Transcript
Automatic transcript; may contain mistakes, especially in Hebrew.
The Kina of Eli Tzion is a call for Tzion and her surrounding cities to continue to cry out to Hakadosh Baruch Hu to be restored. The tune that we use is the same nigan that we use in musaf of Rej Chredesh and of Shallosh Raghalim when we sing b'nei bei skharky batkila. The question is asked at this point as we're winding down the kinos. Why is there a call for continued crying? Why do we somehow continue the cry of the kinah throughout the rest of the year? As we remind ourselves of this Negan on Musa for Chaydesh and Ushallah Shargalah Naturally we would think that this kina would be a kina of hope We know that the minig and Yerushalayim is to wash the floors on Tisha B'Av afternoon Because they knew that Mashiach was coming Chazal tell us that the birthday of Mashiach is on Tisha B'Av
So why do we end Kinos with a call for continued mourning, for continued habei'los? Eli Tzion V'Hareh kamo ishobitzi rehah One of the types of cries that we have is the cry of a woman who's in labor. But the kinna continues and it says, Kibsula chagurasak albawne hu'ra'ah But it's also the cry of a young woman who has lost her husband. These are two very different types of cries. The cry of a woman who's in labor is a painful cry. But it's also a cry that has meaning and has purpose. Because a woman in labor knows that she's going to have a child. And so her pain is not suffering, though extraordinarily painful, it's somehow understandable. But the cry of a young bride who is just in the process, in the beginning of her marriage, of falling deeply in love with her husband, who has all of the hope of what her life will look like for the next 50, 60 years.
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This is the exact opposite cry. Far from a cry of meaning, this is a cry of chaos. A little bit over a decade ago, out of the blue, a guy that I went to Yeshiva with passed away. Young married guy, his levayah was in Beit Shemesh. And a couple, the Khevra from Yeshiva, that had made out Li'a, that lived here in Eretz Yisrael, We went to the levaya. He was not my close friend. But when I was in Yeshiva with him, there were only 33 guys in the Yeshiva. And when there's only 33 guys in Yeshiva, you can't not be friends with people. There's not enough people. Like you can't ignore him. It's not getting Yeshiva with 200 people and he's just a guy. He was one of the guys. And his passing shocked me. I went, I'm sitting on the side, they put him in the ground, I'm standing next to her, Danil Glantz, who's my good friend, and the kala who's recently married to the now deceased young man, she escapes from the clutches of her mother and she attempts to dive in to the kevir, to be with her husband, and she's going to be with her mother.
To be with her husband and she's screaming, Avram Chaim don't leave me, Avram Chaim don't leave me, and she has to be restrained because she can't possibly leave him. And I'm sitting on the side with the plants and we're both shaking. What did we just see? It was devastation in the greatest possible sense of the word. It was the death of hope, it was the death of dreams, it was And because everything that this girl had been dreaming about her whole life, a little girl who from the time she's probably three or four years old is thinking about what would be like without a college. And when she's in high school maybe she starts to wonder who will be. And when she's in seminary she's hearing all of the shiurim. And finally, finally she starts the process of shidukim. And she maybe dated a couple of guys.
And with each one there comes a little bit of excitement but then it's not the one. But then you meet the one. And you get engaged and there's a Vart and all the Chayyub and everything is so happy and everything is so amazing. And you get married and it's the most beautiful Simchon in the entire world. You stood under the Chuppu with this man. And under the Chuppu you were davening and you were crying and you're thinking about what will my life look like? What will it be like when we have our first kids? What will it be like when we're raising them through Teenage Hood? What will it be like to stand under the Chuppu with our children? To have grandchildren? To invite everybody over for Shabbos? To sit around the Shabbos table with all of our grandchildren and all of our great grandchildren to have those fish-eye lens pictures that the bubbies and zaydis are zaychit to have when they go to a wedding and they have Kenay N'Hara, several children and each one of those children have several children, each one of those children have several children. The nafas of a grandparent to be able to look at their entire family at once. I imagine that this young kalah Tisha hoped and dreamed of all of those things and more.
And here she is, and without any warning whatsoever, the Malachamavis comes in through the window, doesn't knock politely at the door, but comes in through the window and steals her husband down from under her. She's left with nothing. And all she has, and I saw it with my own eyes, is this exceptional yearning to not let go of what she has. These two cries are very different cries. The cry of the mother in childbirth who knows that there's going to be a baby at the end of the process. And the cry of a young widow who knows that there is nothing left but crying. These are the two cries of Eli Tzion. So if this is to be a kinna of hope, then why bother mentioning the cry of the second woman of the young bride? The cry of the mother we can understand will be a great mushmuss. Rabbi Sai, Hakadosh Baruch Hu has the plan.
And we will see the plan fulfilled, Gamsu L'Tava, Kalman D'Avir, Rachman L'Tava, everything Hakadosh Baruch Hu does is for the best. And you'll see just like that generation that survived the Holocaust was able to see such unbelievable Yeshua's in their lifetime We too will be Ezra Hashem see Binyan Beit Hamikdash and will understand every single day. That would have been a great moshu'shul. It would have been a great statement of hope. But that's not what the kinnah says. The kinnah says we have to have a complex cry. A cry that lives within the dialectical tension of chaos and order. How are we to understand this? Grief is unresolved love. When you lose a loved one, chassidus shalom. In a certain way you don't want to stop crying. Because the moment you stop crying is the moment you lost contact with the love that you have. You have all this love in your heart but you have no place to put it. So all you can do is grieve. All you can do is mourn.
