Tisha B'Av - The Five Stages of Destruction

3:09 Change never happens from somebody who stands up here and gives a speech. It always happens from people like yourselves who learn to sit next to each other. Who learn to find commonality. The shared essence that we all have as Jews And I dare say that right now It could be that there's no place in the world that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is getting more nachas. That God is more pleased than right here in this space, Medrash. Thank you very much for the invitation. I want to speak not for very long tonight. But I want to share with you an idea that I think is very critical. I also want to share with you at the outset that this is a fairly sophisticated idea. And in the spirit of courage and vulnerability, I want to share with you that I had many hesitations to do what I'm about to do tonight.

4:05 And I spoke with my wife, who works on Mechlelet. And I shared with her that I don't know if this is the right move. I could get up and tell stories and try to be a little inspirational. Or I could do something that's a little bit more difficult, but frankly a lot more real. And I've chosen the path that's a lot more real, and I share that with you because I want you to know that it's a testament to what we have the capacity to do tonight. But also to be able to sink your teeth into it Not just to hear a story But to really think And to share with you an idea that's sophisticated that I think could really impact you. The Mishnah tells us that five things happened on Tishah B'av. And tonight we're going to try not to see these five things as five disparate things that happened on Tisha B'av But as one continuum One process that leads to another.

5:08 The five things that happened: number one was the spies came back and reported to the people in the desert that the land of Israel was too difficult to settle. And the people began to cry. And God said, "If you're going to cry for no reason" You're going to cry for generations. Needs to be unpacked. What does that mean? That was step one, the first thing that happened on Tisha B'av. Step two is the destruction of the first temple, the first Beis Hamikdash. Step three is the destruction of the second Beis Hamikdash. Step four is the destruction of a city called Betar. Betar was after the destruction of the temple. Beitar was the last stage of revolt. It was the last great Jewish fortress, the last great Jewish town. And from that town came the Bar Kokhba rebellion. That was stage four. That rebellion didn't work, and Beitar was destroyed.

6:08 And the final thing that happened on Tishabu The very last thing Was that they plowed under Yerushalayim. The city of Jerusalem was not just destroyed; the city of Jerusalem was eradicated. This is not just five disparate events that happened historically. These are a continuum, a process of how we destroy things. And this message tonight, the lessons that we can learn from Tisha B'av happen to every single one of us all the time. Let's take a moment. 25 to 30 minutes at the max to analyze each one of these stages because the lessons here are so valuable for every one of us. The destruction of all relationships begins with fear. How many people? The answer is almost every one of us. How many people in our lives have done this? I have something I want to say. I have a truth that I want to speak But it's easier to be quiet.

7:15 Than it is to confront what I feel is actually happening. How many friendships have been destroyed because we are afraid to bring our true selves to the table? Not three hours ago, I was speaking with a young woman. And she's in a complex relationship. It doesn't matter what the details are. And for the first time in her life She's learning to confront her fear and say, 'Hinani, here I am. This is me.' And I told her She's beginning to see this. That what happens is that when we start showing up to relationships without fear, the dynamic of a relationship begins to change. Because if you're in a relationship with someone and you don't speak And now you start to speak, what does the other person start to feel? Something is changing. This person isn't acting the same way. God says to the Jewish people in the desert, "I told you to go into Israel." We'll discuss in a moment what that means. I told you to go into Israel. Your response was fear.

8:24 Because your response was fear, you're going to take that fear for generations. It's intergenerational trauma. It's epigenetics. When we are afraid, we pass down that fear. Sometimes I wonder if you look at the adults. Maybe the adults in the room will share this if they're comfortable. Sometimes I wonder how many things in my life are dictated by my ten-year-old fears. When I was a little boy, I was ten years old. In the spirit of fearlessness, I'll share with you that I was expelled from school when I was in fifth grade. And people always ask me, "What do you have to do to get expelled from school in fifth grade? How bad could you possibly be?" And the truth of the matter is, I don't think I was that bad, but it wasn't a situation that worked. But when you're young, you build up a fear, you build up a story about yourself, and then you take that story with you.

