The Kinos and Their Authors - Rabbi Isser Springer shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to the “Lema’an Yishme’u” podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 Shalom u’vrachah. We hope we’re listening to and watching this class deep into the Geulah, and that what we said, saw, thought, and felt during the exile is already history. In any case, in this class we’ll learn about the kinos for Tisha B’Av. We’ll look generally at what we say in the kinos—not every detail, but the types of kinos, the subjects they cover, who wrote them, and, for heaven’s sake, why are they so hard? Why are they so complicated? Why aren’t they written in plain Hebrew, in heartfelt language? Who decided which kinos would be said? And other general questions along those lines. So let’s turn to the kinos. Broadly speaking, they fall into three groups. We’ll focus mainly on the kinos said during the day of Tisha B’Av, and less on those said at night. We’ll touch on the night a little, but mainly on the day. The daytime kinos can be divided into three main groups. The first is about fifteen piyutim by Rabbi Elazar HaKalir. We’ll soon discuss who Rabbi Elazar HaKalir was, what makes his style distinctive, who accepted it, who did not, and so on. But that’s the first group: kinos 6 through 20, fifteen kinos by Rabbi Elazar HaKalir. The second group again has fifteen kinos, numbers 21 through 35. What’s distinctive about these kinos is that they have no single distinctive feature. They don’t have one author; several different people wrote them. And in this group we say kinos about a wider range of events. This group doesn’t deal only with the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash and the events that followed directly from it; we also speak about entirely different periods. Several kinos in this group discuss the First Crusade, also known as the Decrees of 4856—that is, the persecutions

02:31 Speaker 2 that took place in the year 4856. That’s the second group. The third group is kinos numbered 36 through 45, known as the Zion kinos. The first is Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s “Zion, will you not ask,” and the following kinos are similar to it, as we’ll see. So first we’ve divided them into three parts, and we’ll discuss what is distinctive about each one in detail. The first part, as we said, is fifteen kinos written by Rabbi Elazar HaKalir. Who was Rabbi Elazar HaKalir? First of all, he was one of the greatest liturgical poets of all time. His piyutim are very much present in our siddur, in the machzor, and in the prayers for the festivals. He is one of the earliest liturgical poets. Many of our sages place Rabbi Elazar HaKalir in the time of the Tannaim, and many say that he was Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Over the years, as manuscripts were discovered, some questioned this and said he belonged to a later generation, and that his soul’s source was apparently from the time of the Tannaim. In that way, they uphold the words of our sages. But in any event, by all accounts he was very early—either very, very early, from the time of the Tannaim, or simply very early, from a later period. His piyutim are highly ornamented. By “highly ornamented,” I mean that many piyutim have acrostics. A piyut is written according to an acrostic, often following the alphabet: a line beginning with alef, a line beginning with beis, a line beginning with gimmel. It’s like “Ashrei Yoshvei Veisecha”: the psalm beginning “I will exalt You, my G-d, the King; every day I will bless You” follows the order of the alphabet in its verses. But with Rabbi Elazar HaKalir, a piyut might have five, six, or seven lines beginning with alef, then the same with beis, and so on. And there are other things too, as we’ll see—different examples of ornamentation in his writing. We also encounter his piyutim

04:49 Speaker 2 in the ushpizin on Sukkos. All the ushpizin texts we say—both the short ones on each day of the festival and the longer ones, such as “The Fourth Guest”—are by Rabbi Elazar HaKalir. And in the prayer for rain and the prayer for dew. During the rest of the year, we don’t say piyutim on Shabbos—the Shabbosos of the four special parshiyos, and so on. Our custom is not to say many piyutim during the rest of the year, but on the Yamim Nora’im and Yom Tov, in the prayer for rain and the prayer for dew, we use his piyutim. To the best of my recollection, the Selichos we say on fast days and during the Ten Days of Teshuvah do not contain his piyutim. In piyut 6, found in the kinos—the first kinah—the acrostic repeats each letter six times. Piyut 6 is the first piyut, and it says, “Turn away from me; make me [unclear], you who pass by, [unclear] the Mishkan’s booths.” The samech—the first piyut begins with samech. This isn’t the time to explain why it begins with samech. We don’t say the entire piyut, but the first piyut begins with the letter samech, and we see it six times: six samechs, six of the next letter, and so on as he continues through the letters. What does HaKalir write about? What subjects does he address in his piyutim? In general, HaKalir speaks about the destructions, but he addresses a wide variety of subjects connected to the destruction. In one piyut, piyut 7, he compares what happened at the time of the destruction with what we had been promised at other times. At other times, we had been promised—let me read a quote from piyut 7: “How could You hasten in Your anger? How could You rush to destroy Your faithful ones at the hands of Edomites?” You gave the kingdom of Edom the power to destroy the faithful—the Jews—“and did not remember the Covenant Between the Parts, when You chose those You had tested,” and so on. In each section, he compares them and asks: How could we have gone into exile, and You not remember the good things that had happened in the past? It all follows chronological order. In piyut 9, he shows

