The fast of Tisha B'Av is being commemorated starting at sunset this Monday until after dark on Tuesday.
Famously, the Spanish Expulsion began on Tisha B’Av, August 2, 1492. But principally this was when the Bet Hamikdash, the Temple, the House of G-d in Jerusalem as it is called, was destroyed.
In English you have two words: house and home.
House defines a building: home connotes an atmosphere. And your home means your atmosphere – where you can be yourself.
In someone else’s home there is an implicit social demand that you confine to their atmosphere, what makes them comfortable, their definitions. They may be so gracious we are moved to say ‘I felt like I was almost at home’, but if we acted like we were, our mothers would get angry.
When the world relegates G-d to a corner, a religious corner, he feels like a guest. He does not feel at home. But when the Bet Hamikdash stood, it was a symbol that the Almighty felt at home in the world. This was His home where he set the tone.
In Hebrew, the Holy Language, there is only one word for both house and home– bayit. But bayit has two dimensions; the physical, and the spiritual.
But if G-d cannot be destroyed,
then how could his home be destroyed?
The answer given: the destruction happened slowly over time.
Jews stopped enjoying being Jews.
Then they stopped acting Jewish.
And soon there was no home there was only a house,
a shell, a façade.
And it soon fell apart.
But the prophets tell us that at the moment the flames of destruction were licking at the walls, the rebuilding already began.
Of course when we look at the consuming fire we don’t see any rebuilding. We don’t see how any rebuilding is even possible -- that is why we need prophets to tell us. Prophets are people who see beyond the moment.
Just as the destruction of the home preceded the destruction of the house, So too, the rebuilding of the home precedes the rebuilding of the house.
And that rebuilding takes place brick by brick.
With every thought and deed we do, we let the Almighty know that He sets our tone and we follow because this is His home and hearth, and because we love him. When all those stones of the home, those spiritual stones are in place, then the House of G-d will stand. A real house. A physical house, which we can see, and touch and walk inside.
And that is why the Rebbe, an eternal optimist, saw this three-week time of destruction and mourning, as a time of joy and rebuilding.
Every act of kindness, each mitzvah, are bricks in the rebuilding of a better world, a pure perfect and eternal world we sum up in one word: Moshiach. Every quest for knowledge of the Divine within us, and the Divine beyond us, is a testament to the fact that the Jewish way of mourning is to rebuild. And to rebuild in joy.
May these sad days be transformed to ones of gladness and joy with the coming of Moshiach!