9:22 And if you become an adult and you're paying attention, then you actually start to think to yourself What decisions have I made in my life that are born from that place of fear? The destruction of the first Beit Hamikdash, The first Temple, the Second Temple, Betar, and ultimately plowing under Yerushalayim. Our story begins with fears. We take these fears with us. I would ask you Just for a moment. You don't need to close your eyes. All you need to do is pay attention and think, just for a second. What fears in your life are you facing right now? How much of those fears do you carry with you? A young man on NCSY Kollel said to me this summer, he's really inspired right now, and he's really learning, and he's really starting to daven, and he's really getting into it. And he came to me two nights ago and he said But what if it doesn't last?

10:12 How many of us are holding in that place? You came to TJJ. You're having an awesome summer. You came to Miklela. You're having an awesome summer. I imagine that for all of us in this room, we're carrying fear. It's okay to carry fear. It's human to carry fear. But there's a difference between carrying fear and speaking from a place of fear, not for a place of fear. Making decisions from a place of fear. Last summer, I had the opportunity to be in Jerusalem with the TJJ bus. And one of the girls, maybe one of the most inspiring girls I've ever met in my entire life She shared with me that summer she had begun to keep Shabbos. What an unbelievable thing! For a Jew to say, "I'm going to keep Shabbos" And we had a question and answer in the Jerusalem Gold Hotel on a Shabbos morning.

11:04 And with tears in her eyes, she said, "But what if I can't continue when I go back home?" What if I don't have the support that I have here on TJJ? I was so moved by her honesty. By her vulnerability. By the fact that she recognized there was a fear and she wanted to confront it, she didn't want to let that fear dictate her life. What was the fear? If our journey begins from a deep place of fear, then the question we must ask ourselves is, 'What is the fear?' And here I'd like to share with you the mission statement of all of Judaism. If somebody asks you a question, 'What is Judaism about?' This is an answer to that question in one line. It's very simple. You ready for it? Very simple. We believe we have an ambitious belief in this religion that this physical world can be transformed into a place where the physicality and the spirituality can be merged.

12:02 We believe that what we look at in this world is not what this world is. It can be something more. That means the key word we're looking for, and it's the word that inspires us in our life. Is change. People talk about change all the time, but what does change mean? Change doesn't mean becoming something that you're not. You didn't come to Israel this summer to become something that you're not. You came to Israel this summer to access the truest version of yourself. It's why we came. I have no doubt that this summer you girls have gone on amazing tours. You've seen amazing things But I very highly doubt. That what you'll remember is you walked over here or you walked over there. What you'll remember in ten years from now, in twenty years from now, in thirty years from now Is what you discovered about yourself when you came home to this country.

12:57 Coming home to Israel is like walking into your house. The girls know how you got here, and it's like I don't know how to say this nicely, but you know how it's just a little uncomfortable. It's great. There's no doubt that it's great here, but when you go home and you're going to walk in your room for the first time since a couple of weeks, and you're going to sit on your bed and you're just going to feel fine for the first couple of minutes. It'll just be like I'm back in my room. It's a little uncomfortable to come six thousand miles away. But when you come to this country You come in home. And home is a place where you discover your truest self. This physical world, in a certain sense, is the greatest lie that's ever been told. This physical world is waiting to change. It's waiting to transform and become what it really is. That is a daunting prospect.

13:49 It means that when you look at the world, you have to say, "I see more than what you are." But I want to share with you that even though that's a tremendous fear It's also a tremendous blessing. There's a person in my life. There's actually a couple of people in my life, but I'm thinking of one person in particular. That in the worst times of my life They were the ones that stuck by me. There was a time when I was in eighth grade and I had gotten in very big trouble. And this—he wasn't a rabbi. This person He came to my house one night. And he said, "Get in the car." He was an older person, my parents' age. He said, "Get in the car." And we went to Dunkin' Donuts on Rockaway Turnpike. Anybody here from the Five Towns? You don't have to. It's fine.

14:45 Dunkin' Donuts on Rockaway Turnpike. We sit down. I had gotten in big trouble, and he sits down with me. He says, "Get a donut, Berg. Get a donut." At the time, I was a skinny person. I said, "I don't need a donut." He said, "Get a donut." That was the beginning of my weight gain journey. I blame it all on him. And I had been lying about something. It doesn't matter what it was. And he sat down. We sat down. I remember exactly what donut he got. He got a French croler. I don't know why I remember that, but it stuck in my head. And he goes, "I know you're lying, so let's just stop the lying." I was in eighth grade. In my world, deny till you die. So I said, "It's not true. I'm not lying." He said, "I know you're lying. Just stop." I was like, "It's not true." We went back and forth for maybe 20 seconds, and then he goes.

