Kinnos 2025

There is a halacha in Yoreh De'ah that if a person tears kriah having been misinformed that say he lost a brother and then it turns out a few minutes later it's clarified that it wasn't a brother who died but a parent or one of the other seven immediate relatives that he has to tear kriah again. Acts of mourning need to be directed. There needs to be an understanding of whom or what we mourn for. Similarly the Rav zatzal would often when he was called upon to deliver a eulogy would say that it's the role, the obligation of a maspid to answer the question who was the niftar. So too as we are about to say kinos the Rav zatzal once defined kinos as the analogue to a eulogy, the analogue to a hesped for the Beis Hamikdash. As we try to be misabel al Yerushalayim so we need to pause and try at least in a rudimentary fashion answer the questions: what was the Beis Hamikdash? What was its unique function and what are we missing because of churban? Now in order to answer those questions we need to understand albeit superficially and inadequately something about Hakadosh Baruch Hu's remarkable beriah. The Rema in Shulchan Aruch commenting on the berachah explaining the berachah Asher Yatzar adds an explanation for those put forward by the Mechaber. The Rema's commenting on the conclusion of the berachah ועוד יש לפרש שמפליא לעשות we conclude the berachah רופא כל בשר ומפליא לעשות. So the Rema says יש לפרש שמפליא לעשות במה ששומר רוח האדם בקרבו that Hakadosh Baruch Hu safeguards the spirit, the spiritual essence of a person within his physical body וקושר דבר רוחני בדבר גשמי. Hakadosh Baruch Hu binds together, Hakadosh Baruch Hu intertwines something spiritual, a spiritual essence with something physical. Perhaps the ultimate or one of the ultimate wonders of the beriah is that cooperative partnership and symbiotic relationship between the physical and the spiritual. One wouldn't have imagined that the two could interact, two different planes, and yet Hakadosh Baruch Hu is mafli la'asos that he's קושר דבר רוחני בדבר גשמי that he binds together the spiritual with the physical. So for instance the Rambam tells us that the capacity that a person has for abstract understanding, abstract knowledge, ultimately yedi'as Hashem is not something physical. It's not something physical and yet we know that it can only function in this world and express itself through the brain. Rachmana litzlan a person suffers a brain injury, brain damage, so even though the nefesh hasichlis is something spiritual it can't and doesn't function in this world, its functioning is impaired because of that mafli la'asos. Hakadosh Baruch Hu created that the physical is a conduit to the spiritual. spiritual nefesh hasichlis, that intellectual soul that we have that lets us learn Torah on the highest levels, have yedi'os Hashem. The conduit for that in this world is the brain with all its neurons, all its cells. When Shlomo Hamelech consecrates the Beis Hamikdash, so he reflects on the apparent absurdity of building a Beis Hamikdash. כי האמנם ישב אלוהים על הארץ? Can Hakadosh Baruch Hu dwell on earth?

הנה השמים ושמי השמים לא יכלכלוך אף כי הבית הזה אשר בניתי.

