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In this Tisha B'Av shiur, Rav Dov Ber Cohen strips away the surface-level questions about mourning something distant and arrives at the heart of what was truly lost: relationship. Not the stones of th
The Rabbi Dov Ber Cohen Podcast explores Jewish mindfulness, emotional mastery, relationships, and real inner avodah.
In each shiur, Rabbi Dov Ber shares practical Torah wisdom for navigating anxiety, deepening connection, strengthening emunah, and living with greater presence and purpose.
Rooted in Chassidic depth yet grounded in everyday life, these teachings are experiential, honest, and transformative.
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Okay, Tisha B'Av is the most important day of the year. It's the most unpleasant and uncomfortable and least enjoyable probably, but it's called a moed. Moed really means we say it means a festival, but it comes from the word va'ad which means a meeting point. It's a gathering when we meet Hashem. So every festival is actually when we meet Hashem. Pesach we're meeting Hashem through the energy of freedom. Shavuot we're meeting Hashem through the energy of receiving the Torah. Rosh Hashanah we're meeting Hashem through the energy of new starts, beginning again. Yom Kippur we're meeting Hashem through the energy of purification, letting go of anything that's getting in the way. Sukkot we're meeting Hashem through the energy of love and emunah. Hanukkah we're meeting Hashem through the energy of light in the world. Purim we're meeting Hashem through bringing spirituality into the physical world. So all of the festivals are really a moed, they're a meeting point, a connection point between us and Hashem. But the whole problem with everything in our lives, in the whole of Judaism, is the brokenness that is stopping that. So all the other festivals are lacking because of Tisha B'Av. If we could just sort out Tisha B'Av, then in a way we wouldn't even need the other festivals. So we're just doing the other festivals because they're mitzvot from the Torah, they tell us to do those festivals, and they're very important and they're very powerful, and everyone who knows me knows that whichever festival we're in I'm going to tell you that it's the most important festival, because it is, because that's the one we're in at the moment. But this time I really believe this is the most important thing because this is the foundational core factor that is getting in the way of the whole purpose of everything we're trying to achieve here. And every year people struggle with Tisha B'Av. It's like what do we do? What do we say? So there are a few different levels. Firstly we say we have to mourn over the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. The Beit HaMikdash was destroyed and we should mourn. And then everyone says, this is I'm just going through what everyone says every year, well, it was so long ago we don't really know what it meant to have a Beit HaMikdash, so how can you mourn something that you don't really know? And our lives are actually quite good, we've got a good life, so that's meaningless for us. So then the next level is we say you know what we should mourn that we don't know what we're mourning. We're not actually in pain by not having the Beit HaMikdash, but we should be in pain that we're not in pain. So that was last year we said that as well, and it's true and it's cute and it's nice and it's sweet, but we're still not so bothered by it, we're all okay. So we've got to understand, you want to have a meaningful Tisha B'Av, what does meaningful mean? Something is meaningful if it's taking you towards the purpose. Very very simple. We've got to define our terms. It's meaningful if it's taking you towards the purpose. So you've got to work out what's the purpose of Tisha B'Av and what's the purpose of life? What's the purpose of everything? Because if you understand what the purpose is, then you can make sure you're doing things that are tapping you into the purpose and therefore they will be meaningful and you will get something out of them and you will be moving towards the purpose. So what is the purpose of life? Judaism says the purpose of life is summed up in one pasuk from the Torah, one verse from the Torah, which says v'ahavta l'reiacha kamocha, you should love your fellow as yourself. V'ahavta l'reiacha kamocha, Rabbi Akiva, one of the greatest people who ever walked the face of the earth, said that this is a klal gadol baTorah, it's basically the whole of Torah. Everything is, all of life, or Torah means hora'ah which means instruction manual. The whole purpose of everything we're doing is v'ahavta l'reiacha kamocha, which basically translates as relationship. Relationships. You are here to create a relationship. And our sages say there are three relationships: ben adam l'atzmo, between you and