So, the nine days are coming and I don't think I took even one minute in the past two weeks to think about this time of year, what it means and what feelings should be coming up. I've just been so busy. My thoughts have been occupied with all the things I need to do to fulfill my responsibilities towards my family-and none, not even one thought was about the pain of galus and the tza'ar hashechina. How crazy is that? Probably super normal for a galus mom.
Maybe this is why we shift from the three weeks to the nine days in this way, from less intense laws of mourning to stronger ones. In case we were too busy with life during the beginning of the three weeks, we now have a reminder that there really is something to think about. There is something to be feeling during this time. We need to phase into a new level of thought so we can arouse our souls to get to a place of feeling the pain of galus without outside tzaros and crazy painful stories in the news and in the world!
Maybe this is why we mourn in reverse. Maybe it's because Hashem is waking us up to His pain-first with a soft tap, then with a light knock (the nine days) and then with a loud shout (Tisha b'av), saying, "Helllooo! I am in pain! Feel my pain with me!" And maybe we should be feeling the pain more intensely as time passes. Because as the time does pass and we acknowledge that we are still in galus, the pain should also intensify. It should hurt us even more because, like, hello?! Are we still here? How is it that we are still here? Are we ever going to get out?
After all these years, will it ever happen?
As Jews, we believe it will. That's what shabbos nachamu is all about. The prophecies about the destruction came true, and so we believe (and ask Hashem to help us continue to believe) that the prophecies about the redemption will also be fulfilled. We just don't know when it will happen so that makes it so hard. And that's where the challenge to continue to believe takes place!
I feel like its somewhat easier for me to feel pain-because I went through my own loss. So I take my emotions surrounding the death of my brother and connect them to the bigger loss of Klal Yisroel during the time of the churban.
I lost one brother and it was so incredibly painful; it still is, when I let myself feel it.
During the destruction of the bais hamikdosh, every Jew experienced multiple losses. So many Jews died of starvation and thirst. Mothers consumed their babies! The devastation was enormous. I try to magnify my loss a hundred times over to feel what took place during the churban.
But there's more. More I want to feel. Not just my own loss magnified (because that's kind of a selfish sort of pain), but I want to connect to what we had.
That clarity, that holy connection to the Source of all life, I want that.
When I was in the holy land, Eretz Yisroel, I was able to connect to a piece of that. And the clarity I felt there, the connection I felt at the kosel as I cried tears of yearning and tears of closeness, that was a galus connection! That wasn't even what real people experienced during the time of the bais hamikdosh.
So whatever connection I did feel, can't be compared to the clarity and closeness a Jew could experience during the time of our bais hamikdosh. If I want to grasp a piece of whatever was felt during the time of the bais hamikdosh, I need to take my clarity and dveikus-and magnify it a hundred times over- and then I can try to imagine a tiny crumb of what the Jews experienced before we were sent into galus.
I want clarity? I want real closeness? Any connection I've ever felt is only a galus experience.
I can yearn for more.
I can daven for more.
I can arouse my soul to experience pain-pain that whatever closeness I've ever felt in my entire life on this earth has no comparison to the closeness and connection to Hashem of all those years ago.
And then I can start to yearn for moshiach.
