Parshas Devarim (5768)
This Sunday, August 10th, is a very sad day for the
Jewish people. It is a day of public fasting known as
Tishah B'Av, which means the Ninth Day of the
Hebrew month of Av, and it is the day on which the
Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and
expelled all the Jewish people from the Land of Israel
in the year 70 C.E.
The Talmud in Gittin 55b discusses the reasons why
G-d allowed the Romans to destroy the Second
Temple and to exile His people. The following story is
related:
There was a man who threw a big party in a posh
Jerusalem hotel, and asked the party coordinator to
invite his best friend Kamtza. The coordinator didn't
hear correctly and mistakenly invited the man's worst
enemy, Bar Kamtza. When the host saw his worst
enemy sitting there at the party, he told him to leave.
Well, Bar Kamtza didn't want to be publicly humiliated,
so he asked if he could stay, and offered to pay for
whatever food he ate. The host refused the offer and
demanded that Bar Kamtza leave immediately, this
time in a louder voice. Bar Kamtza then offered to pay
for half the expenses, and then for the entire cost of
the party, just so that he shouldn't be embarrassed
publicly, but to no avail. The host took Bar Kamtza by
his ear, and threw him out of the ballroom.
Well, you can imagine Bar Kamtza's anger and
shame. So what did he do? He decided to take
revenge on all his fellow Jews who were sitting at the
party and said nothing to stop the host from
humiliating him in public. Bar Kamtza went to the
Roman emperor and informed him that the Jews were
rebelling against him. To prove this, he told the
emperor that the Jews wouldn't even accept a
sacrifice that was offered to them by the emperor. The
emperor was curious to see if this was true, so he
sent an animal sacrifice along with the Jew, Bar
Kamtza, to be brought on the altar in the Temple.
Along the way, Bar Kamtza made a blemish on the lip
of the animal in a place where, according to Torah
law, the animal is considered unfit to be brought as a
sacrifice, but in the eyes of the Romans, is not
considered a blemish at all. When the Rabbis
received this sacrifice, they were in a quandary as to
whether or not they should sacrifice this blemished
animal. In the end, they decided against it. When the
Roman emperor heard this, he realized that the Jew
Bar Kamtza was right about the Jewish rebellion
against him, and he proceeded to enter Jerusalem,
burn down the Temple, and exile the Jews to the four
corners of the globe.
All this because two Jews in the same neighborhood
couldn't get along with each other. Indeed the Talmud
says that the reason why we were exiled and lost
everything that we once had, is because of
this "baseless hatred" between our own people. And
the Talmud also says that the Messiah will come and
return us to our former glory only after we rectify this
horrible infighting and learn to love each other like
family should.
But it goes much deeper than that. If you examine the
story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza carefully, you will see
that, ultimately, the root of all the trouble was the
abuse of that greatest of gifts that G-d gave us - the
power of speech. The host publicly shames Bar
Kamtza, Bar Kamtza informs on the Jewish people -
all abuses of the power of speech.
The Mahara"l of Prague, one of the great Torah sages
and Kabbalists of the 16th century, explains the
deeper meaning of the blemish on the lip of the
emperor's sacrifice in the above story. He says that
there is a fundamental difference between Jews and
gentiles. We Jews are the people of the Torah, and,
as such, our strength is in our voices - voices of
Torah, study and prayer. We are therefore
commanded by G-d to elevate our power of speech
and the spoken word by using our voices for great and
holy things. Our power of speech is so great in G-d's
eyes, that he even granted us the power to create
binding prohibitions upon ourselves in the form of
vows. In Parshas Matos, the Torah states that if a Jew
should vow with his mouth to abstain from a certain
food or object, there is thus created upon him a
Biblical commandment not to break that vow!
Words mean a lot to us, and we don't take them lightly.
That's why the Jews are held to a higher standard with
regard to the use and abuse of our speech. The
gentiles are not enjoined to elevate their power of
speech to that level. Therefore, says the Mahara"l, they
don't see a blemish on the lip of an animal as a
significant blemish. After all, it's only on its mouth, it's
only words, and words don't really mean anything! But
the Jew sees the mouth as the "Holy of Holies". After
all, we can actually create Biblical prohibitions just
with our words alone. And we can also destroy
families, friends, even entire nations with the power of
words alone. So a blemish on the lip is quite a
significant blemish, and renders the animal unfit to
bring before G-d.
This then is the powerful message of the upcoming
fast day of Tishah B'Av. We are in exile, and the
reason why we are still here and not where we should
be is because we can't learn to get along with each
other. So long as we tear each other apart with our
power of speech, and we throw our neighbor out of the
party over some petty fight, the Temple will not be
rebuilt, and the spiritual and physical peace we so
desperately crave will continue to elude us. The
choice is in our hands - and in our mouths.
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