What was that Tisha B'Av all about anyway?

One minute we are mourning; no music, meat, etc, and when chatzot (midday) strikes we can be merry again. What's this all about? As people tell me they can't wait to listen to music and eat meat again (myself included), I ask myself about the last 3 weeks. How can we ever be fully happy again? How can we rush out of our mourning like this? If we truly felt it, surely we would never eat meat and listen to music... because aren't we always supposed to lament the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash?

These questions have been in the back of my mind the past 3 weeks. I think I may have an answer, but I'd like your opinions.

In truth, we're never completely happy without the Beis Hamikdash. We even commemorate it at biggest simchas with the breaking of a plate. We're always lacking. But at the same time, we can't be in constant mourning. We have to "ivdu et Hashem besimcha" (serve Hashem in happiness) and count all our blessings. The 3 weeks are there to make us stop our lives and remember why we're here and where we're going. If we never have a period of time to reflect upon the matter it would be even more distant than it already is from us. We're missing closeness with G-d and we don't even know what we're missing!

But once we explore this and understand a little bit more, we'll know why we're sad. And then we can be happy, because we know it's not all gloom. We know there's hope.

Now, can somebody pass me the shnitzel?

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Mourning our loss; Yearning our future

I look out my window as Hashem's nature plays its part. The sun is low. The leaves are waving. The sky is pleasant. The clouds are following an Easterly wind. Flowers sway to it. The occasional shout of a child echoes. Everything is so calm. You'd never think there's anything wrong or missing in the world. This is just life and people are living it.

But the greater picture is neglected. A few thousand miles away lies our Homeland. There, things aren't so calm or normal. There's something indescribably more lingering in the air. There's confusion and complexity. There's spirituality trying to absorb the politics and the galut. It's like an unanswered scream. It's loud, but few hear. It's the centre of our heritage and tradition. This is where it all happened and it's where it all will happen. Every stone is steeped in history and every stone will merit the future. You enter the beautiful walls of the Old City to reach our current holiest place. Something, though, isn't quite right. You walk along the Kotel plaza. You look up. You expect to see something holy and vast, but instead its antithesis lies; ironically, a huge, golden mosque. We can't really go beyond the wall, and we can't really explore most of the Old City. We're restricted in our own country. How could galut be any more obvious?

I could carry on a calm life in Chutz Laaretz. Everything could be normal and relatively easy. But I cannot be away from my source. I can't tear myself away from my country and my home - despite its difficulties. I can't be away from my people, who live in such messirut nefesh everyday. I can't be away knowing that this is G-d's chosen Land, and this is where the Beis HaMikdash will be. The worst part of galut is not knowing you're in galut. And that's exactly what we're mourning about in the three weeks. We're mourning our lack of spirituality, our lack of awareness of G-d. We go through the motions in the three weeks; we don't listen to music, have haircuts, take pleasure trips. And we can't wait until it's over; we're mourning that too. We're mourning the fact we don't see, for example, an apple as a dvar Hashem and we don't recognise the neshama and inherent holiness in every person. Yet during this time, we are also yearning. While we mourn our loss, we also recognise that this is a stage for flourishing. Tisha B'Av will sprout into a day of simcha.

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