15:32 I know who you really are. This is not you. It was one of the most powerful lines I heard in my life. I had been lying for three straight weeks. I was getting in so much trouble. But when he said that to me, and I saw he was honest, I saw he believed in a different version of myself. He gave me permission to believe in that person too. The greatest gift that we give people is that we see them not for how they're showing up and what they're doing. The greatest gift that we give people is that we say, "I see more." A Jew is meant to see more in this world. You see someone and you're looking at the way they're behaving. Don't look at the way they're behaving. That's the lie. The lie is that we can define people based on their actions. The truth is that every one of us has a godly soul inside of ourselves. And no matter what you do, that godly soul cannot be tainted. That's the truth of what it means to be a Jew.

16:28 A Jew doesn't look at the external; we look at the internal, and we see how we can raise the internal to create change. To go to Israel for the spies, for the Jews in the desert meant. This is what the Alter Rebbe or Shneur Zalman of Liadi said generations ago. In the desert, they were in a purely spiritual environment. There was no need for transformation. They were surrounded by the clouds of glory. They had the pillar of fire walking in front of them. Everything they needed was there. If they needed food, manna fell from the sky. It was a purely spiritual environment. To come to this land meant: Can you take spirituality and invest it in the physical nature of this world? We were afraid to do that. We were afraid to fulfill the mission for which we were created. The beginning of our destruction began with the fear that we cannot complete the Jewish mission.

17:23 Watch what happens. Four steps now come from that fear. Step number one: If you don't believe that you can merge spirit and physical matter, then you cannot have a relationship with God. A human physical being cannot have a relationship with an infinite spiritual God if you can't fuse these two things. The first temple was destroyed, not because we were mean to each other. The first temple was destroyed because we did the worst sins possible. We didn't believe we could have a relationship with God. The second temple was destroyed because if you can't have a relationship with God, you also can't have a relationship with each other. This is what's happening in the world today. We are seeing more and more divisiveness than ever before. It used to be, girls. There was a time when Democrats could marry Republicans and Republicans could marry Democrats. Such a time existed in the world.

18:25 But what happened? Political rhetoric started dividing us more and more. And now, how do we define someone? You're from this camp, and you're from this camp. And if I'm being honest with you, we do it in our Jewish community also. You do this, you do that, and we create separation. The reason why it's so exceptionally powerful to be in this room tonight is because we're in a room of people that refuse to play that game. That we can sit next to each other, and we can say your godly essence and my godly essence are the same godly essence. So there's no difference between us. What an exceptionally beautiful thing to say! But if you don't believe in God, if you don't connect to God, then you're you and I'm me, and there is no shared essence. So if you watch what happens, number one, we were afraid to go on the mission to merge spirituality and physicality. What does that do? It creates a relationship between man and God. It severs that relationship. What happens when you sever the relationship between man and God? You also sever the relationship with each other.

19:25 This is a very powerful level of destruction, and if we stopped here, it would be fine. But there are two more levels, and that's really what I want to focus on tonight. The first level is called the death of hope. I remember a couple of years ago During COVID. My grandmother, who was 90 years old, had just celebrated her 90th birthday. She was in an assisted living facility in New Jersey. For those of you that don't know, the assisted living facilities in New Jersey were a death trap. Crazy amounts of people contracted COVID and ultimately passed away. And I was here in Israel And my parents lived here in Israel. My grandmother lived in New Jersey. And I got the phone call from my mother. Grandma was diagnosed with COVID. And in those early days of COVID, this was within the first month of COVID.

20:30 That was a death sentence. And then I got a phone call: Grandma's in the hospital. And then I got a phone call: Grandma's on a ventilator. And so you know, logically, you know that it's over. Logically, you know it's over. But what do you hold on to? You hold on. To irrational levels of hope, and you daven, you cry out to Hashem, and you say, "God, please save my grandmother." It's not over. Aren't there stories of people that got sick and they were the ones that made it? Elderly people. Maybe my grandmother will be the two percent. And as things are going on and it's getting worse and worse, you start to acclimate. You start to say, "this is happening." But in the back of your mind, in the recesses, there is that one percent chance. Until you get that phone call Until you get that phone call, and it's the phone call you dread. My grandmother, allow shalom. She passed away.