yourself. Self-worth, self-compassion, self-respect, self-love, self-nurture, self-actualization. You have your relationship with yourself. Ben adam l'chavero, between you and other people. Between you and other people, mainly Jews: your wife, your children, your friends, your students, the whole Jewish people. And ben adam lamakom, between you and Hashem. These are your three relationships that you've got to be developing and working on in your whole life. So people think the Torah is a book of rules. The Torah is not a book of rules. The Torah is a book of relationships. It's just that relationships have rules. There are rules, things you can do in the relationship, things you can't do in the relationship. You can't put people down, so that's a rule in relationships. Don't put people down. So putting yourself down, I'm such an idiot what's wrong with me, that's going against the rules of relationship. And there are putting other people down and putting God down, it's going against the rules of relationship. We've got to actually uplift people and so we have certain rules in relationship. So we have these three relationships that we need to be tapping into. V'ahavta l'reiacha kamocha, Rashi says rei'acha means Hashem as well, Hashem is called your friend, Hashem's our... friend. So when we're not connecting to Hashem it means we're not loving Hashem. Ve'ahavta lere'acha kamocha means you should love other people like you love yourself, which means you have to love yourself first. So this one pasuk, this one verse, is teaching us about all three of these things. Ve'ahavta lere'acha kamocha is you have to love yourself, and you have to love other people, and you have to love Hashem. And relationship is really defined by four things. It's defined as emotional intimacy, really. But there are four parts of emotional intimacy according to our sages and they're called ahavah, yirah, simchah, and deveikut. Ahavah, yirah, simchah, deveikus, that means love, love, awe, reverence, respect, yirah. Simchah is joy and deveikut means a feeling of oneness, that we're together, connection. Love, respect, joy, and connection. So you have to have that relationship with yourself. Do you love yourself? Do you respect yourself? Do you enjoy being with yourself? Do you feel deeply connected to your essence who you really are? Do you love other Jewish people? Do you respect other Jewish people? Do you find joy in being with other Jewish people? Do you feel a deep, essential, intrinsic connection to other Jewish people? And Hashem. Do you love Hashem? Do you have awe and respect Hashem? Do you have simchah when you do your mitzvot? Do you love being a Yid? Do you love connecting to Hashem and deveikut? Do you feel that you're really an expression of Hashem, you're part of Hashem? So what are we really really mourning on Tisha B'Av is we're mourning the complete destruction of relationship. That's what we're mourning. The building of the Beis HaMikdash, we're not mourning the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash, I'm mourning the destruction of the relationship. So the main destruction destroyed relationship we have from the Beis HaMikdash is obviously with Hashem. Hashem the Beis HaMikdash, in fact the Kodesh Hakodashim, the Holy of Holies is called the bedroom, is a place of intimacy between Hashem and the Jewish people. Offerings are called korbanot. Korbanot means comes from the word karov, which means closeness. So do we have closeness to Hashem? The answer is no. Says the Gemara says that when the Beis HaMikdash was destroyed, Hashem basically the Shechinah, Hashem's presence, left the world. The Torah says ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם. Make me this holy place and I'm going to come and live within you as a people, within each individual, within your hearts. So when the Mikdash is destroyed, the Shechinah has gone and that's why we pray every day, by the way, Hamachazir Shechinato Letzion. We pray in three times a day. Return your Shechinah. I want the Shechinah, the divine presence isn't here. We lost that. We lost the center point of the Jewish people as a nation. And we lost our real sense of self, our purpose, our godliness within ourselves. We lost everything. We basically, it destroyed the whole purpose of what we're here for and that's what we're mourning. We're not living on a high level of relationship with ourselves, with other people, or Hashem. And we see this in the sages say that the Temple was destroyed, the first Temple was destroyed because of the three cardinal sins of avodah zarah, idol worship, which is destroying the relationship between us and Hashem. We're giving power to other people, we're cheating, it's basically cheating on Hashem. It's idolatry, idolatry is adultery, idolatry is adultery against Hashem. We also have shefichas damim, murder. We were killing each other. And by the way as a separate point. People say, you know what? We're missing the