Q: How important is it to cry in the kinos in Tisha B’Av? Is it very important or let’s say I’m more of an internal person and it’s very hard for me to cry?
A: How important is it to cry on Tisha B’Av? What if it’s a person that only feels internally but can’t actually bring himself to cry?
It’s very easy to weep on Tisha B’Av. על בית ישראל על עם ה’ שנפלו בחרב. The Germans came to town after town and took the people. The people in the small towns, they were generally shomrei Shabbos in the small towns. In the small towns, yes. They all ate kosher in the small towns. They weren’t tzaddikim already and their children didn’t go to yeshivos – many small towns didn’t send any boys to yeshivos anymore. Even the small towns were cooled off – their hislavus had gone away –but in general they were moderately observant people.
The big towns is what I was talking about where they had the newspapers and the leftists. For instance Pinsk. Pinsk was a town of 40,000 Jews. In 1938 you didn’t have ten boys from Pinsk who went to yeshivos outside of Pinsk. In a town of 40,000 Jews not ten boys who went to yeshivos out of Pinsk!
I was in Slabodka. Nobody from Slabodka went to yeshivos except Slabodka people who were kollel people. Otherwise nobody went. So therefore the fire had gone out already.
But still imagine a small town, like a small town where I lived for a while. I knew the people personally. Quiet people. They didn’t have any great hislavus but they kept everything. There wasn’t any fire anymore. They didn’t send their children to yeshiva. They didn’t have many children either by the way. They didn’t have many children. Small families. Small families. Nobody had big families anymore.
But then the Nazis came and marched all the men outside on a field outside the town and they shot all the men down. My brother-in-law, they shot him down. A Telzer yeshivah bachur, a nice boy. They shot him down for nothing. In cold blood they killed him. Now can you do anything else than weep at that?
Then they took, a few weeks later, all the women; quiet women, decent women. Nobody was full of hislavus. Many didn’t have sheitlim at all; no, they didn’t have sheitlim at all. They wore their own hair most of them. Uncovered heads. But still they were quiet women. They kept kosher.
So they took these quiet people out in the field, the quiet women and the girls. My sister-in-law, a beautiful and fine frum girl went with them. And they shot them all dead in cold blood. Is there anything to do except weep? Certainly we weep. We weep and weep. And Tisha B’Av is not enough. We have to weep more frequently for that.
My chaveirim; Rav Feivel Pilvishker, zichrono levrachah, from Pilvishkov, a tzaddik, a yungerman. He was learning all the time. He even thought in learning all the time. He was always thinking in divrei mussar in his spare time. They found his dead body on the field. He was murdered outside of the town.
Other tzaddikim too. Aharon Bihrzer, my chavrusa. He became the son-in-law of the Kodoner Rav. He was murdered together with the Kodoner Jews.
My rebbi, Rav Avraham Grodzinski, was burned up in a fire. The hospital was set on fire. They burned him up.
Rav Elchonon Wasserman zichrono levrachah was in Slabodka. They marched him out with all the Slabodka boys and they shot him in the Ninth Fort. They shot him dead.
Certainly we have to weep. When we say we understand that Hashem is doing everything for our benefit, it’s bederech klal, yes; but the fact is that they were killed!
Rabbi Akiva, when he was killed so the gemara says there’s no kapparah for that. מי יביא לנו תמורתו – you can’t bring another Rabi Akiva. And therefore all the nations of the world are held accountable and Hakadosh Baruch Hu will remember that. He’ll remember! כי דורש דמים אותם זכר – The One who remembers the blood of the innocent, לא שכח צעקת ענוים – He won’t forget their outcry. He won’t forget it.
And therefore all of them deserve that we should remember them with tears. Certainly we’re sorry. We’re sorry and we weep for them.
But we should know sof kol sof Hashem is doing a chessed to our nation and the end will be that we will be the ones who are going to conquer. And the tzaddikim in the Next World are going to rejoice that their nation is the nation that survives. Sof kol sof the happiness of the World to Come and the happiness even in this world will be ours. When Moshiach comes all the nations will admit that their religions were false, were wicked lies and they’ll all bow down and they’ll יכירו וידעו כל יושבי תבל כי לך תכרע כל ברך תשבע כל לשון.