As we walk through life, we are constantly barraged by an onslaught of diversions which makes us stray from our task on this Earth and which prevents us from achieving our destinty.
We have lost our ability for emotional expression, we do not ‘feel’ anything for Hashem , for ourselves and for the Shechina in Galus!
The greatness of our Ancestors was manifest in their ability to ‘feel’! They felt for Hashem, they felt for Am Yisrael. God was real to them and just as real as anything they could recognize using their senses.
Today, our hearts have turned to stone. Today, it is no longer in vogue to cry…even if we’d remember how.
Someone once asked the Kotzker Rebbe what to do if one could not recognize the significance of Tisha B’av as a day of mourning for the Jewish people, much less summon up the ability to cry and lament over the destruction of our Bais Hamikdash.
The Kotzker Rebbe in his usual sharp and direct manner, responded as follows:
“If a Jew’s situation is such that he cannot cry over the Churban Habayis and our bitter exile, then he should weep over his own Churban (the fact that he is incapable of weeping)!!!!
Rav Nachman of Breslev used to say, if one cannot shed tears over a Sefer Tehillim, he/she should read it without tears and he will eventually stumble over a pasuk etc. that wil talk to him in a most personal way..and…the tears will eventually come.