21:30 My grandmother was a second mother to me. I was my grandmother's oldest grandchild. I was the one that made her into a grandmother. She was very young. She was a second mother to me. She came on all our vacations. I have a picture on my desk of my grandmother. And whenever I'm speaking to somebody on the phone or on Zoom, my grandmother's right there, and her voice is inside of my heart, telling me, "Come on, Mordechai, say something nice. Pick them up. Lift up another Jew." Her voice lives on inside of me. For me, to lose my grandmother was one of the most painful things that ever happened to me in my entire life. I was holding on to hope in those final moments, like you can't imagine. I was holding on with two hands. I wouldn't let go. And then when hope is destroyed. It feels.

22:18 It might even be worse than the thing itself. You ever have something like that where you're holding on and you're like, maybe it could just be maybe. After the destruction of the first two temples What we had left was one fortress city called Betar, and there was a great man in that city whose name was Bar Kochba. And he said, "we've lost almost everything, but what if" What if? Maybe we could take it back. That was what Beitar was. What happened on Tishabov? Step four. If step one is fear, and step two is the loss of our relationship with God, and step three is the relationship of loss between man and his fellow man, then step four is the death of hope. And that is an exceptionally tragic thing. But even that wasn't enough. There's still one more level of destruction. That level of destruction is the death of memory.

23:20 I don't know if other people have this. So it could be that what I'm about to say will fall on deaf ears. My family, when something works, we do it over and over again. You know how some people go on different vacations. One summer they'll go to Mexico, and another summer they'll go to Cancun. In my family, we do the same thing every single year. There's a place. Anyone here from Boston? Nice. There's a place called Onset, Massachusetts. It's a beach town. It's a gorgeous town. We went one summer to Boston, and then we went every single summer to Boston for the rest of our lives. We had a vacation house there, and it was beautiful. You know what my family does now that we all live here in Israel? I don't know if your families do this. We don't have new experiences. We sit around the table and talk about old experiences. Do you remember the time we went to that water park? Do you remember the time we went to the Fryhoffers Outlet? Do you girls know what Freihofers is? Such an old man. Do you girls know what Entimins is? What's the best type of Entimins?

24:18 The crumb topping donut. Everyone knows that. There's no argument. We're not having that conversation. There's Moshe Tzvi. We agree. There's no conversation to be had. Somebody said to me. I gave this year one. Somebody said the best type of Entimins donut is plain. I had to ask them to leave. It's like pineapple pizza. We're not having this conversation. For those that don't understand that pineapple pizza is not something that any human being should ever eat So Entenmann's donuts. I'm sorry, that's my fault. Entenmann's donuts are very expensive. But there is an outlet store right near Ansett, Massachusetts. And they sell Entenmann's donuts. Fryhoffers is the parent company Three for five dollars. So my mother. When we would arrive in onset, our very first stop was the Fry Hoffer's outlet, and each one of us would get a five dollar bill, and we could go into the Fry Hoffer store, and each one of us could choose three boxes of Entenmann's donuts. You understand? It's a family thing.

25:27 And now, what do we do? Any time somebody comes back from America with a box of Entenmann's donuts, my whole family sits there and goes, 'Remember that time that we would go to the Fry Hoffer's outlet and get Entenmann's donuts?' We haven't been to Ansett, Massachusetts, in almost 20 years, but we're still talking about the Anthem's donuts. I'll tell you another ridiculously foolish memory that we keep repeating in my family. Anyone here ever heard of Cape Cod potato chips? Cape Cod. They're not that good. Cape Cod potato chips. There's a. I didn't mean it. It's going to be okay. For those of you that I just offended, I want you to know I'm with you. It's Preethi Shabu. Please forgive me. The Cape Cod potato chip factory. It's smaller than this room, and it's located right near Anson, Massachusetts. Girls, I kid you not. There is a Cape Cod potato chip tour.

26:19 And at the end of the Cape Cod potato chip tour, you get a free bag of chips. It's like this big and it's half air. It takes about 15 seconds to walk through the Cape Cod potato chip tour. It's not much of a tour. It's just a glass wall, and you can walk by and see people working in a potato chip factory. Nobody watches how many times you go through and take a free bag of potato chips. Which means that when the Berg family goes to the Cape Cod potato chip factory, it may or may not be true that we take hundreds of bags of little potato chips, one at a time. And my mother, who's embarrassed for her children, the whole time she's going, "Stop! It's a chil Hashem! You're desecrating God's name!" And we kept going, "Yeah, but free chips!" And we go and we're taking more chips. And then one summer.

