Why Tisha B’av

Tish’a B’av is a hard day to relate too, for us the Churban is an abstract issue. The Medrash relates that Rebbe explained the pasuk “Bila Hashem v’lo chamal” 25 ways. Rav Yochanan explained sixty. The Medrash asks was Rav Yochanan greater than Rebbe? The Medrash answers that when Rebbe began speaking and explained the first pshat, the many Churban survivors in the audience began wailing and crying. Rebbe simply could not continue until everyone calmed down. Then he explained the next pshat, and the scene repeated itself. Rebbe spoke the whole day but simply could not get past twenty five. Rav Yochanan, however, lived many years after the Churban. When he spoke, no one cried. So he completed sixty explanations. Even back then people began to get desensitized to the Churban; this is normal.

Here is a thought: Once there was a company formed with a vision; they were going to revolutionize the way people did business. However they got off to a rocky start, had trouble with licensing and venture capital. To tide them over, the CEO bought up a few vending machines and spread them over the city. The president servicing them in one district, the VP in another and so on. However, every year the company held a lavish conference discussing further development of their Big Idea. One year a new worker stood up “Hey, we are doing soda machines. Why all this talk about business models?” The president answered “True, we are temporarily in vending. And that’s the point of this convention – so that we never forget our goal, and fall into thinking we are soda machine operators!” We gather every year to reaffirm that we are sidetracked today; we are actually the nation of the Beis Hamikdash.