temple because if the temple was here, there'd be only good in the world. The whole world would be perfect. Have you ever had that idea? We want the temple because if the temple was here and the Shechinah was here and the divine presence was here, then there'd be no war and servitude. That's not true. Look at the first Beis HaMikdash, it was destroyed. The Shechinah was revealed in the world and still we were serving idols and we were killing each other. And the third thing is gilluy arayos, which is immoral sexual immorality, which you might think is a problem between between people, but it's not. The sages say that's a problem in yourself. Problem in yourself, especially if it's consensual, even though it's forbidden, it's not between you and other people, it's in yourself because you're going completely against your highest thing, which is your ratzon, your desire. It's a complete misuse of your desire and it means you're being a selfish taker whereas the soul who you really are is a giver. So immoral sexuality you think might be a sin against other people, it's not. It's a sin against you, against the essence of who you are. So the temple was destroyed because of these three things: idol worship, murder, and sexual immorality. Temple destroyed. Why was it destroyed? Because we destroyed the three relationships. Destroyed the three relationships. Second temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred. We hated each other, which is also the three levels, by the way. When you're hating other Jews, you're hating Hashem's Does Hashem love every Jew? Yes, loves every Jew. So if you don't love every Jew, you're hating Hashem's children, so you're messing up your relationship with Hashem. If anyone comes up and says anything not nice about my children, I'll beat the... that's not good for our relationship. So you're messing up your relationship with Hashem when you don't love other Jews. Sinat Chinam is obviously messing up your relationship with other Jews, and Sinat Chinam is messing up your relationship with yourself because you are love, you love Jews. In fact, the first thing someone said to me when I got to Yeshiva was if you come to Yeshiva and you get religious and then you start looking down on other Jews, you didn't become religious, you became self-righteous. Because the more you connect to Torah and Hashem and soul and goodness and truth, the more you love every Jew. Why don't you love every Jew? So both temples were destroyed because of these three relationships. We destroyed these relationships. So this is what we're mourning now. So how are we doing, do you feel, now? Now, by the way, you know me, I'm a very positive and hopeful guy. I'm very positive, but we're given this one day a year to actually be real. Be real. Do you think we're doing well at the moment? We're doing so, so, so badly. We're doing so scarily badly. And people say, no, there's more Torah than ever and Torah websites and all these things. We're doing so badly in our relationship with Hashem. If you think about it. And really, many people are saying, well, because so many Jews don't know about God and Torah and secular Jews, I don't think it's their fault. I think it's the frum Jews' fault, really. To be fair, I love everyone and don't feel guilty. But if we're the ones who are meant to be conscious, then it's our fault if we're not doing it. So how's our relationship with Hashem? So the purpose of life we say is קרבת אלוקים לי טוב, closeness to Hashem, which means Simcha, Ahava, Yira, and Devekut. Ahava, Yira, Simcha, and Devekut. How many people are really, actually, really walking around with Devekut? Really feeling Hashem's presence, really properly? Or Ahava? Are you obsessed with Hashem? People, you know if you get obsessed with a woman at the right time, you can't stop thinking about her. You just think, I can't stop thinking about her. What am I going to buy her? What's she doing? How many people, I'm talking about frum people, even me, I'm not holding there, walking around obsessed, thinking about Hashem all day? And Yira? Do I have actual awe? Mincha. Did everyone daven Mincha today? You had Mincha. Did you have awe in Mincha? Or were you standing in Mincha and you just couldn't say the words because you were in awe? You were in Hashem's presence and you were like, how can I even say the words? So I wasn't. I don't know if I have. So just the very, very, very basic things. I'm a very positive and hopeful person. But I'm just being real here. I'm being real. The Shechina, Hashem's palpable divine presence, isn't really around. I haven't seen it. We say, although it doesn't say it here, שויתי ה' לנגדי תמיד. שויתי ה' לנגדי תמיד means I place Hashem before me at all times, which means I'm walking around with God consciousness. I'm literally walking around feeling that Hashem is walking with me, holding my hand all the time. I think it would be a very good level to be