How are we to know what are the things for which we need to repent and mend our ways?
AN older couple once went to discuss the state of their shalom bayis with Rav Yosef Rosenblum, the rosh yeshivah of Yeshiva Shaarei Yosher in Boro Park. While Rav Rosenblum ztz”l headed a small chassidishe yeshivah and was mostly out of the public eye of the yeshivah world, everyone knew of his greatness. (Rav Yechiel Perr told me he was present when Rav Aharon Kotler learned that a certain rav had refused to make an appeal for the Lakewood yeshivah. Reb Aharon wondered aloud, “But where else are there talmidim like ours?” and began listing off his best talmidim, beginning his list with Rav Yosef Rosenblum.)
Rav Rosenblum was not only a great talmid chacham, but also a great chacham, to whom many would turn with their personal problems. He listened as the husband lodged a complaint, gesturing toward the spouse sitting beside him. “We’ve been married for so many years now, and she still brings up to me things I did decades ago!”
To which Rav Rosenblum replied, “If she still talks about those things, then it can only be that in some form you’re still doing those things…”
And that’s what Tishah B’Av is about.
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