Is the following a sign of strength or a sign of deep, deep trouble? A person puts his hand in a fire and does not flinch. Or a person sticks a three inch needle deep into his palm without a wince. I don’t care if the person looks like the hulk; this is a sign of severe nerve damage as he is too numb to feel anything. This is where the Jews find themselves on the eve of another ninth of Av. No one really cares, or even feels the lack of missing spirituality.
It all began in the desert a few thousand years ago. Promised a land teeming with goodness, the Jews faltered and lost trust. They sent in spies to the land to scope out the scene. Had the spies come back and reported honestly, the mistake would have ended there. Instead, the report itself came back largely on the negative side, and the Jews cried out. The Talmud, taanis 29a, reports that since the Jews cried out for nothing on that day, that they would cry out for something on that day for the rest of history. What appears to be a harsh condemnation for foolish behavior may actually be the remedy to a deep problem.
It is hard to place pain in a positive light outside the weight room or the doctor’s office, think shot. However, there is one other place where a person can appreciate pain, and that is certain rehabilitation centers. Pain after surgery, most people can do without, but the pain that one feels after a possible spinal injury is welcome relief. With that in mind, we can approach the day of T’sha B’av with one thing in mind- to feel some sort of pain!
In other words, when the Talmud says that Jews will cry out from now on, it is not a curse that we will be given a reason to cry, rather it is an instruction of what we must do in order to reconcile the damage done. When exiled, and there is a lack of closeness to G-d within our hearts, the cry of this distance is in itself the fix- the fact that we can cry over the distance! The heart can then awaken and reconnect.
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