of breaking it, you're capable of fixing it. So there's a simcha that a person has to have in these times, and that's what Chazal say. The Chazal say, 'Anyone who's mishenichnas avme mamtem besimcha.' What does mamtem mean? The Balakhasa say, 'Of course, tamit besimcha, but mamtem besimcha.' A little bit less simcha today, because we're in the state of availus of recognizing what isn't.

46:03 But of course, there's a state of simcha within that recognition. Which is why even on Tishav We Tishav was a funny day. We get up really We really are ready from after mincha on Tishav. We're already really in a completely different state. If that's mamish the day of the destruction, so then why in the world would we ever get up? We wouldn't get up. So imagine if I'm telling a person on the day of the Lava'ya Start to get up already. Start to get up already? This is the time to do more. By us, if you've come, the culmination of the nine days is Tish'behov And you've entered into that point of essence that still exists, so then the motif is deep avelus in the morning and already coming out of that avelus. There's already a certain state. A certain type of completion, a certain type of simcha that we could already begin to experience, which is why the Shabbos afterwards, and this year it's Ma'ariv right afterwards, is Shabbos Nacham.

47:02 That there's a Nachama that comes naturally from Tishavaf. That it's not something that a person has to reach for. The natural state of avelos brings with it a Nachama. We should be zeicher. We should be zeicher. We have to. It's a difficult thing Like we said, pay attention to what's happening to us To pay attention to what we don't have, to pay attention to what we still have, to recognize the eternal nature of all things in this world, especially of the relationship that we have with the Eved Sheter. And in that Skos we should be zayche to be roya b'simchasa and to not only see the simcha right now, but also to see the completion. Bescherm.