Shiviti Hashem lenegdi ever. Ever. Ever. And I'm talking about good Yidden, by the way, good people. Raising good families, learning, mensches. We're very good at having good character traits. We're good at having good character traits and good at being joyful and good at changing... changing the world and we're nice people. Frum people in general, especially the ones around here, just really good nice people. I'm not... that's not what I'm saying. But I'm talking about an actual spiritual experience. Is our Judaism leading to a spiritual experience of God consciousness? Dovid Hamelech says טעמו וראו כי טוב ה'. You should taste, taste Hashem and taste we always say is an experience, a personal direct experience. You've got to direct... you can never describe to someone what something tastes like. What do strawberries taste like? You can talk about strawberries forever. If you don't bite into a strawberry, you'll not know what a strawberry tastes like. So you can talk about Hashem forever, and you can learn Torah forever, and you can say brachas forever, and you can do mitzvot forever, and completely never actually have an experience of Hashem. And it's really hard, even those of us who are trying. We're really... and we're really trying. There's a lot of work going in and not so much feedback. Now we're very geshmaak because we keep doing it. We're showing up and joyfully. I'm doing it joyfully, but I'm talking about real experience. So maybe at some times in Ne'ila of Yom Kippur suddenly you're feeling a bit of spiritual upliftment. Or even Kabbalat Shabbat. Kabbalat Shabbat you're like, wow, and you have that... ay ay ay ay ay. Even in that, are you actually feeling Hashem? Or you just like that song? And you're with your friends and it's nice. Ai yai yai yai yai yai yai yai yai yai yai yai yai yai yai. Is there really Hashem? But the very little Hashem. Very, very little actual awe, actual yira. The Chofetz Chaim once came late to davening, 45 minutes late to davening. Students afterwards said, Rebbe, why were you late? He said, I woke up in the morning and I said modeh ani lefanecha. I said modeh ani lefanecha. I am grateful before you, lefanecha, and I couldn't move for 45 minutes. Cause I was just in front of Hashem, modeh ani lefanecha. Never even close to that. I used to do ten days silent meditation retreats, fasting. That actually did work. I think I felt much more connected when I was walking around Nepal with no shoes on, sitting in temples, meditating all day. And now I try and I'm really trying hard. I'm a very nice guy. I'm trying really hard. But Hashem's not here. Hashem is here. But the palpable experience of Hashem's presence, that lot, we lost that. We lost that when the Temple went, that's gone. It's out. By the way, even when it was here, we struggled. So don't think when the Temple's rebuilt that's going to all be perfect. Well, actually, third Temple might be different. But it's good that we enjoy niggunim and we should sing our niggunim but really we should be in pain that we have no real relationship with Hashem. We don't. We don't have a real relationship. I respect us by the way, and Hashem respects us because we're still going. Just a little bit of hope. Hashem's like, I can't believe you guys are still turning up. I'm so impressed every time you daven Shacharit, Mincha, Maariv with Hashem's like, you know what, I would have given up by now. He doesn't say that. But he's very proud of you cause you're turning up, davening Shacharit, Mincha, Maariv every day, even though you're not getting the benefit. You're told that why do you do mitzvot? Because then you have kirvat Elokim. Do you, when you put on your tefillin, do you then have an out-of-body experience and just feel the warmth and love and awe of Hashem? When, after you finish davening Shacharit, you shouldn't be able to speak. You daven Mincha and then finish Mincha, aleinu, and then you go okay and then you're talking about lunch. If you actually were standing in front of Hashem for the last fifteen minutes, you wouldn't be able to speak. You just wouldn't be able to speak. So on the first level, we're not doing very, very well in our relationship with Hashem. Remember, relationship means emotional intimacy. Even the frum frumest guy who's the nicest guy and the best guy, does he have actual emotional intimacy with Hashem? Actual אהבה יראה שמחה ודבקות, very rare, very rare. We have moments, very rare. Next one. They might not ask me to come back. How are we doing with Ahavat Yisrael? Ben adam lechavero. I'm telling you, it's mamash scary. It's not, it's not normal. Now, religious people putting down secular people, that's terrible. That's terrible and we've got to get over that. And I'm not talking about the unaffiliated Jews, I'm talking about religious Jews hating religious Jews. I'm shocked. I mean, shock. There are some religious Jews who are happy when other religious