Hold on: We’re not about to lose our chassan
Before World War II, Rav Shneur Kotler got engaged. After the war, his kallah wrote him a letter breaking the shidduch. Her family was gone. The dowry her father had promised was gone. Her health had been broken by years of suffering.
“I had nothing left to offer,” she wrote, and was letting him go.
Rav Shneur Kotler wrote back one line.
“You lost your family. You lost your money. You lost your health. Did you think you were going to lose your chassan?”
That story offers a remarkable lens through which to read the Mishnah that introduces the Three Weeks.
The Mishnah in Ta’anis (4:6) lists five tragedies that occurred on Shiva Asar B’Tammuz:
•The Luchos were broken.
•The Korban Tamid ceased.
•The walls of Yerushalayim were breached.
•A Sefer Torah was burned.
•An idol was erected in the Beis HaMikdash.
Five wounds. Five moments that appeared to announce that the bond between Hashem and His people had been severed.
But there is another way of reading that Mishnah.
The Midrash in Shemos Rabbah (43:1) compares the Luchos to a kesubah, the marriage document between Hashem and Klal Yisrael. Another Midrash, Shemos Rabbah (46:1), describes what happened in the immediate aftermath of the Golden Calf. The Luchos were suspended between Heaven and earth, part in Hashem’s grasp and part in Moshe’s, and Moshe tightened his hold and pulled them away.
Think about that for a moment. Moshe fought to hold onto the very Luchos he was about to shatter. Why?
Because he understood that what looked like the end was actually a question.
• • •
When Hashem appears to pull away, do we loosen our grip, or do we hold on even tighter? Rabbi Akiva put it simply in Berachos (61b). Torah is to a Jew what water is to a fish. You do not negotiate with water. You do not decide you can live without it for a while and come back to it later.
When something is your life, you hold on even when holding on makes no obvious sense. Moshe grabbed the Luchos because he refused to accept that the relationship was over, and the Torah itself tells us why. “Ki hu chayecha v’orech yamecha (This is your life and the length of your days)” (Devarim 30:20).
That refusal is the avodah of these weeks.
From Shiva Asar B’Tammuz through Tisha B’Av, the halachos of mourning intensify steadily, as the Shulchan Aruch in Orach Chaim 551 spells out. Every passing week carries additional reminders of what has been lost. But mourning is not the same as surrender.
Eichah opens with a line that cuts both ways. “Kol rodfeha hisiguha bein hametzarim” (Eichah 1:3). On the surface it describes our enemies overtaking us in the narrow straits. But the Bnei Yissaschar hears something else in those words. Those who become rodfim, those who actively pursue Hashem, can find Him specifically bein hametzarim, during these very days of concealment and loss. The narrowing is not Hashem shutting the door. It is an invitation to chase harder.
The Midrash in Shir HaShirim Rabbah (5:2) puts it even more directly. “Pischu li pesach k’chudo shel machat,” Hashem says. Open for Me an opening no wider than the eye of a needle, and I will open for you an entrance as wide as the Ulam of the Beis HaMikdash. The smallest movement toward Him is met with something beyond anything we could create on our own.
• • •
The Apter Rav once sat with a student who listed every difficulty weighing on him. When the man finished, the Rebbe said quietly that he had forgotten something. He had forgotten that the Korban Tamid had not been brought that day.
The Rebbe was not minimizing the man’s pain. He was expanding his vision. Every single day we are missing something. Twice a day Klal Yisrael once stood before Hashem and simply said we are here.
That daily meeting no longer exists, and we should feel its absence not just on Shiva Asar B’Tammuz but every morning we wake up without a Beis HaMikdash.
But feeling the loss and accepting it are two entirely different things.
Rav Shneur Kotler’s kallah thought she had nothing left. His answer was that she still had her chassan. During these weeks, when the galus feels long and the Beis HaMikdash feels impossibly far, Hashem is asking Klal Yisrael something remarkably similar. So much has been lost. So much has been broken. The Luchos have been shattered. The kesubah seems far away. But did you think you were going to lose your chassan?
Moshe’s answer was to hold tighter. Ours should be the same.
We are not losing our chassan.
Rabbi Benny Berlin is spiritual leader of BACH in Long Beach. www.bachlongbeach.com. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