27:08 One summer I'll never forget. They decided to be very fancy. This was not exactly a fancy place. They had a Cape Cod potato chip lifeguard chair. Where they had displayed all the Cape Cod potato chips. And my brother was a lifeguard that summer. So I decided that we needed to purchase that Cape Cod potato chip lifeguard chair and I went. To the guy who's running the store was like an 18-year-old stoner Boston kid, and I was like, "How much is the chair?" And the guy said, "What do you mean? How much is the chair?" I said, "How much is it for the lifeguard chair?" He said, "Lifeguard chair is not for sale." I looked at him. I said, "Listen, I'm Jewish. Everything is for sale." How much you want for this? $100 for the chair? The chair is not for sale. I said, "200 for the chair." My mother is dying. My brother is laughing his head off. My father is pulling out his credit card.

28:00 We're ready to buy the chair, four hundred dollars for the chair. The guy goes, 'Let me get my manager.' The manager of the Cape Cod Potato Chip Factory came to haggle with me over buying the chair. We brought a station wagon to Cape Cod. How in the world were we going to get a Cape Cod Potato Chip lifeguard chair back to New York? Nobody asked that question. But you know what we still do today? Any time anybody sees Cape Cod potato chips, my father goes, 'Would have been awesome if we got that chair, no?' Why are we still talking about it? It's 25 years later. It's 30 years later. Why are we still talking about the Cape Cod Potato Chip lifeguard jam, or even the chips? The answer is because we keep things alive in our memory. It's how we remember people that have passed on. We just tell stories about them. Jews love telling stories.

28:50 It keeps us. It keeps us awake. It's like that person is still real to me. When they came to Eretz Yisrael. And they plowed under the ground. They destroyed all the memory of Jerusalem. We had no place left to visit. Watch the progression from the beginning, girls. Watch the progression. Step one: fear. We can't fulfill the mission to make this world a spiritual place. Step two: if you can't make the world a spiritual place, you have no relationship with God. Step three: if you don't believe in the spirituality of each other, there's nothing that's bonding us. Step four: if there's nothing that's bonding you, all you have left is hope. And what happens when hope is destroyed? When hope is destroyed, all you have left is memory. But what happens when they take their memory from you? What happens when there's nothing left to visit?

29:42 Imagine you came this summer. Did you go to Kever Rachel? Did you go to the Kotel? You saw places. Imagine if you came here and there was nothing to see. Imagine if you were just walking in the mountains. You would have said, 'Why did I come here to walk the mountains? I could have walked the mountains in Utah.' Why do I need to walk the mountains here? The answer is because here you come back and you could see something. You know what they did to Jerusalem in those times? They destroyed all of it. But there is one secret, and we'll finish with this. The secret is to listen to the language of what the rabbis said. They didn't say they destroyed Jerusalem. What did they say? They plowed Jerusalem. They plowed Jerusalem, which means they destroyed it. But to plow also means to plant. That you make the ground ready.

30:31 Our destruction is also the place of our rebirth. That's why we know who's born on Tishav Mashiach is born on Tishav. From destruction always comes rebirth. This right now in this room is the rebirth. And most of us aren't paying attention to it. You came six thousand miles to Israel. Your grandparents, your great grandparents, they would never have dreamed that this summer could have happened. That Jews are once again sitting together. We do believe in learning Torah, and we do believe that we can make this world into a more spiritual place. We are the generation that's living fearlessly. And that's an unbelievable gift. It's time for us to step out of the prison. We created a prison for generations that was built in fear. And today, thank God, we're letting go of that fear and we're rebuilding. And not that long from now, we're going to be holding by Tishubov.

31:32 And a lot of you might think When it comes to Tishubov, you might make the mistake of saying What we're doing is mourning the destruction. We are not mourning the destruction. We are rebuilding through our memory. We're rebuilding through our mourning. I'll finish with a line from Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, who was one of the great Hasidic rabbis of his time. He said, "It's true we're in the hospital" But we're not in the ICU. We're in the maternity ward. We're giving birth, and it's painful. But something is happening Girls. Something is happening. The question is: Are you along for the ride? Are you ready to be part of this process of giving birth to the next generation that, will God willing, greet Mashiach right now in this country? Thank you so much, girls.