Jews get killed fighting for Israel. And there are some religious Jews who are happy when some religious Jews get beaten up by policemen. That's so sick. That is so sick. We're in such a very, very bad hatred. Not just, you're a bit different. Not sinat chinam. Not like, oh, you're wearing that kippah, which is hard enough, by the way. How much judgment do you get, you go in somewhere and you're wearing that kippah? Or you're, you're studying at that yeshiva. And oh, he's Breslov, and he's Chabad, and he's Litvak, and he's Chassidic, and he's Ashkenazi, and he's Sephardi. And even with the Sephardi it's like well he's Kurdish, and he's Moroccan, and he's Temani. Everyone's making fun of each other. It's like, it's actually scary. Scary. Someone said to me, you know what? These people, and these people are giving their life for these people. These people are stopping the geula, they're stopping the redemption. I hate them. I hate these Jews. I was like, אוהבי השם שנאו רע, those who love Hashem, you should hate evil. You don't hate people. You should hate... if you don't agree with someone you can, you can hate what they're doing. You have a mitzvah v'ahavta l'reiacha kamocha, you have to love every single Jew. And they'll, they'll say then they're not my reia. They're not, they're not part of me anymore. Now, let's say even if it is true, they are stopping the redemption by what they're doing. Is hating them bringing the redemption? They're not bringing the redemption, making it even worse. It's a very, very, very bad, I don't even know what to do about this one. I really don't know what to do. Hate, immense deep, I hate that Jew. I spoke to someone, he... He hates this type of Jew more than he hates Hamas. Because Hamas are just giving us what we deserve because we're not doing that, but this type of Jew is causing the... very scary, very scary. And I'm actually not sure quite what to do about it at the moment. What we need to do, I said a few times now, is we need to get a Haredi guy and a Dati Leumi guy and a secular guy, a kibbutz left-wing kibbutz guy and a protester and a policeman and put them in the same room, and they each have to say the other person's point of view. Don't have to agree with it, just have to at least understand it. I understand this guy. I understand him. I don't agree with him. I think it's the worst thing in the world, but I understand, at least I understand that's not going to happen. Even if I got that to happen, it would be some moderate people who would be okay to come and do it. But not the people who count. It's always the moderate people who come together, but the people who are causing the big problem, it's hatred. And I noticed that Hashem says, I'm going to give you a chance to metaken. I'm going to, you're going to fix this. Rabbi Akiva's students died because of sinat chinam. They didn't show respect to each other. Twenty-four thousand of Rabbi Akiva's students died because they didn't show respect to each other. And it was between Pesach and Shavuot, forty-nine days between Pesach and Shavuot. So Hashem says guys, I'm now going to give you an opportunity to fix that. I'm going to fix that between Pesach and Shavuot, so I'm going to give you Yom Haatzmaut. I'm going to give you Israeli Independence Day to give you a chance to completely disagree. I don't think we should be celebrating this, I think this is the worst thing ever, and I think this is the best thing ever. And I want you to, you can disagree, you don't have to agree with each other, but I want you to understand each other, come together, love and respect each other and say, I love and respect you, you're saying Hallel, go and do that, I'm not saying Hallel, but I'm going to say Tachanun, and me say to the Tachanun guy, I love and respect you, I understand why you're saying Tachanun and I love and respect you. And the Tachanun guy say, I understand why you're saying Hallel and I love and respect you. That's what we have to do. It's not so hard. That's what our Rosh Yeshiva does. Our Rosh Yeshiva, understand how huge our Rosh Yeshiva is. He gave a whole class on why you should say Hallel with a bracha on Yom Haatzmaut. And then he said just the last line, and this is why I don't. And then he had two minyans in Aish. One at the Kotel with a bracha, one in the yeshiva with Tachanun. That's a very big man. You need a big man like that to bring us together. So he says, I understand you, I understand you, but I'm not going to do it. It's a big thing. And we got Yom Hazikaron. Hashem said, I'm giving you so many chances now to fix it, just love Jewish people. What's so hard about that? Why is it so hard? Is that hard to love a Jewish person? Ego. Ego stops love. Ego stops love. Neshamas, you love every Jewish people naturally. You love people. So I don't know how we're going to get out of this because Hashem, I believe, and I've got lots of sources for this, he basically