07:15 Speaker 2 that the suffering of the destruction had already been foretold in the curses written in Parshas Bechukosai. Kinah 10 approaches it from another, distinctive angle. Kinah 10 speaks about the exile of the twenty-four priestly watches. The twenty-four priestly watches were dispersed among various towns, mainly in the north of the Land of Israel, in the Galilee. He laments that the priestly watches are no longer there—that they disappeared from those places, were exiled, were killed, and so on. Kinah 11 speaks about the death of Yoshiyahu in battle, an earlier stage that was, in a sense, a prelude to the destruction. Kinah 16 speaks about stories from the Gemara in tractate Gittin that we study on this day. So we’ve seen that HaKalir writes about the destruction in the Tisha B’Av kinos, but he looks at it from different angles. Now let’s give a few examples of difficult expressions in HaKalir’s piyutim. After we look at examples of the difficult words in his piyutim, we’ll discuss why he chose such difficult language. Let’s take an example from piyut 9. In the section for the letter ches, it says, “He considered turning away a people plucked like a lily.” “A people”—we’ll see several times that instead of the usual word for “people,” HaKalir uses a variant form. So, “He considered turning away a people plucked like a lily.” The Jewish people are called “the lily of the valleys” in Shir Hashirim: “I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys.” And they were plucked—“plucked like a lily.” As the verse says, “And you, children of Israel, will be gathered one by one.” We see how such a short phrase—and there are many like it in HaKalir’s writing—requires many sources to understand it. So that’s the first example: “He considered turning away a people plucked like a lily.” In the same section of piyut 9, the section for ches, it also says, “The smoke of her canopy rose like a furnace.” What is “the smoke of her canopy”? The canopy is the Beis Hamikdash, where the Shechinah dwelled, and it was burned. The smoke from that canopy rose like the smoke of a great fire, and so on.

09:40 Speaker 2 In section 9, “Drowned and slaughtered were those on the tiers of the platform.” What does “slaughtered” mean here? The word can mean slaughter; sometimes it means to slaughter. So some of the Jews drowned and some were slaughtered. And who were “those on the tiers of the platform”? The Levites who stood on the steps of the platform where they sang. “Drowned and slaughtered were those on the tiers of the platform.” We don’t really have the tools to understand the kinos, the difficult expressions of the Kallir, unless we use a commentary. Why did the Kallir do this? Why did Rabbi Elazar HaKallir, one of the greatest liturgical poets, choose to write in such a difficult style? First of all, to put our minds at ease, it’s important to know that we’re not the first people this has bothered. One of the Rishonim spoke quite sharply about the style of the Kallir’s poems. That was Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra. In his commentary on Koheles, chapter 5, verse 1, Ibn Ezra writes some harsh words. Let’s quote him: “For most of his poems are riddles and parables. I will mention one of his poems: ‘To those who fear Him He doubles, and months He doubles; for this day he cast a lot, and from Zion he shall reign.’” Ibn Ezra offers several ways of understanding it and shows that, in fact, we have no straightforward way to understand it. When there are several possible interpretations and we cannot decide between them, we cannot really be sure we know what it means. Ibn Ezra adds, “Even King Shlomo, the wisest of all men, wrote clearly enough for us to understand him. Why did the Kallir have to write in such a style? [unclear],” and so on, as we quoted earlier as well. Ibn Ezra objects to the style of the Kallir’s poems. Ibn Ezra’s own poems include the familiar “I Will Exalt You, My G-d, Soul of Every Living Thing,” and many others—

