Every Tear Finds Its Way Home

To Begin Young married man, here is one simple question. When someone tells you, “Cry over the destruction of the Holy Temple,” what goes through your heart? The honest answer is: “I have troubles of my own. I’m not going to cry over something that happened more than two thousand years ago.” And you are right. This is not because the destruction does not matter. It is because your own private pain is real, and it is bleeding right now. Our Sages teach that the gates of tears are never locked. A tear is holy, whether it is shed for the House that was destroyed or for your own home. But what if these two tears, the tear of exile and the tear of your own life, are really one tear? Three That Are One There are three things we weep over. We weep over the Holy Temple that was destroyed. We weep over the honor of Heaven that went into exile. The Zohar, the classic book of Jewish mysticism, calls this “Hashem’s Presence is in exile.” And we weep over the exile itself. At first glance these are three separate sorrows. One is about history, one is mystical, and one is about our people. A person like us, sunk deep in his own day, feels he has no share in any of the three. But they are not three. They are three faces of one single lack. It is a world where Hashem’s light has been hidden. The Bible calls Hashem “a sun and a shield,” and in this world that sun has disappeared behind the clouds, as it were. And this hidden world is the very root of every lack and every trouble. Root and Branch Here is the point. Listen. The reason you have troubles is the destruction of the Holy Temple. The same is true for every lack, every pain, every feeling of distance and every suffering in the world. This is not a nice turn of phrase. It is how things really are. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, writes that the sufferings and limits a person meets in his life come directly from the hiding of Hashem’s infinite light during the exile. Exile is not only a piece of history about a people driven from its land. Exile is a state of the whole universe, the state of “Hashem’s Presence in exile.” In it, Hashem’s infinite light is hidden. Every hardship flows out of that hiding, for the world as a whole and for each person in his own life. When a finger hurts, the pain shows that the whole body is sick. When one person hurts, his pain shows that the whole world is sick. So when you cry over your own pain, you are already crying over the destruction of the Holy Temple. You just don’t know it yet. Following the Tear Home So what is the inner work? It is not to force yourself to cry fake tears over an event you never saw. That doesn’t work, and it isn’t true either. The work is to take the tears you already have, the honest, real and painful ones, and follow them. Ask yourself: Where do they come from? What are they really crying over? Our Sages say that Hashem Himself, as it were, weeps over the exile. There, in the most hidden place, there is a weeping that came before our own. When we cry, even over the smallest thing, we are echoing that weeping. As the Bible says in Hashem’s name: “I am with him in trouble.” Hashem is present in the trouble of every single person. And if Hashem is present in my trouble, then my trouble is held inside the trouble of Hashem’s Presence. Connecting the two is the deep reflection the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, speaks about. It does not create a new feeling. It deepens the feeling you already have until it reaches its root. This is the great new teaching of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, about Hashem’s personal providence: nothing happens by chance. Every private sorrow is part of the great story. So every private tear can become a whole tear, a tear that knows its place in the world. Closing and Comfort The prophet says: “Hashem will wipe away the tear from every face.” Notice: not “tears,” but “the tear.” One tear, which is all the tears together. The very tear you cry over your own life is the tear Hashem will wipe away on the day of redemption, once it is connected to its root and knows it is a branch of the great breaking. It will not be wiped out of the world as something unwanted. It will be wiped away, transformed, into gladness and joy.