Thursday, October 18, 2007

A New Churban

The Waqf is currently doing work on Har Habayis involving heavy machinery. A trench is being dug and archeologists claim that in the process, an ancient wall is being destroyed, possibly a wall of the ezras noshim. What are we to take from this?
Chazal say (Yerushalmi Yoma 1:1) that any generation that the temple was not built in it's day, is as if they destroyed it. This means the the existence of the temple is an accurate reflection of the spiritual state of Jewish people.
I would suggest an additional perspective, based on an idea I heard from R' Zev Leff a number of times.
The generation of the churban had their aveiros and were the cause of the destruction. What would happen if we had that temple? Would it survive, or would it too be destroyed? Nowadays we don't actually have anything there to destroy, but the message must get through. So the goyim have to dig up something, and destroy that! Do you get the message? Are we witnessing a replay? Could this be an actual churban? If not on the scale, but surely the message is there.
This is so sad I should sit on the floor and weep and weep.
The answer for us cannot be simply to raise a cry, involve the authorities and prevent the construction. We must deal with the message. Are we combating the root causes of the churban?