Tisha B’Av: The Secrets of Jewish Tears

Plato, the famed Greek philosopher, came to Yirmiyahu HaNavi as he watched him cry over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. ‘I don’t understand,’ he exclaimed, ‘Why does such an intelligent man cry over mortar and bricks?’ ‘And,’ he continued, ‘why don’t you do as the wise men do and ‘let bygones be bygones’, the Temple has gone, why are you still crying over the past?’ To the first question, Yirmiyahu explained that the Jewish people are not crying over the physical structure of the Temple, but what it represented. It was the spiritual lifeline of the world, giving every Jew the closest connection with G-d and indeed, Yirmiyahu the wisdom to answer Plato’s complex questions. But, to the second question, Yirmiyahu refused to answer. Only a Jew could understand what these holy tears represent. Only a Jew could know that we are not crying over a dead past, but we are sowing the seeds for our future. Let us explore together the secret of the Jewish tears, an enigma which even Plato could not understand.

The Megilla of Eicha which we read on Tisha B’av is a devastating Megilla, detailing how a glorious and beautiful Yerushalayim fell into complete ruin and loss. Yet, each painful pasuk is part of a nevua, prophetic words from the great prophet Yirmiyahu. There is a concept that a navi can only access his powers of nevua when he is in a state of simcha. We wonder, therefore, how Yirmiyahu managed to write this Megilla with prophecy when its tragic words would surely rob any Jew of their simcha. The secret, however, is in the mourning itself. Through his painful and heavy prophecy, Yirmiyahu would surely bring himself and the Jewish people to tears, for generations. And if a Jew can shed a tear through this tragic megilla, an underlying note of simcha continues to exist. 

The secret of our tears is that they express connection. We can only cry when we care about something. The fact that we can shed a tear over the loss of the Beit Hamikdash contains a hidden joy. It means there is a place in our neshama that has never truly distanced from Hashem. There is a part of us that is still wholly pure and connected. Our tears are not the tears of a child who cries when their ice cream melts away. Our tears are tears of aspiration, of desire, of the future. When we cry over the Beit Hamikdash, we are actually creating an indestructible mikdash in our hearts. It is not a Mikdash carved of stone or brick, but built with tears and love.

We know this is true both from looking inside the Torah, and from looking inside ourselves. In the Torah, although Rachel is the predestined wife of Yaakov, it is Leah, whose eyes are tearstained in the pesukim, who marries Yaakov first. It is Leah who is the mother of the most Shevatim. As kids, we may think that Leah’s eyes were teary because she perceived herself as a victim, she felt sorry for herself that she would live a life being married to Eisav. But this was far from true. Leah used her tears to sow her future. She cried for a holier future, she cried to be wife to a partner who she could unite with spiritually, she cried to be a mother who would forever shoulder the Jewish people. She did not cry from misery, but from hope.

The secret of our tears is that they express connection. We can only cry when we care about something. The fact that we can shed a tear over the loss of the Beit Hamikdash contains a hidden joy. It means there is a place in our neshama that has never truly distanced from Hashem. There is a part of us that is still wholly pure and connected. Our tears are not the tears of a child who cries when their ice cream melts away. Our tears are tears of aspiration, of desire, of the future. When we cry over the Beit Hamikdash, we are actually creating an indestructible mikdash in our hearts. It is not a Mikdash carved of stone or brick, but built with tears and love.

This is as true today as then. It is often said that the child who the mother cries over most is the one who ultimately brings the most nachat. This is not because the mother cried over an unchangeable reality, over something unfortunate. Rather, being a true Jewish mother, she tapped into the invincible power of Jewish tears. By crying for her child, she has the power to bring him back to the path of Torah. Not when she cries over her fate, but when she uses her cries to shape the future. 

It is for this reason that the Gemara uses the perplexing wording “whoever mourns over Yerushalayim sees and merits its rebuilding.” Rather than employing the future tense (will see and will merit), the Gemara uses the present tense. This is because when we shed a tear on Tisha b’av it is creating a reality right now. It expresses a longing from the deepest, purest part of our soul and is immediately elevated to one of the spiritual bricks of the third Beit Hamikdash. Crying is an act of rebuilding: it is not a future guarantee, but a present reality. Tears were the foundation of all the success and blessings of the Imahot in the Torah, and they are the foundations for us as Jewish women now and forever. 

This also accounts for another seeming discrepancy. In Sefer Tehillim, we often refer to the Temple as King David’s Temple. “Mizmor Shir Chanukat Habayit Ledavid.” This is perplexing because it is an undisputed fact in the Navi that King Shlomo oversaw the construction of the Temple and not King David. However, Rav Yisroel Reisman explains that while King Shlomo built the Temple with his hands, King David built it with his heart. Throughout Tehillim, King David expresses “nichsafa vgam kalta nafshi”, how much his soul is thirsty for Hashem’s presence. It is these words, these longings of David’s heart that truly built the Temple. We may not be the architects of the external structure of the Temple, but we are all given an opportunity to have a part in the internal structure. If our dreams, our tears, our desires are focused on Yerushalayim, we become its builders.

The Gemara¹ tells us that women are brought more easily to tears than men. While this sounds purely like an emotional difference, I feel that this can be empowering on a spiritual level as well. The gematria of bechi, crying, is the same as the gematria of lev, heart. Women are certainly more in touch with their emotional world, adept at articulating what is lying inside their heart. We can use this koach, this power of bechi, our connection with our lev – and channel these tears and desires into the foundations for not only our homes, but the home of Hashem. Then we can truly fulfill the pasuk, “hazorim Bedima brina yiktzoru” “those who sow in tears will reap in joy. 

Inspired by ideas of Rav Pincus in “galus v’nechama” and Bilvavi on the Festivals (authored anonymously).

1. Bava Metzia 59a ↩︎