says if you guys can't sort it out, I'm out. I just can't be around you. And then we lose shmira, we lose protection, and then stuff happens to us when we lose protection. In fact, the Nefesh Hachaim says that. That's how the temple was destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar didn't destroy the temple, it was already destroyed because of what we did, so Hashem's presence left, so it was easy. He just had to go in and do what he did. So are we close to fixing? Are we actually close to achdut? Are we close, not even achdut. Achdut is very high level, that we're all together. We all see what we have to bring. Forget even that, how about understanding? Very far, very far, scarily far. I'm very scared. It's scarily far from this. I don't know what to do about it. Yes. So I don't think the worst problem facing the Jewish people is antisemitism. I just don't care about the antisemites. They're going to hate us, so what, they're going to hate us. In fact, antisemitism is really good for us. It brings us together. Antisemitism's great. Brings people back to Israel, makes people make aliyah. Antisemitism's one of the greatest things that happened to the Jewish people, I'm not joking. And then people say no, the worst thing that's happened to the Jewish people is assimilation. Seventy-two percent of Jews are marrying non-Jews, and I think assimilation's really, really, really, really bad. Really bad and I spend my whole life trying to work on that. I just don't think it's as bad as religious Jews hating each other. You only had nine men in a minyan and you needed one more, you'd let that guy who you hate and you would be happy he got beaten by the police or he died in Gaza, you'd say come, make up a minyan. And it's that sick. It's the biggest problem. It's what's caused destruction I think. Sinat chinam mamash in our days. Final one, relationship with ourselves. I'm a very positive, uplifting, hopeful human being by the way. Relationship with yourself. How are you doing with that? You are love and joy, you are love and joy. That's who you are. You're a radiant being and I say this all the time and everyone laughs. You're a radiant being of divine love and joy. That's what you are. How often do you feel that? Very rarely everyone's so uptight and heavy and issues and I got problems I can't deal with it and so no relationship with yourself. If you had a real relationship with yourself you'd just be walking around with joy and lightness and playfulness. No one's playful anymore. Everyone's heavy, no one's playful or they're just frivolous and stupid, just be playful, fun. I'm okay, I'm okay, life's okay. We are so, so deeply disconnected from ourselves. Uptight. Once again, really good people, raising good families, trying to do the thing, but deeply, deeply disconnected from what it means to be a Yid. My rebbe said that Moshe Shapiro zatzal says that the Imrei Emes is the only person who has tzuras ha'adam. The only person he's ever seen with tzuras ha'adam, that he has the form of a human. What a Jew is meant to be, he said the Imrei Emes was the last person. We know what we're meant to be. We're so far from what it what does it mean to be an Adam? I think our Rosh Yeshiva is pretty close by the way. What does it mean to be an Adam? Not overthinking all the time and so worried about what other people think and and intense. Everyone's so intense and heavy and it's like I told someone the other day to stop working on themselves. Working on, I says just stop working on yourself already. You've been working on yourself for eight years just stop it, just chill out a little bit. Gosh, just chill out. So we are so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so deeply, deeply, deeply far from healthy relationship. So far, it's called yeridas hadoros, yeridat hadorot, which means each generation just gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and we're so far. Like I just want to make a point just in case I didn't make the point. So far. So far, like ridiculous, like sick how far we are. And I'm talking about even the good guys. We're good, we're shteiging, we're working. The guy, think of a guy in yeshiva, he's a good guy in yeshiva and he's working and he's a really nice guy. He's struggling with his his midos and struggling with his parents and he's struggling with this and his relationship with Hashem and his Gemara and he's struggling and struggling. We're struggling. Why are we struggling? No Hashem. Hashem's where's Hashem? Where's Hashem? So this is what we gotta work on. So we have these practices on Tisha B'av to tap us into this. This is what we're doing. Self, other, and Hashem. What's the practice on we're doing with ourselves is we're fasting. We're fasting and wearing dirty clothes. Fasting and wearing dirty clothes. Because we're saying hold on, we're so far from relationship with ourselves. And what is relationship with