Tisha BeAv: At the Root of the Destruction

The destruction of the Temple, the destruction of Yerushalayim — but by way of introduction, I would like to clarify something: we have two kinds of heritage. Twice in the entire Torah the word morashah (heritage) is written — once concerning the Torah itself, the giving of the law, and once concerning the giving of the land. Just as G-d gave us the law, revealed the law to us, He also disclosed to us what our place of anchorage would be — or rather, the anchorage of that law. In other words, the land and the law are intimately bound to each other by a charter. In truth, we were not born in Canaan; we are not the product of a Land of Israel.

Our womb lies rather in Egypt: that is where we were born, where the Jewish people was born. And we are forbidden to return to Egypt. Who longs to return to his mother’s womb? No — the land is a place in which to flourish, and that place was determined by the Holy One, blessed be He, and given by the Holy One, blessed be He. We did not conquer it, we were not born there; but there is a covenant that binds us to the Land of Israel as a lover is bound to his bride. That is why, at every wedding, we recall: “Sos tasis vetagel ha’akarah bekibbutz baneha letokhah” — this marriage will gladden the mother who had become barren, the woman who had become barren, because it will bear witness to the ingathering of all her children within her.

This refers to the Land of Israel. And that is why this bond of love uniting the Jewish people with the Land of Israel is a real choice — and it carries a danger, like any love that allows itself to grow old. The poison of every love is aging and routine: when one settles into the everyday and is no longer able to reinvigorate that love, to give it a new dimension each time. The Torah warned us of this when it said, “Ki tolid banim uvnei vanim venoshantem ba’aretz” — when you beget children and grandchildren and you grow old in the land. Then there is a therapy. For if in the end this land rejects you, because you do not observe the moral foundations of conduct and behavior that the land requires, the therapy is exile — and there you will serve deities of etz va’even, wood and stone.

Etz va’even — the worshippers of wood and of stone. You know very well which religion, which cult, which practice this alludes to, do you not? The wood is Christianity; the stone is that of the Kaaba, of Islam. And that is how we found ourselves sometimes among Esav, sometimes among Yishmael. And what did we do there? We learned to rediscover our identity. For despite every attempt at emancipation, we did not find our place among those peoples; we found no place of welcome. And so we turned back to our sources and longed for a return to Israel. But this return must take place on the basis of a unity recovered around the fundamental rules of the law.

That is what the text of the Torah says, and it says so in light of two sins that took place in the desert. Let me remind you: there was the sin of the golden calf, and there was the sin of the spies. The sin of the golden calf amounts to a rejection of the law; the sin of the spies, to a rejection of the land. Paradoxically, both unfold over a span of forty days — forty days of Moshe’s absence, forty days of the spies’ mission — and we know very well what came of it. That is why the prophet Yirmiyahu says: while the sin of the golden calf received an immediate repair, since G-d forgave it, He nonetheless said, “Beware, you are on probation. The day you do it again, I will remember this sin of the golden calf, this first infidelity.”

Whereas the infidelity to the land was not forgiven at once. It had to be atoned for through forty years of exile. And the generation showed itself incapable of grasping the importance of this Land of Israel for the Jewish people as the place where its spiritual aspirations would be realized. For it was not a matter of contenting oneself with national borders — nationalism will always remain somewhat regressive in the eyes of Jewish thought. Those borders must be able to expand — “yamah vakedmah vetzafonah vanegbah,” westward and eastward, northward and southward — in the name of Israel’s spirituality. That is what matters most. And the laboratory is this Land of Israel, kept sheltered from every foreign influence, every intrusion, every interference. The land had to be preserved in its original purity […].

At the outset, when the spies refused the land, it was because of what they argued: “If we have a land, we too shall grow old like all the other nations. France would no longer recognize itself in the Gauls, nor the Gauls in the French. The same holds for all the states and all the cultures that have disappeared, of which absolutely nothing would remain. So let us stay without borders, in the wilderness of the nations, and try to live among the nations.” But this was refused. The refusal came through two men who stood firm, Kalev and Yehoshua, and the two represent two dynasties: the one of David, the other of Mashiach ben Yosef (the Messiah son of Yosef) — a socio-cultural messianism, if you will. And this socio-cultural messianism is destined to yield its place to the messianism of David, as you know.

