Mourn What Might Have Been

Prepared for print by Rabbi Eran Feintuch

IS it really possible to mourn the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash? As we approach Tishah B’Av, we all ask ourselves that question. How can we weep over the loss of something we never experienced? We observe the halachos of the Three Weeks, but the inner aveilus they’re meant to express seems beyond us.

In a way, we’re 100 percent right. The aveilus we’re familiar with is mourning the passing of a loved one, Rachmana litzlan. So to us, aveilus means the pain and sorrow we associate with such an occurrence. But when we approach the Three Weeks that way, we get stuck. Try as we might, we can’t feel a deep personal loss over the absence of the Beis Hamikdash, because it’s utterly foreign to our lives.

We don’t even have a clear understanding of what the Beis Hamikdash was, so we don’t fully appreciate the magnitude of our loss. The manifest presence of the Shechinah, the korbanos that bridged Heaven and earth — these are all abstract to us. Though we understand that the Beis Hamikdash was a magnificent place, and our lives would be better if we had it, we can’t mourn what we never had to begin with.

But besides expressing personal grief, there’s another way to mourn. The Ramban asks a fundamental question about aveilus: Why must we mourn? The laws of aveilus require us to mourn even for a family member who lived to a ripe old age and we knew it was his time to go. Of course, that person’s absence pains us, but we knew he wouldn’t be around forever. His passing is painful, but not tragic. There must be a deeper reason for the mitzvah of mourning.