ourselves is what's our ratzon, what's our desire? What are you even living for? That's why gillui arayos, sexual immorality, is really a problem with yourself because you got the wrong desire. You're chasing after the wrong thing for your selfish little pleasure. So we're fasting. The fast says, I want you to be hungry but just not feed your hunger. You get hungry, you eat. You get lonely, you call someone. You get bored, you do something. You're just a machine trying to get rid of your hunger. You're just a consumer. Getting what can I do, more, more personal growth, more whatever it is. So Hashem says I'm going to give you a day you can't feed it. Sorry. You're going to have to sit with it now. And when you sit with it, then you can tap into your real the hunger of your soul. Your soul's hungry. Your soul's hey, why don't you feed me? What about me? Why don't you listen to me ever? So we have the fasting. And the dirty clothes, kabbalistically speaking, the thought, speech, and action are the clothing of your soul. So your thought, speech, and action defines you. So is your thought uplifting and kind and spiritual and healthy? Is your speech uplifting, kind, spiritual, healthy? Are your actions? So we're wearing dirty clothes. Why? Because our clothes are dirty. Our thought, speech, and action is pretty dirty. We're trying, once again, we're doing well. It's not great, not great. So we want to uplift that. Bein adam l'chavero, something very, very, very uncomfortable and weird is we don't look at each other or talk to each other. It's very, very strange. It's for me it's the most painful, weird, strange thing in Tisha B'av. It's so uncomfortable and you can't even smile at people. But just for the new people here, don't get offended when I see well, I won't see you tonight, but tomorrow morning I'm not going to say hi to you and I'm not going to smile at you and I'm going to just look I'm going to be in my own little world and that's trying to tap me into, well, what's your relationship with other people anyway? Your relationship with other people is quite selfish. Usually you have your physical and emotional needs and how can I get them met, and I don't like people who go against my ego. It's a very egotistical relationship. So it's saying, hold on, why don't you just sit on your own in a corner and realize: are my relationships healthy? And then we read kinnot, while reading kinnot, to what's happened to our nation as a whole? Our nation's like messed up, messed up. The good days of our nation, when were the good days? When were the good days of the Jewish people? Could someone actually look, ask ChatGPT, ask Claude: when were the good days? השיבנו ה׳ אליך ונשובה חדש ימינו כקדם. What's the kedem? 80 years when King Shlomo, when were the good days exactly? I don't know, show me the good days. We're like all throughout history we're messing up. It's to show us the brokenness of our relationship. The third one, and if you, most people don't feel this is, what about our relationship with Hashem? You're not putting on tefillin in the morning. So someone who doesn't feel the pain of that, it means we're not in the game. For me, the first thing I get up in the morning, I'm like \"Give me my tefillin now\". Some people are like \"Give me a cup of coffee and a cigarette now. Don't even talk to me till I've had a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Okay, now I'm a human again. If I haven't had my cup of coffee and a cigarette I'm not a human, don't talk to me\". I'm like if I don't put on my tefillin and talk to God, I'm not a human. I can't do that. Tisha B'Av is very painful for me because I'm like, and then the second I can get my tefillin on, I'm like \"Get my tefillin on!\". Many people don't feel that though, they're just like \"Okay, on this day we don't put our tefillin on until later, so I won't\". It just shows that when you do put your tefillin on, you're not doing it properly. If it doesn't bug you that you're not putting on tefillin tomorrow morning, it means that when you are putting on tefillin in the morning, you're not doing it properly. Someone said to me when someone dies, when your parent or someone dies, in between when they die and you bury them, you can't do any mitzvahs and you can't say any brachas. You can't do mitzvah and bracha. Some people are like \"Great, I get off the hook!