When we let ourselves feel the pain, we’re spurred to bring on salvation

Tisha B’Av has never been fun. We’ve always dreaded it – the long, hot fast day that inches ploddingly by as we sit around voluntarily focusing on the depressing and tragic.

Lately, the dread has grown a new layer. Because for most of us, the world feels different than it used to. As we’ve watched the events of the last almost-two years unfold, our hearts have been touched by the heartrending, frightening reality of exile.

Throughout the year, we cope by concentrating on the positive. The now. The beauty in our daily lives.

But on Tisha B’Av, we’re instructed to full-on focus on the tragedy of our people. To drop the brave, cheery smiles and just mourn.

It’s scary, voluntarily letting ourselves fall into this chasm. There’s so much pain. So much to mourn. So much uncertainty. Can we truly, meaningfully go through this day and still emerge strong, with inner peace?

The Torah only obligates us in tasks that do us good, that develop us as people. So, why Tisha B’Av? What does Hashem want us to gain from leaning into the mourning?

In his introduction to Toras Ha’Adam, the Ramban asks a thought-provoking question: why do we mourn when someone dies? Don’t we know we’re all destined to die?

The Ramban wasn’t dismissing our feelings. He was attempting to clarify a deep, philosophical issue.

We don’t excessively mourn when things don’t go the way we like. When our car breaks down or we suffer from illness G-d forbid, we accept that that’s how things are meant to be. Why, then, did our Sages mandate this elaborate, drawn-out mourning process when we lose a loved one?

Because, answers the Ramban, death actually isn’t something “meant to be.”

Adam was supposed to live forever. Then, his sin made Plan B kick in. Now, people die. We have to separate from them. We’re mourning because really, things shouldn’t have happened this way. We shouldn’t have been cut off from our lost loved one.

In sharing this insight, the Ramban hints at a profound distinction: the one between aveilus, mourning, and ye’ush, despair.

Despair is depressing. Despair is hopeless. Eventually, despair’s tears are replaced by dry, resigned sighs. Because despair means we’ve given up on anything changing. And if nothing’s going to change, there’s nothing to cry about.

Mourning is different. Mourning comes when we know things should be very different than they are – but they haven’t changed yet. It’s that tension between what is and what’s possible that allows for fresh tears.

Twelve months after a human being’s death, Rashi teaches, a Heavenly decree eases the intensity of their loved ones’ pain, and mourning formally stops. The person is gone from the world, and the sense of closure in that knowledge affords comfort.

But no such decrease was ever decreed on the mourning of the Beis Hamikdash. 2000 years later, we’re still “sitting shiva.”

That’s because there’s nothing “gone forever” about the Beis Hamikdash, about the state of unblocked closeness to Hashem that reigned in its days. Hashem is still right here. He can return to us any day. As Rashi in Eicha (1:1) explains, Yerushalayim hasn’t actually been widowed. She’s become like a widow. Her husband is still alive, but He’s far, far away and she doesn’t know when He’ll return. She can’t move on. She’s still mourning and yearning.

Tisha B’Av isn’t a time for ye’ush – for fixating on tragedy and sinking into fear. It’s a time for aveilus. For focusing on the beautiful way things should be, can be, but aren’t. For affirming that we haven’t become numb to the spiritual void in the world. We see it, we feel it, we lament it, we want it to change. We believe unshakeably in a better future, and we want to bring it closer.

Despair immobilizes us. But sadness, pain, tension – those are motivators. When we’re upset about something, we want to act. To change things.

That’s why we have Tisha B’Av. That’s why we need to spend some time without bravely focusing on the positive – and actually immerse ourselves in the negative.

So we’re galvanized to act. To do what we can to move Redemption closer.

To follow the path of the comfort-related haftaros stretching all the way to Rosh Hashanah, when we’ll take that impetus, that sadness, that yearning for a better future, and turn it into teshuvah.

For the last Three Weeks, we’ve been focusing on Ahavas Yisrael. This paradigm shift – ye’ush to mourning, hopelessness to action, fits beautifully into our interpersonal work as well.

There are people we don’t like. Whether on a personal or ideological level, we can’t stand how they act, what they say, what they support, how they think.

So we distance ourselves from them. We think of them with disdain – and might even show it.

What if we could change our paradigm? What if, instead of anger or distaste, we could view them with “mourning”? Focus on the tension between their current state and their potential? To borrow a popular phrase, what if we could “be sad, not mad’?

We’d automatically see more positivity in them – if only in potential form. Which automatically would bring us emotionally closer to them.

Eicha refers to Tisha B’Av as a “Mo’ed.” Which seems puzzling. “Mo’ed” usually refers to a Yom Tov – Pesach, Succos, Rosh Hashanah. Why does Tisha B’Av get the same label?

Because a Mo’ed is a time of extra closeness to Hashem. And as we’ve discovered, Tisha B’Av is also a day of closeness.

This year, let’s use TIsha B’Av right. Let’s use the insights we’ve gathered here to draw closer to Hashem – and to His children. So we can finally, finally be zoche to the time when unlimited closeness will finally become ours.