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Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily.
Today we'll be quoting from Rav Yerucham Levovitz’s sefer Da’at Hochma U’Mussar, volume two, page 208. He says, There's something interesting about mourning over the Bet Hamikdash on Tisha B’Av. The things that move us are things that really don't have to do with the essence of the day.
The essence of the day is mourning the destruction of the temple, mourning the fact that we're disconnected from our Father in heaven, and we've been exiled from our land and so on. But what is it that arouses us? Things that he says are Tefelim L’Fi Erech, which are really secondary in the broader picture. They're peripheral items…. descriptions of the atrocities and horrors that happened during the destruction of the Bet Hamikdash.
For example, the ten martyrs. Caesar's daughter asked them to spare the Kohen Gadol, because he was a beautiful man. She wanted to marry him. The king said, I'm sorry, I can't do that. So she said, Please, at least, I'd like to have his face saved. And they peeled his skin off of his face and made it into a statue. Horror story. We hear those horror stories and we get moved. There are people that spend their Tisha B’Av reading Holocaust stories of atrocities and horrors, and it moves them. But Rav Yerucham Levovitz says that's really missing the point.
Why is it that we go after those horror pictures or horror scenes? (Rav Yerucham was not talking about a pictures. There were no pictures back then. They were reading horror lamentations) It’s because that's the only thing that makes us feel. We're not able to feel, just from an idea of being distanced from God, or being an exile. These things don't talk to us. We need to see something. We’ve lost our ability to feel without something real and sometimes gory. To give a mashal, imagine if, lo alenu, someone is told of a patient that has stage-four cancer. The oncologist knows what that means, and if the relative of this person is an oncologist, they're in shock and terror from that news, because they know what that means.
They don't need to see any pictures. But for the laymen, when they look at the man, he looks fine to them. Like the famous Last Lecture of the professor that was in great shape but was terminally ill. He looked fine. But if suddenly he were to start coughing up blood, that’s when everyone is moved- when they see something's wrong.
That's our situation. We're in a generation that doesn't feel.
And believe it or not, even going back thirty years, Rav Wolbe attributed this to technology. When I say technology, I don't mean the iPhone. He was upset with simple cameras and tape recorders. He didn't like when anyone wanted to tape record his class initially, because he felt, I want you to listen to the class, not your recorder. I want you to have the emotions. He also did not like when people used cameras to take pictures of beautiful scenes.
Why can't you take the picture with your heart?
Technology took away our feelings and we're no longer able to contemplate and to feel.
Great rabbis weren't happy with pictures of Avot or pictures of Moshe Rabbenu and Aharon HaKohen. We shouldn’t need pictures, we should be able to imagine them with our own minds.
And to get a little psychological, there's a phenomenon out there that I heard about a few years ago. I didn't believe it when I first heard of the term at a Torah U’Mesorah convention, but as time went on, I saw more and more how real it is. This goes back to a 2006 study conducted by researchers at Princeton and Cornell, that 17% of college students self-injure. That means they cut, burn or otherwise hurt themselves. More recent data indicates that 12% to 23% of adolescents have self-injured, and 60% of those who self-injure are female. These people are not suicidal. Why would somebody want to hurt themselves? Because they want to feel something. The only thing that can get an emotion out of them is cutting. So, they're willing to cut just to feel. That explains the phenomenon that people, against their better wishes, are looking at pictures of horrific atrocities. The reason for it is that they want to feel something.
We hear of the horrors that are going onb and it's not moving us yet. We need to feel it. But that's just feeding into the problem.
They keep saying that we should not allow our children look at these things, but it’s not just the children! Don't look at it yourself! All of these graphic images desensitize us. This causes problems in many different aspects of life.
Stay away from pictures, stay away from news. We know there's a war going on in Israel- that's a horror on its own. People are being killed. That's a horror on its own. We've come to a point where it's only bad if it's barbaric and horrific. President Biden says, “Such atrocities to hostages..,” as if it's okay to kill somebody with a bullet, but not an ax.
Only blood, gore and horror talk to us. That's a pretty sad state of affairs. Therefore, Rav Yerucham Levovitz says our job is to start thinking and let things become meaningful to us. Connect ourselves to important topics, feel connected to Eretz Yisrael and the people of Eretz Yisrael, to God and His presence.
Think about the broader picture, don’t just get caught up with the graphic horrors and the horror stories that move us and pull at our heartstrings.
We should be able to get emotional just from the fact that there's a war going on in Eretz Yisrael and people are dying and people are starving. That’s a horror. We shouldn't need all of these other things to feel. And if you’re not feeling yet, think about it. Say some tehilim. Pray with feeling. work on your feeling, but not with a need to come onto it with horror and gore.
And it's not just about this. It's about going to a wedding and just watching the chuppah and listening to the music. It upsets me, due to my training, that at a wedding, everyone takes out their iPhone. Countless people are standing up there as if they're the photographers! We have photographers! We paid tens of thousands of dollars for photographers. Put your phone away. Watch the wedding. Hear the wedding.
Enjoy your first child.
Stop the pictures!
I hope this concept was clear and makes a little bit of an impact on us.
Have a wonderful day.