\". But he said to me he was about, he ate something and he said a bracha when he wasn't allowed to say a bracha, and he realized \"If I say a bracha when I'm not supposed to say a bracha, then how am I saying them when I am meant to say them? Because I just say, it's just rolling off my tongue\". So it's trying to teach us. And we can't learn Torah, we're meant to love learning Torah. So now, אין שום יאוש בעולם כלל. So there's no yeush. Okay, that was it, I took us there. And by the way, I want you to feel the pain a lot tomorrow. But we just said it needs to be meaningful. Why, we've got to make Tisha B'Av meaningful. Meaningful, it means it takes me towards the purpose. What is the purpose? Relationships, that's it. So the purpose of life is relationship. So the purpose of Tisha B'Av is restore relationships. So how do we do it? First step is: pain. Feel the pain. Feel the pain of Jewish people hating each other, and at the moment I don't know what to do about it. That's painful. Feel the pain of you've got to work so, so, so, so, so hard to even feel Hashem in your life a little bit. And feel the pain of how you're not connected to yourself. Pain, pain, pain. But then the pain is meant to create yearning. From pain to \"I want, I actually want something, I want a relationship with myself. I don't want to be overthinking everything all the time. I don't want to be, I just don't want that. I don't want to be heavy and intense and uptight all the time. I don't want, I'm yearning for something\". Then yearning has to lead to action. Action. Do. So what are you going to do then? If you're not a different person at the end of tomorrow night, you missed something, you missed something. So then you have to say what am I going to do in order to create the relationship? Pain, yearning, action, relationship. Pain, yearning, that's called meaningful. Meaningful means going towards the purpose. Purpose is relationship. So the avodah of Tisha B'Av is pain at the destruction of relationship. Relationships are destroyed. Destroyed relationships. Marriages are destroyed. How many fathers have messed up their sons? How many people have messed, destroyed relationships, destroyed relationships. Destroyed relationship with ourselves, others, and God. So we feel the pain, but then we say \"I want more, it's meant to be better than that, life is meant to be better than that\". And so what am I going to do about it? So here are your four things. Number one, and I'm sure that Chazal would have said this if they were around today: no phones. If anyone hasn't said that to you, there's no reason to have your phone on Tisha B'Av. No reason to, if you have to call your mom, WhatsApp, whatever, but why would you have your phone? Don't have it, put it away. It's distracting you. The whole problem with relationships is distractions, it's the distractions that are ruining all your relationships. Get rid of your phone, don't need it. And it's good because most people are just distracting themselves from their pain all their life. So we're saying stop distracting yourself. Feel the pain and you'll reach for your phone when I'm bored now. So be bored. If you're bored, you're boring. Think about that. If you're bored, you're boring. Sit and think about your life. Step number two: contemplation. Contemplation. Hisbonenut. To think about what could be. To think about what is and how bad it is and what could be and how good it is. Step three: yearning. Yearning. So sit there tomorrow and be like, I do want a better life than this. Is this the best my life can be just chasing all the time? Chasing, I need more stuff? It's crazy because on Tisha B'Av, Tisha B'Av is just turned into let's watch Holocaust films. Holocaust and October the seventh films. Why? Why are you doing that to try and feel sad? It's just a bit strange to me. That's not what Tisha B'Av is all about, by the way. Tisha B'Av is about repairing my relationship with Hashem. So watching Holocaust films and October the seventh doesn't do it for me. And then: action. You're going to take, you're going to write down tomorrow one action you're going to take, actual action you're going to take to improve your relationship with yourself, with other people, and Hashem. So if you're a particular type of Jew and you judge other types of Jews, I want you to sit and find the good in them. Find the good, understand where they're coming from. Understand, you don't have to agree, but you've got to really try and understand them. Ahavat Yisrael. You have to love Jewish people. Because if we don't love each other and all of those relationships, you and yourself, you and other people, and you and Hashem, it all depends really on us and other people. That's the key one. V'ahavta L'reacha Kamocha. If we can get together somehow as a nation and just a little piece of hope because we have no chance of doing that. We never rely on the whole nation. It's always a few. It's always a few. The Maccabees. The few people save the many. So let's be the few people. That's what Aish is all about, no? Aish is all about the few people. But Aish is all about let's fight anti-Semitism and assimilation. I don't think those are the big problems. I just don't. I think Jews hating Jews, that's a big problem. That's a big problem, sinat chinam here. So B'ezrat Hashem, now you have your guide, your pathway to creating a good Tisha B'Av, a meaningful Tisha B'Av. Feel the pain, feel the yearning, make an action plan, do it.