And a person who's in this situation who loses the loved one, they hope that they never stop crying. Because when they stop crying it means that now it's okay and it's the end. And that love is gone. Father of mine this year lost his father. His father was not a well man. And his father passed away. A couple weeks later I saw him in trouble. And I asked him, how you doing? And he's a good friend. So he answered me honestly. He didn't just give me a, you know, one of these padlam type of answers like, yeah, I'm doing okay. He looks at me and he says, I'm not okay. He said, I hear that. It's okay not to be okay. But it's also okay to be okay. And he said Mordecai, don't tell me that it's okay to be okay. I don't want to know that it's okay to be okay. I don't want to hear that right now.
I said I understand. It's okay not to be okay, and it's okay to be okay. He goes, I can't think about being okay I don't want to be okay forever Because if I'm okay, then then what's my father now? He's a matzevah in Eretzachayim. That's what he is. He's a memory I don't want him to be a memory. I want him to be alive and he lives within me as long as I'm not okay And he's right There's a part of us that shows up to Tisha B'Av and says It's okay. I believe B'Amunah Shleim Abb V'V'Yasam Hasheach. I understand all of this is for a reason. And even if I don't understand the reason right now, I believe that there's a reason. But it's also okay not to be okay. It's okay to say, I have no idea why any of this is happening.
And I struggle with all of this. And it doesn't make sense to everybody who shows the plan. And I don't want to hear that there's a plan. It's like you would never go over to somebody in Shiva and say, he's in a better place. I'm not interested in him being in a better place. When I was in Smi'chah, the Rebbe was teaching us Smi'chah, his mother passed away. And we went to pay a shivakol, the whole khevre from the shir, we went to pay a shivakol. I'll never forget that he was furious when we walked in, he was so agitated. And we said, Rebbe, what happened? And he said, some quote-unquote Rav had just walked in the door, some a kupul. And it said to him, do you want to know why your mother died? And he said to him, to this fake MacCubul, he said, if you can tell me why this blade of grass grows, then you can tell me why my mother died.
None of us know why anything happens. And from our perspective it happens for no reason at all. And which doesn't mean to say that there isn't a reason. But we are not only cast to live within the order of the chaos. But to live within the chaos itself is also beautiful. To be able to say, I have no idea why this is happening. This is happening, but I don't want to let go of that grief because the moment I let go of the grief it's over and In this way, Elitzi'ot is the ultimate cry of hope Because it's the cry of we don't have Yerushalayim hab Nuyah And we don't have B'Sammiktosh and we don't have Mashiach and we don't have Karbanos and Khataris And there's still senseless tragedy and suffering in the world But as long as we continue to cry out to the Rebbe Nachman Hisholom and pain We're keeping the hope that we have alive and if we become okay with it That's the death of hope. And perhaps this is why, as R'salah Beitik suggests, that the niggun that we're about to sing for Eli Tzion is a niggun that we continue throughout the entire year.
Musav avrei sh'chaidash musav avyamim no r'alim it's a haunting niggun. V'nei beisra kivatkila It's meant to recall throughout the year the tragedy of the destruction of the Beis Hamintash. It's meant to make sure that we're not okay. It's okay to be okay, but it's also okay not to be okay. The person is not okay. It means on some level that not only have they not let go, but that they believe that things are going to be restored one day. I'm not kidding. That's not a simple thing either. To know that the reason that Yaqiv Avinu could not be consoled over the loss of Yossef Haz'adik is because deep in the recesses of his heart, He understood this was not the end of the story. And we too understand this is not the end of the story. And there is a tremendous amount of hope in that. We cannot be consoled because we know the base Hamik Tesh is coming back. We know that it's not over. And every cry of pain that we have Is the recognition that everything is coming back and we hopefully await.
I read a Mysa, and I'll finish with this, about Rubashkin. On the day that Rubashkin was released from prison, his wife got a phone call that he's going to be released today. And so she went to the prison, and she had with her regular clothing that her husband should not need to walk out of the prison wearing prisoner's garb. But the warden wanted to take one last shot at Rubashkin, make sure that he doesn't leave with any dignity whatsoever. And so he made him walk out in his prison garb, not dressed like a mensch. Somebody asked, Mrs. Rubashkin, where'd you get the clothing from? Did you have, did you have like your sehul, did you have your wits about you? I was about you that when you got that phone call that after all these years and all of that fighting and that your husband is going to be released from prison.
Did you think to yourself the dignity of your husband, let me run home and get his clothing? She said no. I kept that bag of clothing in my car ever since he went to jail. I knew that he was coming out and I was waiting to be ready. All of the tzar, all of the pain that she felt, all of those years that her husband was stuck behind bars, and that there was no hope, all of that hope in those tears ensured that she prepared herself for the day of redemption. And we too, in these final moments before Chazheis, as we're about to say Elitzion and finish up Tvila, take one last stab at not being okay, because embedded within the absolute chaos, that's where hope lies. That's where we tap into redemption and our ability, Be'ezir Hashem, to bring Mashiach Tzedkeinu. G'mehir Abiyameinu, Amen.
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