So if we wish to go back to the source of the exile and of the destruction of the Sanctuary — for do not forget that the sin of the spies occurs after the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, had been set up — you know what the letters of Mishkan are, the word we translate as “sanctuary.” The Mishkan is made of these letters: mem for melekh, the king — the legislator at the summit; shin for shofet, the judge — the judiciary; kaf for kohen, the priest — the teaching, educational body; and then nun, which is navi. The navi, the prophet, is the guardian of all these bodies, so that there be no inner collusion capable of bringing about the downfall of one or the other, and so that a harmonious balance may be maintained between the melekh, the shofet and the kohen. It is this, in the end, that causes the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, to dwell within the people.

In both cases — in both sins — we see the Shekhinah withdraw from the people of Israel. It returns with Shlomo HaMelekh, when he builds the Sanctuary, when peace is restored within the borders and the people forms a secure, cohesive whole; then, at last, the Sanctuary has its reason for being. It loses its reason for being the moment these currents each begin to regard themselves as the most vital, the most essential, and to seek to dominate or exclude the other. And here we come to that wonderful aggadah of our sages that you know, in tractate Gittin. Rabbi Yochanan says: what is the meaning of the verse, “Ashrei adam mefached tamid” — happy is the man who always keeps a measure of fear?

The fear of error — the margin of error. A little honesty, however slight, and a little room for the other: that man will be happy indeed. “Umakshe libo yipol bera’ah” — the one who hardens his heart will know the fall, decline, ruin. And Rabbi Yochanan asks: to what event does this verse apply? And he answers: “Akamtsa uvar Kamtsa charuv Yerushalayim” — it was on account of Kamtsa and Bar Kamtsa, because of Kamtsa and Bar Kamtsa, that Yerushalayim was destroyed. Let me remind you of the source: “Because of Kamtsa and Bar Kamtsa, Yerushalayim was destroyed. Because of a rooster and a hen, Tur Malka was destroyed.” There was a Jewish town called Har HaMelekh, Tur Malka, the King’s Mountain.

And for a rooster and a hen, that town was razed by the Roman army. And then: “Because of the shaft of a litter, Beitar was destroyed.” For the shaft of a carriage, Beitar, a Jewish citadel-city, was utterly destroyed. You may already have studied Kamtsa and Bar Kamtsa. As for the rooster and the hen: you know that when there were newlyweds, it was customary to parade a rooster and a hen before them, as a way of wishing them fertility through these two creatures. And whenever a boy or a girl was born, an oak was planted on one side and a cypress on the other; when they married, the trees were cut for preparing the fire of the celebration, or for the celebration itself. Now it happened once that the Roman legion seized that rooster and that hen in front of the bride and groom, and the procession accompanying them threw itself upon the robbers; the struggle that ensued led to bloodshed. The same happened with the oak that was cut down: the emperor’s daughter’s carriage broke down along the way, and they would not tolerate any affront to this symbolism […] — though it is at root a pagan rite — and the fight, once again, the quarrel that resulted, led to bloodshed.

Now, what of Kamtsa and Bar Kamtsa? I read it to you only to refresh your memory, and at the same time to explain, because Kamtsa and Bar Kamtsa are borrowed names. They are two people who, I would say, live out the same extremism, each from his own side. We shall understand this, for kamtsa — kometz — means a handful. You see, with love: once that love becomes so pronounced that it isolates you from the rest of the community, it can indeed generate [hatred]. Take ahavah and sin’ah: if you place one above the other and cut them down the middle, you obtain the same halves on either side — ahavah and sin’ah, love and hatred. For hatred, in a sense, sets up an impassable separation between one cell and another; and the same is true of love, which could just as well form an impassable cell between a man and his fellow — not to speak of […].

