Tisha B'Av - 010 Misplaced

The Beis HaMikdash: What We Lost

The days we are in now are days where we are obligated to think about what we had when he had a Beis HaMikdash, and what we are missing now that the Beis HaMikdash is gone. Let us try to understand what we used to have, and then we can realize what we are missing now.

Har HaMoriah, the site of the Beis HaMikdash, was the place where Akeidas Yitzchok (the binding of Yitzchok Avinu on the altar) took place, where he became sanctified with the status of a Korbon Olah. Avraham Avinu was told by Hashem not to do anything to Yitzchok, and then Avraham saw a ram tangled in the bushes; Avraham found the ram and slaughtered the ram in Yitzchok’s place. But the Sages reveal that Yitzchok’s soul ascended to Heaven as he was bound on the Altar, and it is even explained that he spent several years in Gan Eden. Yitzchok Avinu was thus elevated on the place where the Beis HaMikdash would future stand.

Later in time, Yaakov Avinu came across this same place and slept there, for he sensed that it was a holy place; he knew that it was the “house of G-d”, the “gateway to Heaven”, a place where prayers are accepted. It was the place in the world where Heaven kissed physical earth.

Our External Exile and Our Inner Exile

During the first five days of creation, the heavens and the earth were created. On some days there were Heavenly creations made, and on other days there was the physical formation of this universe, with the planets, the animals, the birds, the plants, the waters, the landscape.  On the sixth day of Creation, Hashem made the unique creation of man, who comes from heaven and earth. Man’s soul is taken from Heaven, and his body comes from the earth. He is the only creation made from both Heaven and earth.

The soul on this world, ever since a person is born, comes from Heaven its source, but as it stays on earth inside our body, it is not in its rightful place. It is not found with its source. The separation of our soul from Heaven is really the deepest form of exile that exists. There can be no greater form of exile than this.

During these times, we mourn the destructions of both temples,and we contemplate our many exiles – which include Egypt, Babylonia, Persia-Media, Greece, Edom\Rome, Yishmael\the Arab dominion, and the current exile of the “Erev Rav”. But there is also an inner exile in all of us: We are all created from Heaven, we have been taken from our actual source, from our real place, and we have been placed here, into our physical body on this physical earth.

Our very physical existence on this earth is an exile. Our body comes from earth, and it can be in its rightful place. But our soul, our neshamah, comes from Heaven, and it has come down here to this earth, which means that we are essentially in exile.

However, a person usually does not feel this painful and inner exile. Instead, a person feels his body’s needs, and if he uses his mind a bit, he knows he has a soul and perhaps he tries to fill his soul’s needs, but he usually does not identify that strongly with his soul in a palpable sense. When one palpably feels that he is a soul, he clearly feels how he is in exile on this world.

The Chovos HaLevovos writes that a pious person awaits the day of death. Why does he await it? Just as we await the redemption, the coming of Mashiach, the Beis HaMikdash and the resurrection of the dead, so does an internal person await the day where he will go from the exile he is placed in on this world. He feels strongly that he is found in a place where he does not belong. When you are in a place where you feel like you don’t belong in, you understand that your entire existence here is exile.

This is the inner place in yourself where you can and should feel how you are in exile here. Had Adam never sinned, he would have gone straight into the final Beis HaMikdash, and to the meal of the eternal Shabbos Kodesh. He would have lived forever in Shabbos, which is called yoma d’nishmasa, “day of the soul”, a completely sublime existence. But when Adam sinned and he fell from that greatness that awaited him, he was cursed with labor, with involvement of the physical body. It was a profound exile placed upon him.

What Did The Beis HaMikdash Give To Us?

Even when the first Beis HaMikdash was built, which was more complete than the second Beis HaMikdash, it was still not a complete revelation of the light of Hashem. It was after the sin of Adam, so it could not be the complete realization of Creation yet, as perfected as it was. This was in spite of the fact that it was built by the great Shlomo HaMelech. (On the day Shlomo built the Beis HaMikdash, the Gemara says that he married the daughter of Pharoah). So even the Beis HaMikdash was not the complete redemption. The complete redemption will only be in the future.

But we must know: What did the Beis HaMikdash give to us, when it stood?

Exile To Our Body

Firstly, as we said, if a person wants to understand what exile is, he must know what it is in the inner sense, not merely in the external sense.

