Sources for Future Tisha B'av Sermons (1976)

View The Text

This content is currently available in its original PDF format. As we expand the library, we plan to add a text version as well.

Idea for Tisha B'av/Yom Ha-Shoah (1998)

See my "The Religious Thought of Hasidism", chapters 15 and 17, re: the nature of evil (and exile). Kabbalists were generally dualistic, affirming not only the reality of the good but also that of evil, while Hasidic teachers held to a monistic view, denying the ontological validity of evil and affirming only the good, but in various stages or guises, etc. See the above, chapter 17, selection 5c, from קדושת לוי השלם על איכה, offering the hasidic view. R. Levi Yitzhak points to the famous hymn recited on Tisha B’av, and interperts it to yield the hasidic view. The verse reads, אלי ציון ועריה כמו אשה בציריה—”Wail, O Zion and her cities, as a woman in her birth pangs.” The interpretation: In the course of her delivery, the woman feels great pain, but after the birth of the baby, she is very happy.However, those who are present with her are happy even during her suffering for they know that the pain leads to great joy. So it is with Zion: while her cities are destroyed she feels great grief and pain, but God rejoices because He knows that it will lead to greater happiness; the suffering is only temporary and the ultimate joy will more than compensate for the misery.However, beautiful as the idea and the interpretation are, our generations in this post-Holocaust era find it extremely difficult to derive much consolation from them. For us, evil is hard as nails, and suffering is perhaps more real than joy. The crematoria successfully negated the ontological denial of evil.For us, we point to the rest of the verse mentioined above1: וכבתולה חגורת על בעל נעוריה pw-”and as a maiden girded in sackcloth lamenting for the husband of her youth.” Our historic experience is more this than the first half (according to tne hasidic exegesis)—more like a bride whose love was never consumated because her groom has been killed and she remains a disconsolate widow. There is no compensation , albeit the possibility and even probability remains that she will remarry and find true happines…

Yom Hashoah Three Weeks & Tisha B'Av Reflections on the Shoah

Lesson to Learn from Tragedy

Rabbi Lamm explores what we can learn from the experience of enduring tragedy.

Theodicy General Jewish Thought