Your own vast cosmos can't contain you, obviously this Beis Hamikdash which I've just erected, says Shlomo Hamelech, can't succeed in that either. Hakadosh Baruch Hu exists without physicals, whereas we exist in time and place. We were born in a certain year. As we live, our bodies age because we live in time. We occupy a certain space at all times. We exist in time and space because we're physical. Hakadosh Baruch Hu exists outside of time and space. To speak of a Beis Hamikdash is seemingly an absurdity. And yet there's a mitzvah v'asu li mikdash. But the answer becomes clear, and this is intimated by Shlomo Hamelech in this tefillah as well, although we're not reading all the ta'amei ha-pesukim. But the answer becomes clear when we view the Beis Hamikdash through the lens of mafli la'asos. Of course Hakadosh Baruch Hu exists outside of time and space. He doesn't live in the Beis Hamikdash. But the Beis Hamikdash served as an extraordinary transformative physical conduit, a physical pipeline for the spiritual. For what did the Beis Hamikdash serve as a conduit? Just about everything of consequence. כי מציון תצא תורה ודבר השם מירושלים. With the churban, Yirmiyahu Hanavi laments, מלכה ושריה בגויים אין תורה. We no longer have or comprehend Torah with the same breath or depth. Torah has been dramatically diminished by churban. Nevuah, Ruach Hakodesh. mishom sha'avu, says the Yerushalmi, Ruach Hakodesh, that when Jews used to be oleh regel, like one draws water from a well, so they would draw Ruach Hakodesh and attain nevuah. Yerushalmi says that Yonah ben Amittai, we read safei yonah, Yom Kippur's mincha, that that's how he attained nevuah. He was from the olei regalim and sharsah alav shechina and he attained nevuah. And thus Yirmiyahu Hanavi says that after the churban, גם נביאיה לא מצאו חזון מהשם. Kappara, the atonement for all of our sins. The Rambam paskens that the se'ir hamishtaleiach was mechaper on all aveiros. And for those aveiros classified as kalos, relatively speaking less egregious, it was mechaper even without teshuva. Yiras Hashem. In speaking of מצוות אכילת מעשר שני, the Torah teaches ואכלת לפני השם אלהיך and then the pasuk concludes למען תלמד ליראה את השם אלהיך כל הימים. You go to eat ma'aser sheni once and the effect—again, the effect—in Yerushalayim, which is the outermost precinct of Mikdash, the effect of that, because the Mikdash is a physical conduit for the spiritual, the effect... That's why we conclude Shemoneh Esrei שייבנה בית המקדש במהרה בימינו ותן חלקנו בתורתך, which is so diminished now, v'sham na'avdecha b'yirah. Even the yirat shamayim that we can strive for, that we can cultivate to a degree, but that yirat shamayim is also diminished because we lack that conduit of the Beis HaMikdash. Tefillah, ועבדתם את ה׳ אלוקיכם, Chazal darshen, and the Rambam in Sefer HaMitzvos explains כלומר ללכת שם לבית המקדש להתפלל. Shlomo HaMelech in his inaugural tefillah להיות עיניך פתוחות אל הבית הזה, kaveyachol Hakadosh Baruch Hu, your eyes should be open, should be trained on this house layla vayom, the 24-hour hotline, layla vayom, and the pasuk then continues lishmoa el hatefillah. Of course we continue to davven neged haMikdash even bechurbano, but the effect of the Mikdash in having our tefillos accepted has also been sorely handicapped. The Beis HaMikdash was the conduit for all this and much, much more. We list these disparate items: Torah, nevuah, yiras shamayim, etcetera, but in truth, there's a common denominator. The physical conduit which the Beis HaMikdash was provided for a spiritual closeness to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, which is how the Torah itself defines the mitzvah of ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם. And in its absence, bechurbano, that imposes a distance, Rachmana litzlan. The Beis HaMikdash is also defined in the Torah as the place where Hakadosh Baruch Hu chooses לשום את שמו שם. Hakadosh Baruch Hu's name is associated with the Mikdash, לשום את שמו שם. Now that simas shem, that expression, manifestation of the special relationship between Hakadosh Baruch Hu and Knesset Yisrael, when that simas shem is manifest, so we know as the Torah says in the context of mitzvas tefillin perhaps as well, in a much smaller and limited sense,

וראו כל עמי הארץ כי שם ה׳ נקרא עליך ויראו ממך.