12:01 Speaker 2 poems by the Kallir—by Ibn Ezra—that are written in a much simpler style. So Ibn Ezra objects to the style of the Kallir’s poems, but on the other hand, the great sages of later generations held the Kallir in very high regard. Rabbeinu Tam relates in the name of his father, Rabbeinu Meir, who was Rashi’s son-in-law, that his father heard from the great sages before him that when the Kallir wrote his poems, fire blazed around him. The Kallir possessed extraordinary holiness, says Rabbeinu Tam. Later authorities also write that the Kallir concealed secrets within this style, and that is why he wrote this way in particular. From the writings of the Kabbalists, we know that they specifically accepted the Kallir’s poems, because these, in particular, correspond to what happens Above. In any case, that is the first group: the Kallir’s poems. They deal with the destruction and with events that followed fairly directly from it, and they are relatively very difficult. That concludes our few words about the first group of kinos, numbered 6 through 20. Let’s move on to the second group of kinos, which, as we said, runs from kinah 21 through kinah 35. This group covers a wider range of events. It speaks not only about things that were a direct result of the destruction, but also about things that happened many years later—more than a thousand years later. Several poets are represented here. Some of the Kallir’s own kinos are also in this second section. I don’t know who divided up the kinos or arranged their order, because we’ll see that they are not arranged by the order of events or by author. The first section is only the Kallir. We’ll see that the third is also more uniform: it consists of poems about Zion. But the second section combines several different things. What does it contain? Its first kinah, kinah 21, is—

14:27 Speaker 2 a kinah about “the cedars of Lebanon, the mighty ones of Torah,” meaning the Ten Martyrs. On Yom Kippur, too, in the Musaf prayer, we recite a kinah about the Ten Martyrs: “These I recall, and I pour out my soul,” and so on. In it we lament the terrible deaths of the Ten Martyrs, including Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava, and Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel. The Tisha B’Av kinos also include a kinah about the Ten Martyrs, in a different style, written by Rabbi Meir ben Yechiel. He wrote a poem called “The Cedars of Lebanon, the Mighty Ones of Torah,” lamenting the deaths of the Ten Martyrs. This poem is already easier to understand. Another group within the second section—the kinos aren’t together; they’re scattered—is kinah 22, kinah 25, kinah 29, I think. Yes, kinah 29, and kinah 32 or 33. There are four kinos in the second group dealing with the persecutions of 4856. Those persecutions came much later, more than a thousand years after the destruction. There was the Crusade. To this day, in memory of that Crusade, we say Av Harachamim on one Shabbos Mevarchim: the Shabbos when we bless the month of Sivan. That is because several of the terrible persecutions of the First Crusade took place in Sivan. These kinos have a distinctive quality: their authors were not writing about something old, something that happened long ago, something we are commanded to mourn. In these kinos, we can see the mourning itself. This is perhaps what more immediate mourning looks like—mourning that is felt not because of a command, as the Rebbe says, not because of a command, but truly felt. Let’s give a few examples from these kinos about the persecutions of 4856. The first kinah begins, “Be silent before me, and I will speak; let whatever may come upon me come.” Everyone should be quiet—

16:47 Speaker 2 I cannot keep quiet. Right now I need to speak and pour out my grief. He continues—I’m skipping parts—“Like a woman in labor I cry out.” Like a woman giving birth. I want to cry like a woman in labor, in such great pain. “Like a woman in labor I cry out; I gasp and hear a lament. What shall I do? I will mourn without a melody,” and so on. He gives a number of descriptions of how rejoicing ceased and happiness turned to sorrow. He describes the events of the Crusades: how Jews decided to kill themselves rather than be forced, G-d forbid, to rebel against the Kingdom of Heaven. They decided to kill themselves. Multitudes were killed, multitudes. Fathers who had been compassionate became cruel and killed their children. And he turns to the Torah: “Torah, Torah, put on sackcloth.” This is the source of words so often quoted at the funerals of great Torah scholars; they come from this kinah. “Torah, Torah, put on sackcloth and roll in ashes. Mourn as for an only child, with bitter lamentation.” He goes on describing it, but we won’t go into all the details. Let’s move to kinah 25, where he also gives us the dates: what happened, when people were killed in Speyer—on the eighth of the second month, the month of Iyar, they were killed. He continues with those killed in Worms, and so on. Many people were killed, several communities were destroyed, and he laments them. He opens with the powerful words, “If only my head were water and my eyes a flowing spring.” The poet, Rabbeinu Kalonymus, writes: “If only my head were water and my eyes a flowing spring.” I want to weep without limit. To weep as much as I want to, my whole head would have to be water and my eyes would have to be fountains: “And I would weep all my days and nights.” That is how they felt after the terrible persecutions of 4856. They felt they wanted to cry all the time—“weep bitterly,” and so on. So that is the second kind.

