Will This War Turn to Peace?
By Rabbi Yaacov Haber
Rabbi Yaacov Haber has been a leading force in Jewish community and Jewish education for over forty years. He lived and taught in the United States, Australia and in Israel. He is presently the Rav of Kehillas Shivtei Yeshurun, a vibrant community in the center of Ramat Bet Shemesh, Israel, and serves as the Rabbinic guide to many of its wonderful organisations.
I decided to concentrate on this teaching about Rebbe Akiva on the occasion of Tisha b’Av. I learned that Rebbe Akiva laughed when the Beit ha’Mikdash was destroyed in Rav Haber’s lesson on Netsach, Hod, Yesod in his Tomer Devorah series, I understand (as well as I can) the Kabbalistic significance of the movement towards malchut and the transitions from darkness to light. Nevertheless, to rejoice when people are suffering–even though the suffering is temporary in the context of Tikkun olam–seems grotesquely lacking in rachamim. No matter how I think of it, I cannot see pogroms, the holocaust, even things that happened long ago, like the destruction of the Temples, simply as harbingers of light.