Shiva Asar B’Tamuz
I can still remember it like it was yesterday. It was Monday, March 16, 2020, a few days after Shushan Purim. Word of the unknown dangers of Covid-19 was beginning to rip through the world and into our community here in Queens. Since Purim, there had been many rumors about Covid, and many members of the Yeshivah, on their own, decided to cautiously stay home. However, I, being a skeptic and uninformed, continued my regular schedule in person, as did many others. As the days progressed, we were made aware that the Hanhala of the Yeshivah were having serious talks about how to proceed and that they were scrambling, like we all were, to find any reliable information to help them in making their decisions.
The first sign that was posted by the Yeshivah asked that “any person who was feeling under the weather or had the sniffles should not come to Yeshivah.” And then it happened. I was sitting in the Beis Medrash learning with a friend of mine, R’ Kalman Mandel, when someone came rushing in to tell us that the Yeshivah had just put up a new sign which read that “the Yeshivah will be closed until further notice.”
My heart sunk and I almost panicked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The Yeshivah was going to close?! What?! How can that be?! What are we going to do?! How is Yiddishkeit going to continue?! Where are we going to learn, daven, and grow closer to Hashem?!
But soon I learned that it wasn’t a dream or a joke but rather a painful new reality, where Hashem was making it clear to us that we were distanced from Him and it’s not okay. I realized that we had lost something so great.
This episode, which I am sure we all experienced in our own way, was to me the closest analogy to help me connect with what we mourned this past Shiva Asar B’Tamuz: the stopping of the Korban Tamid. I am certain that the Jewish people of those days felt the feelings I felt, just more magnified. They too felt the pain, the scariness of the unknown, the distance, and were also mourning their loss.
We must use the next two and change weeks to change our perspective of what we are supposed to be sad about and what we are mourning.
Have a wonderful Shabbos!
Rabbi Anton