So that is how it is. The kometz is the man who withdraws into himself, who becomes a small handful, who does not want to mix with everyone. He has his own circle of friends; he is very comfortable there and wants no one else. He has his ideological inspirations, his party; he forbids himself any compromise with anyone else. No: whoever is not of his party and does not think as he does is not his friend and cannot be inside. And now, at the very moment when the country is going through a crisis, when the enemy is at the gates, there was a man — we are not told his name. As for Kamtsa and Bar Kamtsa, we shall see that these are borrowed names, for they are found nowhere else.

Indeed, in the Targum, the Aramaic version, chagav, the locust, is rendered kamtsa — as a sign. For it is in this swarming, in this mass of people, that one later finds oneself in unbearable divisions, where no union is possible. That is why it is said: “Melekh ein la’arbeh” — the locust has no king. And he is someone of whom, as Iyov says, “his strength is in the sinews of his belly” […]. So there was a man whose friend was Kamtsa — “derachmeih Kamtsa.” He came, he came to Kamtsa […]. He made a se’udah, a feast.

It happens: people hold banquets. Why did he hold a banquet? It was not a wedding, nor a bar mitzvah, nor a brit milah. No — one gets together with friends and tries to spend a pleasant evening. That was the high bourgeoisie of the time. And as was usual in those days, there were no invitation cards; people were invited through an intermediary. He had an aide charged with going to call on the guests. Even in my own day, when one invited people to a wedding, even when cards were sent to the various families, if one did not send a delegation to invite them in person, close relatives would not come, because they had not received a spoken invitation. So he issued this spoken invitation, meaning it for his friend Kamtsa. But it so happened that this aide — who perhaps delegated it to someone, or who was overzealous — invited someone who was his enemy: Bar Kamtsa, who belonged to the opposing camp.

Sometimes, at a celebration of two hundred and fifty people, or even a hundred, if an uninvited guest joins in — and it does happen that people walk into a wedding without being invited — one does not, for all that, demand that he leave. Yet here, in the end, the host cannot bear that this man should be present at the banquet, and he orders his aide to ask him to leave. But the other refuses to go. He is ashamed. In reality, it is the other who is more disposed to openness. He wants so much to stay, so much to be admitted into this society and to make his voice heard. There is nothing wrong in that: there is no point in simply continuing to nourish one and the same ideal without accepting a difference, a nuance, another current of ideas. For the sake of his own kavod (dignity), he is ready to pay: he offers to pay for his meal; he offers to pay half the costs of the feast; and when the master of the house refuses, he says, “I am ready to pay for the whole feast — but open your doors, so that we do not exclude one another, even if we hold divergent views and opposing beliefs. Hatred must not settle between us for good.” And manu militari, by force, the master of the house takes hold of him and throws him out. Now, present there was not only the flower of the land, but all the rabbis as well. They should have spoken up; they should have said something. But they too were under this man’s heel, were they not? They did not want to displease; they were guests; they did not want to get involved. They witnessed an halbanat panim, a public humiliation of this man […]; and those who might have wanted to defend him saw nothing […].

In any case, he said to himself: since no one reacted to this scandal, I will denounce you to the Roman authorities. And he does so. He goes and tells the authorities, “Beware, there is a faction preparing to rebel against you.” They ask him, “What proof do you bring?” He answers, “It is very simple — you want to verify it? Send a sacrifice on your behalf to be offered in the Sanctuary, and you will see whether they accept it.” And indeed foreigners may bring sacrifices. We are very strict when it comes to sacrifices — an offering must not present the slightest blemish — but there are certain blemishes for which the sacrifices of foreigners are nevertheless accepted, all out of a spirit of openness and courtesy, and especially when it comes to the Roman emperor. But this man, charged with bringing a fine fatted calf to the Sanctuary and offering it on the emperor’s behalf, takes it upon himself, unbeknownst to his companions, to inflict a small wound on it at the lip, at the eye. In principle, as I told you a moment ago, for a foreign sacrifice this poses no problem; but had it been the sacrifice of a member of the Jewish community, it would not have been accepted. So he arrives with this calf. And you may ask: why at the lip and at the eyes? The Maharal of Prague offers a fine explanation: on the one hand, the eyes are chokhmah — wisdom, knowledge, a way of seeing things and of apprehending the universe; and niv sefatayim, the expression of the lips, is a way of expressing and articulating it. There is indeed a difference between cultures, at the highest level, between what happens in the non-Jewish world and in the Jewish world.