Of course, if a person lives outside of Eretz Yisrael, he can feel how he is in exile, in the physical sense, for he is in a place that is not his. Over here in Eretz Yisrael, how can he feel that he is in exile? Take a look at the world around you; everyone is a different type. We each come from the 12 shevatim (tribes), who were each allotted different portions in Eretz Yisrael, and we don’t know where exactly we come from. So here also, in Eretz Yisrael, none of us can know for sure where our rightful place is. There is probably no one who is living in his right portion in Eretz Yisrael.

This is all but the physical layer of the exile. We can start thinking about this simple thought and realize that we are probably not in the place where we belong in. This is just beginning to scratch the surface of exile; we haven’t even yet explained how the exile affects our soul. So wherever we live, we are in exile.

If we view ourselves as a body, then we can at least be aware that we are exiled to the place where our body is. If one lives outside Eretz Yisrael, he can feel that his body is not in the right place, and if he lives in Eretz Yisrael, he can also feel that he is not in his rightful place, for he is probably not living in his designated portion of Eretz Yisrael. Most people don’t think about this, but if you do think about it, you are beginning to realize that this is all a result of exile: we don’t know where we really belong on this world.

Exile To Our Soul

But if a person is deeper, he identifies himself as a neshamah (Divine soul). Then he can feel like he has no place at all on this world!

Ever since Adam sinned, our soul has been exile; it did not enter the eternal Shabbos as it would have enjoyed. Instead, it became exiled by the body, and we are not in our rightful place.

The Beis HaMikdash: Where We Connected To Our Real Place

What, then, did the Beis HaMikash provide for us, if we are anyways in exile, ever since the sin of Adam, where our soul was plunged into the confines of the physical body?

It was the ‘gateway to Heaven’, as Yaakov Avinu named it. The Sages state that the “lower Beis HaMikdash” is parallel to the “higher Beis HaMikdash”. The Beis HaMikdash on this earth was the place where ‘Heaven kissed earth’. There was palpable holiness in that place, and anyone there could connect his soul to Heaven there. Although it wasn’t actually Heaven, it was the gateway to Heaven; it was a place on this world where one could feel connected to his real place.

These are not mere technical definitions. It was the “gateway to Heaven” - a place where every person could feel a lot closer to his real place, his source in Heaven. Compare this to a person traveling to his city. When he gets to the gate of the city, although he’s not yet in the actual city, he already feels like he has found his place. He is very close to his real place that he belongs in. When one is close to his real place, his feeling of exile is greatly removed.

As long as a person lives a body-oriented kind of existence, he views exile though the lens of the body. However, even at this level, he can still feel that a place outside of Eretz Yisrael is not his real place, and even in Eretz Yisrael, he can feel that he is not his actual allotted portion where he belongs in, which gives him some idea of exile.

This perspective is still within the lens of the body, because it is only covering the physical layer of exile. To illustrate what we mean, the root of exiles was Egypt; it was a physical labor as well as a spiritual labor. There was tough labor there, but there was also the “49 Gates of Impurity”, which was exile to the soul.

Thus, when we think about how the exile has affected the place where we live in, it means two things. We have been physically exiled from our rightful place, but even worse, our very souls are in exile.

Contemplating Exile

Each person, on his own level, must contemplate what exile means, and what redemption means.

One who identifies himself mainly as a body, and not as a soul, will not be able to relate to the exile of the soul. Therefore, he should at least contemplate the physical aspects of the exile, such as the fact that we are not living in our rightful place; whether we live outside of Eretz Yisrael or in Eretz Yisrael.

If a person does see life through the prism of the soul, though, he can be aware that our main exile is the fact that our souls are in exile. Feeling the exile through the prism of our soul means to feel how our very soul is not in its rightful place.

These words are usually far from most people, because most people are living life through their body, and not through the soul. Rarely does a person even feel the physical aspects of the exile, and surely there are even less people who feel the exile of the soul.

That unrealized reality, in and of itself, is the depth of this painful exile we are in. There is an exile upon our bodies, and there is exile upon our souls! Most of the world is not in touch with their souls, and therefore they think that they are just a body. That’s how many people in the world are living life: through the prism of their body. It has been this way ever since Adam was cursed with hard labor: man thinks initially that he is a body, and he has a hard time understanding that he is mainly a soul and not a body. That, itself, is exile.

