A Perplexing Avodah
Every year, as we enter the period of Bein HaMetzarim, we find ourselves perplexed about how to understand the avodah of these days. For it is a basic principle that our avodah surrounding the festivals and seasons of the year must correspond to the unique character of that occasion. On Pesach, our avodah is shaped by the miracle of the Geulah and our freedom; on Chanukah, by the miracle of victory and the discovery of the cruse of oil; and so on for the rest. Generally speaking, this avodah flows from a sense of closeness and special illumination that we merited from the Borei Yisborach — an inspiration renewed within us each year, in accordance with which we do our avodah.
The days on which we mark the period of the Churban, however, are the very opposite. These days testify to the terrible distance to which the Borei Yisborach has driven us, and each year, during this period, the Churban is, as it were, renewed upon us because of our sins, רח”ל. Our avodah, it would seem, ought to correspond to that very scale of distance — but how can one possibly do avodah on such a scale? How can we feel any belonging to the avodah of this period, when its most basic characteristic is that the Borei Yisborach, as it were, stands against us?
The True Meaning of the Churban
The Churban, in its essence, does not testify merely to wrongs we have committed and to a consequent need for teshuvah — that is the province of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Rather, the Churban testifies that our entire reality is fundamentally false. It expresses a tragic state of affairs in which the whole world has been laid waste and stands arrayed against us.
The depth of the Churban is so severe that we are unable to perceive within ourselves just how far we have strayed; we struggle to see how all of reality has become corrupted, devastated, and opposed to us. Yet it stands to reason that if a person from the era of the Beis HaMikdash were to suddenly appear in our generation, he would not recognize us as Yehudim at all. One who had known a generation of nevuah and ruach hakodesh could not possibly perceive in us any connection to kedushah. Such a person, from his vantage point, would readily discern how distorted and twisted a reality we live in — a reality standing against us in full force.
The Avodah of Self-Criticism
Sadly, we find it difficult to perceive the process of yeridas hadoros, since we have never known any other world. Yet this lack of awareness does not exempt us from avodah, and herein lies the avodah of this period: In these days when the Churban is renewed against us, we too must do avodah on that same scale of self-criticism — to stand, as it were, against ourselves, and to look honestly at how false and how distant our lives are from a world of kedushah.
Even the fast days observed on account of the Churban are, at their core, acts directed against ourselves. Fasting is not something a person does by nature; it is an act that runs against the ordinary grain. The fast itself is a form of self-criticism regarding our condition, and an expression of the fact that the reality we inhabit is false and stands opposed to us.
This avodah is not among the easier ones. Many shy away from it, claiming it to be a discouraging avodah that erodes one’s sense of self-worth. The truth, however, is quite the opposite: Though this avodah is indeed difficult, it is specifically through it that we raise our own worth and become shayach to the avodah of the days of the Churban — to criticize ourselves, and to feel, even in some small measure, how absent the world of kedushah is from our lives at this time.
A Plot of Our Own
A person can live a rich spiritual life without ever being conscious of what truly stands at the root of the world — just as, in the physical world, a person can go through life unaware that his very existence depends on the earth, and that the earth itself depends on and draws sustenance from the sun, from water, and so on. But once he owns a small plot of land of his own, in which he invests effort and from which he awaits a harvest, he develops a genuine connection to the basic process of growth
and development. Only then does he come to recognize the soil’s basic needs, and become aware of what his physical life truly depends upon.
The Beis HaMikdash is the source of life and the most basic sustenance of the entire world; everyone’s life depends upon it. Yet as long as we have no small plot of spiritual land of our own, we will have no real connection to the root of the world. The absence of the Beis HaMikdash will make no impression on us at all, and we may pass through our entire lives without ever becoming aware of the true source of our spiritual vitality, or of what such a life truly requires.
Therefore, our avodah during the days of Bein HaMetzarim is to try to acquire some small plot of land for ourselves — through which we can touch, even slightly, upon the absence of the Beis HaMikdash in our lives; to consider where that absence makes an impression upon us and carries real significance; and to perceive how our spiritual reality would be different had the Beis HaMikdash — may it be rebuilt speedily in our days — already been standing.