We are far stricter, and far more tolerant toward others — that, after all, is something we need not prove. So this sacrifice should have been brought up on the altar. But one rabbi says, “Oh no! If we accept this sacrifice, people will say the Temple is open to any animal at all, and it will open the door to countless abuses. It must not be!” What, then, is to be done? Another says, “This Bar Kamtsa is dangerous; he went and sold us out to the emperor and is sacrificing our very existence — let us eliminate him.” Let us eliminate him, since, after all, he falls under the law of the moser, the one who maliciously denounces you; that is his law — he must be done away with.

They answer: for a small blemish in an animal — because it could not be offered — we would sacrifice a life? That is not done. So they let him live, but they did not offer the sacrifice. And when this reaches the ears of the king, the ears of the emperor, he says: “So there it is — they are separatists, racists; they want no openness. Yet we desire the mingling of all peoples, while respecting their traditions.” And that is how the army was sent; Nero is on the scene. But when it is told — it is still the aggadah telling it — before moving on to that, I must say that what this narrative sets before the whole community of Israel is that the destruction of the Temple implicates the responsibility of all those who seek the favor of the high spheres of the state and of the outside world; of those who practice a certain contempt toward the other strata of society not of their rank; and, on the other side, of those who will not accept that power be in the hands of the rabbis — rabbis who abuse their power and show a certain obstinacy, a certain stubbornness, in their way of interpreting the halakhah, with endless hesitations and pilpulim (hair-splitting casuistry) across the law.

And so Rabbi Yochanan says: “Anvetanuto” — this indecision, this humility carried to the extreme, yet false, of Zekhariah — it was this that lay at the origin of the destruction of our house, beitenu, the family; of our Sanctuary, heikhalenu; and of the destruction of our land and our exile from it — “vehiglatnu me’artzenu.” So when we analyze the motives of the destruction of the Sanctuary, we must not look for them outside. We must look for them within ourselves, within our ranks, within the currents we maintain with extreme intolerance toward one another. And therefore we must learn again to live together. But, unfortunately, we manage to relearn living together only under the rod of foreign peoples, who force us to fall back on our rites, on our sanctuaries, and who teach us to rebuild our lives.

And then the midrash — this midrash continues, saying that when Nero decided to descend upon Jerusalem, he shot arrows in every direction to see whether he would succeed, and everything concurred: all the arrows went toward Yerushalayim. Nevertheless, he decided to question a child, asking him, “What verse did you study today? Recite your verse for me.” And the child says: “A day will come when I shall call Edom to account. I charged him, indeed, with destroying My Sanctuary, but he will have to answer for having destroyed it.” Then Nero, according to the story, said: “What? G-d uses me to destroy the Sanctuary, and I shall have to pay the bill afterward?”

He decided to convert. And it is from Nero, our sages say, that Rabbi Meir descended — the master of the Mishnah, the one who enlightened the eyes of Israel. In sum, it is a way of telling us: take care — even the fiercest enemy of Israel may have among his descendants a branch that will illuminate or uplift the genius of Israel. And that is what happens. Whatever one makes of the link between Rabbi Meir and Nero, one thing is certain: when we go back to Rabbi Meir’s origins, they are not entirely Jewish. So this is a teaching of great weight: even in misfortune, even in exile, great things can still be accomplished.

Now, our sages say: when the First Temple was destroyed, when the Second Temple was destroyed, when the great calamities of Jewish history struck — the Inquisition, the dark dates of the Shoah — it was the Ninth of Av. When did the Ninth of Av begin? When the spies returned from their mission after forty days: “Vatisa kol ha’edah” — it is said that the whole assembly raised its voice and began to weep. It was that night — “that night,” the known night, the appointed night. And the Holy One, blessed be He, said to the people of Israel: “You wept for nothing; you will be led to perpetuate this weeping each time you refuse to identify fully with the Land of Israel and with the charter that binds the Land of Israel to its morashah, its heritage.”

