This is another year we have to mourn the destruction. With
all the truly wonderful things that we have experienced in
recent generations, with the vast increase in wealth and the
tremendous growth of Torah, still the overall situation of
Jews throughout the world is bleak enough today that there
certainly is no one who questions the need to mourn -- as
some did in the early exuberance after the founding of the
State of Israel more than 50 years ago.
Despite all our present problems, there is no doubt that our
greatest political and social problem is the Churban, the
destruction of the Beis Hamikdash and with it the proper
order of national and personal life in service to Hashem.
Without the reconstruction of the Beis Hamikdash -- and all
that it implies -- life is not as it should be, and it can
never really be as it should be without the Beis Hamikdash,
and the service there of the Cohanim and the direction of the
nevi'im and the Sanhedrin. That does not mean that
there cannot be interim improvements, but it does mean that
we should never lose sight of our long-term goal, and
especially on Tisha B'Av, which is explicitly dedicated to
this.
The real and complete solution to these problems lies within
ourselves. We must reflect on what we have done and how we
can improve, especially with regard to the things that Chazal
identify as having been among the causes of the most recent
destruction and golus: a proper appreciation for Torah
and its function that requires us to make a brochoh
before learning, and correcting our shortcomings in
interpersonal relationships that come from baseless hatred,
including loshon hora.
This does not mean that it is futile to seek interim
improvements in the world around us including political and
military efforts, but it does mean, emphatically, that it is
futile to look there for any permanent solutions to the
social and political problems of the Jewish people.
This is the fallacy of the Israeli Left. Having -- on
ideological grounds -- rejected the definition of our
situation as golus they assume instead that it is
potentially messianic, and that there are solutions to all
the problems of their State of Israel. They continually ask,
for example, "What is the alternative to Arafat?" presuming
that there is or must be some alternative that solves things,
"once-and-for-all." But this is not so. We have to be willing
to accept long-term stress and conflict as our lot, though
that does not lessen our determination to minimize the
problems as much as we can.
The Americans are also laboring under this misconception, as
seen from Bush's speech and his insistence on a complete
Palestinian solution. They are constantly looking for a fix
for the problems in the Middle East. The American "can do"
attitude is that all problems are solvable, given the will
and the resources (that is, money) to solve them.
We agree that our problems are solvable and that we should
solve them as soon as possible. However we do not believe
that their solution has much to do with money. It has
everything to do with ourselves and our relationship to
Hashem.
"Whoever mourns Yerushalayim, will merit to see its
rebuilding."
