On the night of the 9th of Av, thousands of years ago, the Jewish people cried for no reason. The spies had returned from the Land of Israel with a slanderous report. Rather than trust in God and see the land with eyes of faith, the people wept in fear, doubt, and despair. And so God responded: “You cried before Me without cause? I will establish this night as a time of weeping for generations.” (Ta’anit 29a)
That night — Tisha B’Av — became a date stained with Jewish tragedy: the destruction of our Temples, the expulsion from Spain, the outbreak of World War I. But the root of it all wasn’t an external enemy. It was internal. It was us. Our inability to believe. Our inability to see. Our inability to be united.
And I fear we are repeating that mistake again.
Today, the Jewish people are blessed with the unimaginable: a sovereign State of Israel, a powerful army, a vibrant Jewish culture and society, and miraculous resilience in the face of relentless hatred. And yet, so many of us still can’t see the gift in front of us.
We see divisions.
The left versus the right.
The religious versus the secular.
Pro-draft versus anti-draft.
Pro-this war policy, anti-that one.
Pro-Bibi, anti-Bibi.
It’s not just disagreement — it’s disconnection. We’ve stopped giving each other the benefit of the doubt. We’ve stopped listening. We’ve stopped seeing each other.
The Talmud teaches that the Second Temple was lost due to sinat chinam — baseless hatred (Yoma 9b). And long before the First Temple fell to idolatry, immorality, and bloodshed, the seeds of destruction had already been planted — in the wilderness, when we failed to see the Land, and one another, through eyes of belief.
We looked at the land God promised us and said, “We can’t.”
We looked at our brothers and said, “You’re wrong.”
We looked at our future and said, “It’s too scary.”
And God looked at us and said: If you refuse to believe in the good, you will be trapped in the consequences of your fear.
Tisha B’Av is not a history lesson. It’s a mirror.
And the reflection we see this year should shake us.
We are living through our own national test — a time when faith, unity, and moral clarity are desperately needed.
And yet we are pulling apart — over politics, over religion, over ideology, over ego.
We’re failing to see the gift we’ve been given.
We’re failing to see each other.
And in that blindness, we are crying the same ancient tears again.
This Tisha B’Av, I’m not just mourning the Temples.
I’m mourning the fact that we still haven’t learned to see.