That is the true root of the Ninth of Av, of the fast of the Ninth of Av. It begins first with the sin of the spies, and continues through many stages. For even in the Midbar, the desert — the generation of the desert, the generation that left Egypt, aged twenty and above — had to atone for its sins in the desert and die in the desert. It was on the Ninth of Av that this elimination of part of the people took place, time after time, throughout the forty years, until a regeneration of the people of Israel that would have the strength and the courage to carry out the conquest — but according to the will of the Eternal. For after the sin of the spies, there was an attempt by all the desperate ones to reconquer the land by themselves.

But Moshe told them: once one cannot answer to the will of G-d… For what Kalev said was, “Im chafetz banu” — if G-d desires us, if G-d’s will is within us, if it is what animates us, then we shall succeed; if it does not animate us, we shall not succeed. Well — we must believe that this chefetz (desire) is within us. If today we have regained a state, we must be able to keep it on sound moral foundations, on the unity of the Jewish people, on healthy family units, […], and on a spirituality that seeks transparency and purity; and, finally, that the love of our land guide all our steps. Now, what actually brought the land to ruin? We are told there were three great magnates, three great fortunes in Israel, who were there and who could have withstood the three-year siege that Vespasian laid around the city of Yerushalayim. As the Maharal says, a spiritual city such as Yerushalayim does not fall quickly — unless there is a real defection among its inhabitants. Now, we are told that there were three brigands ruling the city of Jerusalem during the siege, who could not agree among themselves. Some wanted to attack the enemy head-on; others wanted to attempt dialogue, and they were forbidden to hold it, and it was impossible to find common ground. So what did they do? They burned all the food stores in the city, to force the starving people to take up arms and go to war

against the occupying power. Yet there were three great fortunes who devoted themselves to giving everything to these resistance fighters. They had enough to hold out for twenty-one years. Twenty-one years! Had they not destroyed everything, they might never have had to open the gates, for no army could have sustained a twenty-one-year siege — even three years of siege was already very hard. But the fact that the people gave in to this division weakened the people. And it was then that Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai summoned a nephew, a member of one of these rival legions, saying: “Now you must get me out of here.” And you know the story: he told him, “You must play dead so that we can carry you out.” And it was on leaving — on leaving Jerusalem — that he asked Vespasian, “Give me Yavneh and its sages,” while in exchange the gates of Jerusalem were opened to Vespasian.

It was a way of ensuring at least that the spirituality of the Jewish people would not be breached. But he was rebuked for this attempt by other rabbis of the time, because he should not have yielded to the enemy’s pressure; on the contrary, he should have tried to find from within the strength to reunite all the parts of the people and to fight. Indeed, at the end of his life he said that King Chizkiyahu would appear, would come. And what had Chizkiyahu done? Chizkiyahu was the king of Israel who resisted the Assyrian legions and refused to surrender; the Assyrian armies were struck by a plague that ravaged 185,000 soldiers, and they had to withdraw — and that is how Jerusalem was saved. And Rabban Yochanan felt remorse; he said, “Perhaps I did not do everything. I should have made an act of total faith, as Chizkiyahu did, and resisted, relying on divine intervention.” The question remains open. And as is said of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, he was set at ease only when King Chizkiyahu appeared to him and told him, “You acted rightly, for the circumstances within the Jewish population were not the same.” It is known that [in Chizkiyahu’s time] the teaching of Torah had spread from north to south, from east to west, throughout the land.

There was a unity of the people around the study of Torah. Whereas [in Rabban Yochanan’s time] there were declines of another order — but what, let us say, decided the fate of the exile was first and above all sin’at chinam, gratuitous hatred, pushed to the very end between the various factions. There — I stop here to leave room for any questions. It is a subject… — “Good evening, good evening, master. I would like to put to you the question that came to me while listening to your lecture.” — “A little louder.” — “If I refer to another of your lectures — I think you can hear me?” — “A little better.” — “If I remember correctly, the Name of Hashem was cut in two on two occasions in history: at the creation of the world, with the original sin, and at the destruction of the Temple.

