When we think about the Yamim Tovim, each one evokes a certain feeling. Pesach is the festival of freedom. Succos surrounds us with joy and trust. Shavuos draws us into a renewed acceptance of the Torah. Every Yom Tov carries with it a unique spiritual energy, an opportunity to connect to a particular aspect of our relationship with Hashem. Then there is Tisha B’Av. If someone were to ask us what the spiritual power of Tisha B’Av is, most of us would probably answer, “Mourning.” Why would Hashem designate an entire day for mourning? Why would Chazal refer to Tisha B’Av as a moed — a festival, a sacred meeting place — if its essence is grief? Festivals are meant to uplift us. Mourning weighs us down. It seems almost contradictory.
Throughout most of the year, we do our best to keep moving. We take care of our families, fulfill our responsibilities, and try to serve Hashem with joy. Even when life is difficult, we remind ourselves to be grateful, to look for the good, and to continue growing. These are beautiful aspirations, and they are an essential part of avodas Hashem. Yet beneath the surface, many of us are carrying tremendous pain that never has an official time to be embraced. The loss of a loved one. A struggling child. A relationship that never became what we hoped it would be. Illness. Loneliness. Waiting. The confusion of not knowing what Hashem wants from us. The ache of unanswered tefillos. Sometimes we cannot even name what hurts. We simply know that something inside us feels heavy. And because life asks us to keep going, we often become very good at carrying that weight without ever truly feeling it.
And that is one of the reasons that Tisha B’Av exists. When the meraglim returned from Eretz Yisrael, they cried a bechiyah shel chinam — tears without cause. Hashem responded, “You cried for nothing. I will establish this day as a bechiyah l’doros — a day of tears throughout the generations.” Hashem understands the human heart better than we understand ourselves. He knows that we cannot spend an entire lifetime running from our pain. He knows that healing begins only when we are willing to acknowledge what hurts. So once each year, He gives us permission to stop pretending. For one day, we do not distract ourselves. We do not fill the silence. We do not rush to fix everything. We sit on the floor. We allow ourselves to enter a place we spend most of the year avoiding. We mourn.
The Rambam writes that the purpose of a fast day is not only to remember tragedies of the past, but to awaken our hearts in the present. Tisha B’Av is certainly about the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash and all the suffering our nation has endured throughout history. But it is also about recognizing the ways that galus continues to live within us. The pain of the Shechinah is described as hester panim — Hashem’s Presence concealed from the world. His light, His closeness, His goodness are no longer openly revealed. Isn’t that also how many of us experience our own lives? On Tisha B’Av we read Eicha, which can also be read as Ayeka — Hashem, where are You?
The destruction of the Beis Hamikdash did not merely remove a building from our landscape. It altered the way we experience Hashem’s Presence. Since then, we have all lived with varying degrees of concealment. That concealment shows up not only in history, but in our own hearts. Tisha B’Av invites us into it. The word moed means a meeting place. Usually, we imagine meeting Hashem through joy. We feel Him in moments of gratitude, inspiration, and celebration. Tisha B’Av introduces another kind of meeting. We allow ourselves to acknowledge our grief instead of hiding it. We begin to realize that our personal pain is not separate from the pain of the Shechinah. The loneliness we feel, the longing we carry, the places where life feels unfinished — these are all echoes of a world that has not yet reached its redemption. Our tears become larger than ourselves. They become part of Klal Yisrael’s tears.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of galus is not only that the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed. Perhaps it is that, in learning how to survive exile, we also learned how to exile parts of ourselves. We push away our sadness because it feels too overwhelming. We silence our confusion because we think we should have stronger emunah. We bury our disappointments because everyone else seems to be coping. Slowly, almost without realizing it, we become strangers to our own hearts. And when we disconnect from our own hearts, we also find it harder to connect to Hashem. And so we have Tisha B’Av, a moed, a meeting place. The one day when we stop pretending that we are fine. We allow ourselves to sit with what hurts, without rushing to explain it away or fix it. We discover that Hashem is waiting for us there too. Perhaps redemption begins long before the Beis Hamikdash is rebuilt. Perhaps it begins the moment we stop exiling our own hearts and allow ourselves, at last, to come home.
Try this at home — Write Your Own Kinah: This Tisha B’Av, write your own personal kinah — your personal lamentation. Give yourself permission to feel the galus that’s in your heart, the pain that you are struggling with. It can be in the format of Aleph–Taf, or any other format that you choose. The only mandatory instructions are to feel. To be honest with your pain. To give yourself permission to really feel it. And when you finish writing, read it over out loud to yourself, slowly — and then write about how it felt for you to hear your personal kinah.