18:59 Speaker 2 That exists within the second group. We spoke about the first poem, “Cedars of Lebanon,” a lament for the tragedy of the Ten Martyrs, and we spoke about the second type, laments for the persecutions of 4856. These laments also say that another day of mourning cannot be added. In principle, there should have been a special additional day to mourn the terrible suffering of those persecutions, but since another day cannot be added, we include that mourning on Tisha B’Av. The Gemara— We’ll discuss two more laments in this second group. Lament 23 tells the story in the Gemara about Rabbi Yishmael’s children, who were sold into slavery. Because they were so beautiful, their masters made an agreement: “My slave will marry your maidservant, and we’ll share the children.” Rabbi Yishmael’s son and daughter were put in a room together, but neither knew that the other was their sibling. They just cried: “How can a son of kohanim become a slave and marry a maidservant?” and so on. Each cried in their own corner, withdrawn into themselves, without realizing who the other was. Only when daylight came did they see that this was no maidservant or slave—it was the two of them. They cried so much that their souls departed. Lament 23 is about that painful event. Lament 31 contrasts the departure from Egypt with the departure from Jerusalem into exile. Leaving Egypt was one kind of departure; going into exile was entirely different. Let’s read a few lines from Lament 31. It opens—the author’s identity isn’t entirely clear—“A fire burns within me when I call to mind my departure from Egypt.” A fire burns when I remember what happened

20:54 Speaker 2 when I left Egypt, and the poet goes into detail. “Then Moshe sang”: when we left Egypt, there was Moshe’s song, a song that would not be forgotten. It was written in the Torah. That was when they left Egypt. But what happened when we left Jerusalem? The parallel line is “And Yirmiyahu lamented.” Instead of Moshe’s song, there were Yirmiyahu’s laments. In the stanza beginning with the letter gimel, he says that when we left Egypt, “the waves of the sea rose and stood like a wall.” We had the splitting of the Red Sea: the waters stood as a wall to their right and to their left. That was when they left Egypt. But when we left Jerusalem, “raging waters swept over us and rose above our heads,” as the verse in Tehillim says, “Then the raging waters would have passed over our souls.” He uses that image to draw the contrast: then, at the Exodus, the waters stood still; now the waters are sweeping over us. That, broadly speaking, is the second group of laments: a range of laments by different authors about different events. Let’s move on to the third group. The third group is called the Tziyoniyyos, the laments addressed to Zion. As we said earlier, this group consists of Laments 36 through 45. It begins with a poem by Rabbi Yehuda Halevi. Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, one of the great sages of Spain shortly before the Rambam, wrote many poems. One of his best-known poems is “Zion, will you not ask after the welfare of your captives?” We’ll discuss this remarkable poem in a moment, but first, there is one feature that later poets took from it and imitated. That is why this whole group is called the Tziyoniyyos. What makes the poem distinctive is that Rabbi Yehuda Halevi speaks, as it were, to Zion. Though Zion cannot answer him, he turns to her and says, “Zion, will you not ask after the welfare of your captives?” Aren’t you asking how we are—your children who went into exile, who are held captive, who wait for you and seek your welfare? How can you not be concerned for them? He addresses Zion directly. There are several expressions in this poem that we’ll discuss

23:29 Speaker 2 before moving on to the later poems that followed its lead. He writes a line that also made its way into modern Israeli song: “When I weep over your suffering, I am like jackals.” When I cry and think about Zion’s troubles, my cries are like the cries of jackals. “But when I dream of your captives’ return, I am a harp for your songs.” When I sit and imagine and dwell on the return of your captives, I become a harp, a musical instrument expressing joy. That line also found its way into a song about Jerusalem: “For all your songs, I am a harp.” It comes from this poem. He goes on to describe how much he longs to reach Eretz Yisroel: “Who will grant me the chance to wander in the places where G-d revealed Himself to your seers and your messengers?” When will I too be able to walk in the places where Hashem revealed Himself to your seers, the prophets who saw prophetic visions, and to your messengers, whom Hashem sent to speak to the Jewish people? When I arrive, “I will fall on my face upon your land; I will cherish your stones greatly and show favor to your dust.” He also writes, “How sweet it would be to me to walk barefoot and unclothed”—how he would love to be in Eretz Yisroel even barefoot and unclothed, so long as he could walk there. But then he asks, “How can eating and drinking be pleasant to me when I see dogs dragging away your young lions?” The dogs—those who brought about the destruction, may their names be erased—are dragging away the lions of the Jewish people. How can I eat and drink? This is a poem worth reading slowly, in plain Hebrew. Its approach was striking and new: to speak to Zion, to address her and, as it were, stir her—and through that, to stir us to mourn the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. Following this poem, many others called Tziyoniyyos were written, and they are arranged in the kinot after Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s lament. We’ll discuss two of