So I simply wanted to ask you what the link would be between the original sin and the destruction of the Temple.” — That is a subject in itself. First of all, one must not speak of original sin. There is no original sin. There is the sin of man — the sin every man commits. “I sinned through pride,” as someone says. Because by dint of wanting to assert oneself in one’s entirety, there is inevitably a fault. We must start from the principle that we never hold the whole truth. Even if we have made headway in this quest for truth, it is not the truth. As I have told you before, truth lies at the crossroads. It is when Yosef corrects his father, saying, “Lo khen avi, ki zeh habekhor — not so, my father, this is the firstborn; place your hand upon him,” and he answers him: “No. If I crossed my arms, know, my son, that it was with a very precise intention: if the two are to succeed, it will be at the crossing of their paths” —

not each one separately, not one parallel to the other. That is important. And it is equally important — you know, the aron: it is said that the aron, the Ark, was hidden away and is no longer found. In the Second Temple, the Ark of the law does not exist; it is absent. Why? Simply to allow the law to develop independently of the Written Law — so that one does not revert to the letter of the law, seeking at all costs to apply it exactly as it was written. One must allow it to breathe, to develop, to open up. And that is why the Ark containing the tablets of the Written Law was hidden away. Quite simply. Is that clear?

So, to come back to it: the sin — the sin of man, who is a partner of G-d. And this is so because if G-d gives the Torah without allowing man to decode it, then the command is there, and man stands bound hand and foot before the law. No, that is not how it is. What is the Oral Law? It is an opening of the shell of the Written Torah, of the Written Law — a way of giving it greater resonance. For in a sense, the whole Written Law is contained in the first commandment given to man. There is a positive commandment and a negative commandment. “Mikol etz hagan akhol tokhel” — of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: that is the positive commandment.

The world — I wished to give it for your full and complete enjoyment; one thing only I ask of you, [concerning the tree] of the knowledge of good and evil. That which substitutes good for evil and evil for good, and which risks leading you into this error, into this confusion of things — that, I beg you, I forbid you. When you begin to rely solely on your own reason, without Him, without leaving to your reason its atzilut, its source of emanation, its source of inspiration — then you are at fault, know it well. There. Another question? — “Yes, Mr. Benizri, to be brief… Why the…” — “Luc Reissman, can you hear me?” — “Ah yes, it’s on my end. Can you hear me?” — “Yes, now I can.” — “There. To be brief, and so as not to load my question with too many elements, I would simply like…

You know, when we speak of the destruction of the Temple, the destruction of Jerusalem, in the end we think only of its rebuilding. Today, can we say that on a symbolic level, with the State of Israel, the Temple has been rebuilt?” — First, we must know what the Sanctuary was — what did it represent? Was the Sanctuary a slaughterhouse consecrated to G-d? No, certainly not. All the sacrifices were performed in the outer part of the Temple; in the Holy of Holies, no sacrifice was made. So what mattered in the Sanctuary was first and above all the presence of G-d, which bore witness to a point of reference and a point of convergence for the whole assembly of Israel. It was a way of recovering unity at different stages of the year — the three pilgrimage festivals, if you will, in quotation marks — the three festivals in which Israel’s identity was renewed in light of each event: whether the Exodus from Egypt, liberation; or renewal through the Torah; or renewal through exile, which is the sukkah.

So it was the Temples that bore this trilogy, and that is why we aspire to its rebuilding — as a place that could draw toward it not only all Jewish consciences, as it once drew all the tribes of Israel (the Mishkan was at the center and all the tribes around it), but all the consciences of the world. The peoples will go, in the future, to the house of Yaakov: “Veyorenu midrakhav venelkhah be’orchotav” — that He may teach us His ways and we may walk in His paths; that He may guide us, direct us. We are not going to become once more people of practices, devotees bound to them in their minutest details. Whoever wishes to practice them in their minutest details — good for him. But in their essence, in their spirit — that is what is essential; otherwise one only disfigures them.

