Finding Answers Amidst the Ashes: Tisha B’Av 2024

In a year marked by so much pain and hate, it seems as if we are going nowhere. So many things do not seem to be going right. Many of us wonder where our country and the West as a whole are going. Is chaos taking over? Are we just regressing? The answer is no!

No, while all these may be true, we are still moving forward,, but on a very different track. The more our leaders fail, the more our institutions fail, the more our countries fail, the more we learn about ourselves and the more learn where answers lie and where they do not.

Answers do not lie without, they lie within. Answers lie within ourselves. The more things do not go well, the more we move in the right direction, as the more we learn that answers lie within ourselves. And this is a step in the right direction.

As impersonal institutions fail at their job, we realize that we as individuals cannot fail at ours. We realize that answers do not come from Presidents and Prime Ministers. Answers do not come from Courts and Chancellors, Chiefs of Staff, and Parliament. Answers do not come from Roshei Yeshiva.

Answers come only from within each one of us.

It is easy to mourn over the complete and utter ineptitude of so much of our leadership. It is easy to get frustrated by the wrong decisions made repeatedly by so many of those we look to for guidance and leadership. This is the wrong emotion.

The more we see that solutions do not come from without, the moment we understand that solutions do not come from without, is the moment we can start finding solutions within. And it is the moment we should rejoice.

People like to complain in Israel about our military leadership. They point to the many real problems holding the IDF back from true success. They like to complain about our civilian leadership. They point to the many real problems holding our country back from political success.

These are all beside the point.

Popular movements distract us from real change. They make us think that change comes from chanting and being part of a mob. Positive change does not come from losing one’s individuality in a crowd.

Positive change comes from recognizing one’s individuality, embracing it, and realizing that the courage to change comes from one’s individuality, and only by changing oneself can one change one’s surroundings. And only by changing one’s surroundings can one change the world.

Every year people speak about how far we are from a world with a Third Temple. They speak about disunity and awfulness and bemoan how far we are from where we must be. Maybe they are wrong. Perhaps every year that we have faith in ourselves, in our locus of control, in our own story, is a year that the Third Temple is even closer.

Maybe the more people who are frustrated, the more that people have given up on our institutions, the more they have abandoned hope in morality from institutions, and perhaps the closer we are to them no longer giving up on themselves. No longer giving up on the people around them.

The closer they are to no longer giving up on themselves, the closer they are to taking charge of their lives and moving them towards good. Towards good choices. And towards a Third Temple soon in our days.