When the simas shem of Hakadosh Baruch Hu is manifest, when it's discernible, so then the Goyim, all our enemies sworn to our destruction, are intimidated, veyaru mimeka. And without that simas shem being discernible, without that simas shem being manifest, there is no such intimidation, which is why, as Rav Soloveitchik famously emphasized, all subsequent tragedies of Jewish history are also mourned on Tisha B'Av because Tisha B'Av is the root cause. It's the root cause of the Spanish Inquisition, it's the root cause of the Chmielnicki massacres, it's the root cause of the Holocaust, it's the root cause of October 7th. Because there's no simas shem which is manifest, there's no veyaru mimeka, and because of that our vulnerability and our subjugation. Nonetheless, even though all subsequent tragedies should and are mourned on Tisha B'Av, because of its centrality, the primary focus in the kinos we're about to say and it for our primary focus. The mahshava source of קשר דבר רוחני בדבר גשמי also translates that our actions, our physical actions in this world, have spiritual consequences and spiritual reverberations. Rav Chaim Volozhin in his sefer Nefesh HaChaim when he introduces us to the Kabbalah worldview depicts that cause and effect, that physical, spiritual cause and effect. The lens of mahshava also tells us that it's our actions, our physical actions in this world, which are responsible for Churban and hence the role of Kinos also is to recognize that fact and that there should be a hisorerus for teshuva. In fact, in the very first Kina which we'll begin, so Rabbi Elazar Kalir opens the Kina that in the second line סחי ומאוס השימוני באדר הבריאה. That our enemies relate to us as filth and refuse. The caricature of the dirty Jew is a constant anti-Semitic trope. Now this description of sechi u-ma'os hesimoni is inspired, as the Kina is in general, by pesukim in Eicha. The pasuk in Eicha, Perek Gimmel, סחי ומאוס תשימנו בקרב העמים. But there's a crucial difference. Rabbi Elazar HaKalir attributes the action to our enemies: sechi u-ma'os hesimoni. They, the Goyim, are the ones who are responsible for our degradation. The pasuk says: Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Sechi u-ma'os tesimenu, the subject of tesimenu is Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Hakadosh Baruch Hu decrees, our enemies malevolently, without caring about the decree, without being motivated by implementing גזירת הקדוש ברוך הוא, so they're the instruments. So it's both. It's sechi u-ma'os hesimoni, but it's crucial that we recognize that ultimately, ultimately it's because there's a gezeiras din brought about because of our aveiros of sechi u-ma'os tesimenu. You, Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Chazal tell us that all the middos of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, Hakadosh Baruch Hu punishes midah k'neged midah. The midah k'neged midah in this sechi u-ma'os tesimenu is that when a Jew neglects Torah, when a Jew goes against Torah, that's the ultimate self-degradation. And when we chas v'shalom engage in that self-degradation, so then the onesh midah k'neged midah is that there's a gezeiras din of sechi u-ma'os tesimenu which our enemies very enthusiastically, very malevolently execute sechi u-ma'os hesimoni. But when we read and recite the Kina of Arzei HaLevanon about the ten towering Torah scholars' personalities put to death al kiddush Hashem, we have the impression that they were contemporaries. And in fact, as all the commentaries point out, that's not true. And yet the paytan almost in what seems at first glance to be a misleading way, does seem to give that impression. But it's not simply that the paytan is taking poetic license. There's a transcendence... And although unique in status, the destiny of the Asara Harugei Malchus is part of a defining recurring pattern in Jewish history. Maintaining our unique identity as a people consecrated to Hakadosh Baruch Hu has and continues to require dying al kiddush hashem. The apparent catalysts of vicious antisemitism vary from one historical epoch to another. The cast of antisemites changes and yet the murderous antisemitism remains an ahistorical constant. That's the meaning of the paytan's weaving together two different periods into one seamless narrative because what he's describing really doesn't belong to any one historical period. It's an ahistorical quality. There's a second complementary message subtly expressed in the lines of the kinah. We describe how רבי חנינא בן תרדיון was v'kehalos, Rebbi Akiva, they defied the decree. They weren't naive. רבי חנינא בן תרדיון knew what would inevitably result from defying the might of the Roman empire. The cost of being the am hanivchar in this world appears at the darkest of times very great. And yet in truth, the privilege of being Hakadosh Baruch Hu's am hanivchar dwarfs any price.

כל ימי נצטערתי על מקרא זה אמר רבי עקיבא מתי יבוא לידי ואקיימנו.

I always yearned, worried that I wouldn't be able to be mekayeim the mitzvah of kiddush hashem. The eternal destiny of kirvas elokim in olam haba contextualizes and provides perspective on all adversity in olam hazeh. The refrain throughout this kinah until the last stanza is eich enachem. How can I, speaking in the voice of Knesses Yisrael, how can I be consoled? How can I find consolation? At first glance, it's very hard to understand. The Rambam writes the halacha in Hilchos Aveilus. When a person is observing aveilus, so the halacha says on the one hand, the person is supposed to grieve, but on the other hand, it has to be b'mida u-v'mishkal. אל יתקשה אדם על מתו יותר מדי. A person's not supposed to mourn excessively and if he does so, harei zeh tipesh. There's a mitzvah for an avel rachmana litzlan to accept tanchumim, to accept the consolation that's offered. How does the paytan insist that eich enachem? But if we revisit these lines in the Rambam, the Rambam explains that the reason excessive mourning is prohibited is because שזהו מנהגו של עולם. Ever since Adam and Chava sinned, death is minhago shel olam, it's the way of the world. והמצער עצמו על מנהגו של עולם. If a person reacts disproportionately, he doesn't make peace with minhago shel olam, the way of the world, harei zeh tipesh. He's a fool. People are mortal and death is a natural part of life ever since the cheit of Adam Harishon. But churban is a grotesque anomaly and because of that, one should never, ever acclimate to churban and hence the paytan's refrain of eich enachem, of being inconsolable, eich enachem.