For a law is like a human being: it has a body, but it has a soul. And what matters in a man’s life is his soul — this consciousness of being. Otherwise he would not even have this consciousness of being. I do not know whether an animal has a consciousness of being. — “Yes, thank you. I would like to pick up on what Samuel Walzer said a moment ago about original sin and the destruction of the Temple. You said a sentence in passing during your first lecture of this series: you said that the original sin was programmed. A sentence that struck me deeply, because it means a great deal, and in my view we could discuss it for hours and hours.

In my view we could discuss it for hours and hours, but I would like to place it in the context of the fact that if this original sin is programmed…” — Please, avoid this “original sin”; it is Christian. This expression, original sin — the sin of origin that weighs upon our shoulders and of which we can never rid ourselves — is an aberration. No, there is no sin weighing upon us. — “Then let us speak of the prohibition, of this prohibition whose transgression was in fact programmed. If it was programmed, why was man’s punishment — the fact that he was driven out and left to himself — something that could be experienced as, I don’t know, negative?” — There are always two aspects to onesh (punishment). He will toy with us, take revenge on us, strike us — one can picture it that way […].

He would be lowering Himself to our level. The onesh is annulled, quite simply, if it has no educational purpose — if there is not truly, in this trial, a remedy, a therapy. I have removed the word onesh, punishment. For us, in the end, the notion of punishment does not exist: we pay the bill, we settle it […], and it is paid. You settle what you have done and its repercussions. Every act indeed has consequences — they may be harmful — but you will be able to make up for them, to recover them. And it is in this sense that exile is a therapy; it is not a punishment. It is a punishment only when it is reduced to its most elementary expression.

And that is inconceivable, I tell you frankly: a father who would punish his son irremediably — that is not permitted; he would have ceased to be a father. […] — Other questions? Too many questions after such an intense lecture, too many questions. — “Thank you, Mr. Benizri.” — Well then, have a good holiday. — “Thank you very much, but I think we will still see each other next week.” — Oh? — “I believe so, yes. Thank you very much. As you said, the Torah takes no holidays.” — Yes, that’s true. No — with the Torah, it’s always a holiday. — “So, what is it? The true therapy, master Benizri, the true therapy — it’s not the play on the word therapy.

Wouldn’t it be Israel? […]” — […] “Therapy” comes from the Hebrew terufah (remedy). — “Really?” — Ah, perhaps, yes. — “In any case, thank you very much, and see you next week.” — Thank you, see you next week. See you next week. — “That’s extraordinary, if the word therapy really comes from the Hebrew terufah — that’s extraordinary.” — Yes, certainly. — “And the Greek?” — Yes, absolutely: trophê, therapy — it’s the same thing. We mustn’t repeat it, or we’ll have problems again. No, but if you want to complete it: terufah comes from the word rafeh, weak, you see? A person who is weak needs a terufah, a tonic. So the terufah comes to remedy a deficiency.

There — the Hebrew language is marvelous; it is the proof that it is a revealed language. There, thank you very much. — “You said — I didn’t hear — it is the proof that it is…?” — Pardon? — “You said it is the proof that it is — I didn’t hear — revealed?” — That it is a revealed language, yes. There. — “Thank you infinitely.” — Come now. Goodbye. See you next week. — “Goodbye. Thank you very much.” — If you have another topic, send it to me. Goodbye. — “Thank you very much. Goodbye. See you soon. Thank you, thank you very much. This lecture is for us a fountain of youth.” […] — “Rav Benizri, I didn’t want to ask you this question, but since we are at the end of the lecture…

I noticed that in the psalm of the day — Wednesday’s — there is a curse relating to an illness, to dysentery affecting children. Yet today we are facing a virus that does not affect children. Could we draw something from this, a teaching, or…?” — No, but listen: everything affects adult-children and child-adults. […] Come, have a good evening! — “Good evening! Goodbye!”