25:51 Speaker 2 those laments. One is very well known because it is recited aloud. Among all the kinot, there is one that is said aloud: “Lament, Zion and her cities, like a woman in labor.” Zion and her cities—Jerusalem and the cities around it—weep. “Lament” means to cry out, like a woman in labor. We mentioned that image earlier in the kinot: weeping like a woman giving birth. The poem continues, “And like a maiden clothed in sackcloth for the husband of her youth”—like a young woman whose husband has died before they had much time together. So we turn to Zion and tell her to weep like a woman in labor and like a maiden wearing sackcloth for the husband of her youth. That is intense weeping. We especially remember this poem because it is recited aloud. The lament then details what Zion and her cities must weep over so intensely, like a woman in labor: the palace that was abandoned, the Beis Hamikdash that was abandoned, the offerings, the Jews, the blows we suffered during the destruction, and so on. That is one lament written in the style of the Tziyoniyyos. Another deals with the latest event mentioned in any of the kinot about historical events. It is Lament 41. It isn’t the final lament—we’ve already said that the kinot are not necessarily in chronological order—but it describes the latest event. It was written by the Maharam of Rothenburg. The Maharam of Rothenburg is known for the story of his life, particularly his imprisonment. He had great students, foremost among them Rabbeinu the Rosh, who himself had to flee to Spain because of the persecutions in Ashkenaz. The Rosh thus brought Ashkenazi Jewry—its traditions and Torah—together with Spain. He arrived in Spain and met the Rashba, Rabbeinu Shlomo ben

28:04 Speaker 2 The Aderes, one of the greatest sages of Spain at the time. The Rosh was a student of the Maharam of Rothenburg. And the story of the Maharam of Rothenburg in prison—how he was forced to sit in prison through no fault of his own and passed away there, as is well known—was not the first time he suffered the troubles of the Jewish people in exile. He wrote a kinah about something that happened long before that. In his youth, he studied in France, in Paris, under Rabbi Yechiel of Paris, one of the great Tosafists. At that time there was a disputation about the Talmud. A Jew who had converted, G-d forbid, initiated the disputation. He wanted to prove that the Talmud, that the Gemara, was against the Christians. Incidentally, at about the same time there was a disputation elsewhere in Europe, not so far away. In Spain, there was a disputation with the Ramban. What did they try to prove against the Ramban? That the Gemara says the Christians are right, so why do the Jews insist on not accepting Christianity? That was how they attacked the Ramban. I’ve long wanted to suggest this, but had no one to suggest it to: it’s a shame the non-Jews went and argued with the Ramban, and the Jews suffered because the non-Jews claimed the Gemara supported the Christians, while in France they went and harassed Rabbi Yechiel of Paris because the Gemara opposed the Christians. It would have been better to let the non-Jews argue among themselves. One side would say it was against, the other would say it was in favor, and that way the Jews wouldn’t suffer. But in any case, the Jews suffered from both of those disputations. And following the disputation in France, at which Rabbi Yechi—Rabbi—the Maharam of Rothenburg, Rabbi Yechiel of Paris’s student, was present, they burned twenty-four wagonloads. “This is the statute of the Torah”—this is the decree against the Torah. There is a fast observed by the righteous in memory of that burning of the Talmud, and in its memory the Maharam of Rothenburg wrote a painful kinah. Following the kinah “Tziyon, Will You Not Ask After the Welfare of Your Captives,” the Maharam of Rothenburg addresses the Torah: “Ask, you who were burned in fire, after the welfare of your mourners, who long to dwell in your courtyards,” and so on. “Ask, you who were burned in fire”—you, the Torah burned in fire, ask

