We have lost the sense of commitment and service to God, which can only be completely filled by bringing a sacrifice. We have lost the value of being able to physically reach out and show God that we give ourselves to Him with totality and completeness. And if we don’t shed our own blood, it’s because we substitute the blood of the sacrifice. But we are ready to give ourselves, our bodies, our blood for His sake. If I bring a sacrifice even once a year, it transforms my entire year. The knowledge that I have open to me the opportunity, the desire, the decision, that I will bring a sacrifice, makes me prepare many days for it. It’s an experience that lifts me up. It’s a different and higher form of existence.
The recognition that the loss of the Temple is really something significant, that I suffer now every minute of my life from that loss, is an absolute necessity in keeping our sanity as Jews. This is why the Rabbis instituted the mourning period of the Three Weeks. The Torah given at Sinai included all components necessary to live a full life in the service of God and was not lacking anything. What then are we to make of the holidays and fast days which are of Rabbinic obligation? Why would the rabbis add new laws to a perfect Code given by God Himself?
The only possible solution to this difficulty is to realize that every rabbinic law that we encounter within the framework of Torah does not exist as an ideal. Rather, the existence of rabbinic laws reflect a failing of the Jewish People within particular areas which forced the rabbis to respond and correct these failings. As the first Mishnah in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) teaches (loose translation): “Assu Syag LeTorah” – “Make a fence around the Torah when you deem it necessary. Add precepts and rituals to the Torah to enhance the performance of each of the 613 commandments.”
Ideally, the original Torah given directly by God was designed to be “self-sufficient” in terms of spiritual growth. But the enactment of the Three Weeks was necessary in order for us to keep an awareness of what it is to be a true servant of God, to know and relate to Him. Therefore, we must use the Three Weeks to make us aware again, to keep us from falling into the trap of accepting our lives now as normal.
But it goes even beyond this. Not only do we accept a world without a Temple, a world without the sacrifices, as being a tolerable world, but, worse, we accept a world in which the Jewish people and Torah values are subordinate, as being a normal tolerable world. We’re comfortable in America, in Canada, in England and all over. It doesn’t feel as though we’re in the Diaspora at all. We can speak their language and we can relate to them. We live with their value system that at times is antithetical to Torah.
We accept from them the definition of what a good marriage is, and we start thinking of romance and love as being the basis of marriage. And then marriage becomes primarily a means for self-fulfillment. Shortly thereafter, selfishness becomes ingrained and a part of the very fabric of our existence, instead of the realization that the purpose of marriage is to learn to be concerned one for the other, to be outgoing, to be giving to another.
We learn from them, we take from them because we don’t feel the exile, because we feel at home. And if once in a while someone says,”Well, but you’re not really at home,” we don’t want to hear it, we don’t want to face it. We feel at home, we’re comfortable. This is degradation and falsehood; this isn’t the way to live.