The Torah In Exile

Anyone who searches for truth can think of the following (otherwise, he shouldn’t bother making this contemplation): We sit and learn Gemara during the day, which is called the Talmud “Bavli” (the Babylonian Talmud). Most of the Torah we learn, then, comes from Babylonia, from a place of exile. Some people learn Talmud Yerushalmi (the Jerusalem Talmud), but whenever we have an argument between Talmud Bavli and Yerushalmi, we follow the halachah according to the Talmud Bavli. This is the main Talmud we have: Talmud Bavli. All of the Torah we learn comes from the Babylonian exile; it should certainly bother us, then, that our very Torah we are learning comes from Babylonia, from exile.   

Surely it must be this way, and it will be this way until Moshiach comes. But it can still bother us that our main Torah that we learn each day comes from Babylonia, from a place of exile. The reason for this is because this is indeed our level: we are in exile. The Maharal says that the Torah is in exile with us; just as we were spread all over the world, so are the words of Torah scattered, for some areas of Torah are well-explained and other areas of Torah are lesser known.

Does it bother anyone that he learns Talmud Bavli, a Torah that comes from exile and is confined to this exile? When one opens up his Gemara in the morning and he says the prayer of Rav Nechunia ben Hakanah, does it bother him that his now going to learn a Torah that comes from exile…?

It is obviously the will of Hashem that we learn it, of course, but it is only the will of Hashem because we are in exile now, and because we are not in the state of the redemption! A person might be learning Gemara for so many years yet it never bothers him that he learns a Gemara that comes from exile.

In deeper terms, the Torah we learn now is called a Torah of the ‘body’. We learn the monetary laws, the laws of Shabbos, the laws of niddah, the laws of kosher slaughter, etc. – but all of these are sugyos (sections of Torah) that are ‘clothed’ in ‘bodily’ terminologies. One who feels his existence as a soul can feel the exile constantly, because he feels that he is in a place that is not his; and even when he learns Torah, he is painfully aware that the Torah he learns is also in exile.

Mourning Over The Beis HaMikdash

When we mourn over the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash, it should feel like a dead body lies before us. When someone dies, why do we mourn? Isn’t the body still here in the grave for us to visit it? Is it because we are in pain over the fact that the body suffers at death from chibut hakever? We are in mourning because there is a body here with no soul; it has no life spirit.  The destruction of the Beis HaMikdash meant that the life spirit of the world had gone.

When one feels that spirit of life and he knows that he is found in a different place, he feels the exile. But if he feels that he is fine in his body, and he has no yearning for the soul, this is the depth of this exile. The only reason why people don’t yearn enough for the Beis HaMikdash is because they it must be that they are living a life of the body, and they feel fine with the body they live in.

These words here are just a preface, for a person to open up a new perspective, to stop seeing things superficially. We must reflect and wonder if it bothers us that we don’t live enough a life of the soul, and that we are instead mainly involved with our body’s needs. And on a deeper level, it should bother us that even our Torah learning is in the realm of the exile.

A person might go by Tisha B’Av year after year, and 20 years later, he has still never felt the meaning of exile!

When we open our eyes a little, when we open our mind and heart a bit, and we reflect, we can slowly feel the depth of the exile we are found in. It surrounds us from all sounds – from in front, from behind, above and below, from all directions. We did not speak here about the external aspects of exile; here we spoke about the more inner dimension of exile. Even when one is in a period of spiritual growth, he is still in exile.

Actualizing This Lesson

If one reflects about these words and he has taken them a bit to heart, he should try the following reflection:

Each day when you open up your Gemara [when you are reciting the prayer of Rav Nechunia ben Hakanah, which is to be said before starting to learn each day], on one hand, you should feel happiness and pleasure over the fact that you learn Torah - but at the same time, you should feel a bit of pain over the fact that all of our Torah learning today is on the level of ‘exile’, for it is a Torah of exile, a Torah that is currently ‘clothed’ by the physical body.

In Conclusion

May we merit from Hashem to mourn over Yerushalayim, to mourn over it from the depths of our soul, where we recognize what was, where we are now, and what we yearn for. Each person can do this on his own level.

Let us bring ourselves to feel some level of pain which will enable us to cry a bit. From those tears, it can be realized how the “Gate of Tears is never closed”, and one who truly cries over the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash is one who can feel the gateway to Heaven here on this world. There, one can connect to it from the depths of his soul, and he will surely merit to at least touch upon the light of “One who mourns Jerusalem, will merit to see it in its rebuilding.”

May we merit the rebuilding of the Beis HaHaMikdash, speedily in our times, and today. Amen.