30:13 Speaker 2 after the welfare of your mourners, those who care. Whom shall I turn to, says the Maharam of Rothenburg? To Moshe and Aharon on Mount Hor, to Moshe and Aharon on Mount Hor, and I’ll ask: Is there a new Torah, now that your scrolls, too, have been burned? And here he also uses an expression from Rabbi Yehuda Halevi: “What can my soul long for, what can my palate taste? Can I eat after seeing them gather your treasures”—the Torah, all those wagonloads of Gemara manuscripts—“into its square like a condemned city”? Of a condemned city, the verse says: “You shall gather all its spoil into its square and burn the city and all its spoil completely in fire.” The Maharam of Rothenburg writes: They treated the Torah like a condemned city. They “gathered your treasures into its square like a condemned city” and burned the heavenly treasure, and so on. So we’ll stop here regarding this kinah; there are many more details. The Maharam of Rothenburg goes on at length, lamenting the burning of the Torah that took place in his time. And with that, we’ve said a few brief words about the third section of the kinos, the kinos known as the Tziyon kinos. As we said, Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s “Tziyon, Will You Not Ask After the Welfare of Your Captives,” and the kinos that follow it, were written in this style. They speak to Tziyon or to the Torah, and all these kinos also repeatedly use “your” in the feminine: your captives, your mourners, your dwellings, your scrolls, your eagles, your teachers, your splendor, and so on. That style recurs in the kinos known as the Tziyon kinos. We’ll conclude our lesson with the final kinah. This last kinah is the one and only kinah recited both at night and during the day. At night there are several kinos we don’t say during the day. During the day there are many kinos we don’t say at night. But one is repeated. This kinah is by one of the greatest liturgical poets, Rabbeinu Shlomo ibn Gabirol. We also recite a kinah on the seventeenth of Tammuz, “She’ein Ne’esar Asher Nimsar Beyad Bavel,” as well as a poem. This kinah, which concludes the kinos for Tisha B’Av,

32:25 Speaker 2 is a very unusual kinah. It describes what is, as it were, an argument between two—between two groups within the Jewish people. One group is the Kingdom of Yehuda, primarily the tribes of Yehuda, Binyamin and Levi, and the other is the Kingdom of Yisroel. What are the two groups arguing about? They’re arguing over who is worse off, who suffered more, who needs to mourn more. It’s a painful argument. Sadly, both are right; both suffered. But that is the argument between these two groups. What are they called? The Navi gives them names, which Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol uses in this kinah: “Shomron raises her voice.” Shomron, incidentally, is the Kingdom of Yisroel. “Shomron raises her voice.” Shomron is called Oholah. The Navi describes two women, and the poet follows him: one is called Oholah, and the other Oholivah. Oholah is Yisroel; Oholivah is Yehuda. What do these names mean? Oholah means “her tent”—that is the Kingdom of Yisroel. There, in the Kingdom of Yisroel, Yeravam ben Nevat set up his own... his own sanctuary, his own festivals. It is her tent, not My tent. But what is the Kingdom of Yehuda called? The Kingdom of Yehuda is called Oholivah: “My tent is in her.” Not her tent, as with Yisroel—not Oholah—but “My tent is in her.” And here the two argue, Oholah and Oholivah, Yisroel and Yehuda. Yisroel says: We were exiled much earlier, and for quite some time now I have paid my creditor, my debt to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so to speak. I paid it very early. The Kingdom of Yisroel went into exile much earlier, over a hundred years before the Kingdom of Yehuda. Oholivah replies: I suffered too. I went into exile again and again. You went into exile once, and that was it. The poem concludes, “You who have compassion on the poor, have compassion on their poverty.” In the end, both

34:35 Speaker 2 are right. They went into exile early; the others went through several exiles. The Rebbe makes an interesting point: In the future, with Hashem’s help, immediately, the fast of the fourth month—the seventeenth of Tammuz; the fast of the fifth—the ninth of Menachem Av; the fast of the seventh—Tzom Gedaliah; and the fast of the tenth—the tenth of Teves, will become occasions of joy and celebration. To whom do these festivals belong? Some of the commentators say these festivals belong to the Kingdom of Yehuda. But the Ten Tribes, who will return in the Geulah, will not celebrate on the seventeenth of Tammuz and the ninth of Menachem Av. They will celebrate other festivals: the dates of their own exiles, the dates over which they now mourn. Those are the dates they will celebrate in the future. But the Rebbe says no: “Love truth and peace.” Everyone will celebrate all the festivals. They, too—the Ten Tribes—will join our celebrations of the fast of the fourth month and the fast of the fifth, and we will join their celebrations. We don’t yet know their dates; the Navi doesn’t specify the dates when they went into exile. But we, too, will join their celebrations when we learn when they fall. And, as the verse says, “Love truth and peace”—we will all celebrate together. The kinos end: “Hasten salvation and bring the Geulah swiftly, and return to Jerusalem with abundant mercy. For Hashem has comforted Tziyon; He has comforted all her ruins. He has made her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of Hashem. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of song.” With Hashem’s help, all these kinos will belong to the past, and immediately it will be, “I thank You, Hashem, for You were angry with me.” We will see the inner good hidden and concealed within all the things that are not good, immediately. Much success.