The author of this lamentation echoes Jeremiah: “If only my head would be water and my eyes a spring of tears, so that I could cry all day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.” (Jeremiah 8:23) “If only someone would give me a traveler’s lodge inn the wilderness, then I would forsake my people and leave them, for they are all adulterers, a band of traitors. (9:1)

He is frustrated by his tears’ inability to express the full extent of his sorrow. He wants to escape the world and hide from the overwhelming nightmares of destruction and exile.

He echoes Job: “If only I knew how to find Him, I would approach His seat.” (Job 23:3) “Pity me, pity me, O you, my friends, for the hand of God has afflicted me! Why do you pursue me, as does God? If only my words would be written down! If only they would be inscribed in a book, with an iron stylus and lead engraved forever on rock!” (19:21-24)

He, as Job, experiences the rebuke Israel receives from the other nations as a continuation of the destruction. The power of his words is thwarted by their fleeting meanings: Will others relate to all the pain and suffering embedded in his speech?

He echoes King David: “Then I said, ‘O that I had a wing like the dove! I would fly off and find rest! Behold, I would wander afar. I would dwell in the wilderness.” (Psalms 55:7-8)

The author of this lamentation wants to flee to where he can be with God without the distraction and pain of his existence.

And, the author, echoes God as portrayed by Isaiah: “If only I were at war with the weeds and thorns (rather than Israel) I would then trample it and set it altogether on fire!”

This is why God responds to this lamentation: “From the moment Israel ceased to follow My ways, they abandoned Me, so I abandoned them. I grumbled and I groaned, my innards and my heart were spilled out in grief.”

This Kinah takes us through the intense process of crying, weeping, lamenting, screaming and agonizing over the destruction. Did anyone ever find the words to express the horrors of the Holocaust?

It then introduces the picture of God weeping with us and experiencing the same frustration over finding a way to express the depth of His pain: Rabbi Nachman taught in the name of Shmuel, who taught in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha, that the Holy One, Blessed is He, summoned the Ministering Angels and asked them, “How does a flesh and blood king mourn?”

The angels responded, “He drapes sackcloth over the entrances to his palace.”

God said, “So shall I do: “I clothe the heavens in blackness and make sackcloth their garment!” (Isaiah 50:3)

But this was not sufficient. “How does a flesh and blood king mourn?”

“He dims the lights.”

“I shall do the same, as it is written, “The sun and the moon have become blackened, and the stars have withdrawn their shine.” (Joel 4:15)

Even this was not enough: “How does a flesh and blood king mourn?”

“He overturns all the beds in the palace, so that no one sits normally.”

“I will do the same, “I watched as thrones were set up, and the One of Ancient Days sat.” (Daniel 7:9)

It still was not enough: “How does a flesh and blood king mourn?”

“He walks barefoot.”

“I will do the same: “Clouds are the dust of His feet.” (Nahum 1:3)

God still wanted more way to mourn: “How does a flesh and blood king mourn?”

“He removes is royal robes.”

I will do the same, “God did as He planned and He tore His garments.” (Lamentations 2:17) – Lamentations Rabbah 1:1

We are desperate to find tears, words, and mourning adequate to reflect the level of our pain. God is described in the Midrash above and toward the end of this Kinah as equally desperate to cry. This is remarkable as we recall that the first Tisha B’Av, in the desert after the sin of the spies, God criticized Israel for crying meaningless cries: “You have cried empty cries and I will give you real reasons to cry. (Taanit 29a)

We do not cry because it is Tisha B’Av: Tisha B’Av is designed so that we will learn how to cry.

This Kinah teaches us about crying…

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There is an important comment by Rashi in the second story of Creation that is used as one of the most important ideas about prayer: “Now all the trees of the field were not yet on the earth and all the herb of the field had not yet sprouted, for God, the Lord, had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to work the soil.” (Genesis 2:5) Rashi explains the verse: “There was no one to recognize the benefit of the rains. When Adam came and knew that rain was necessary for the world, he prayed for them and they fell.”

I was recently studying Da’at Tefillah, one of the best works on prayer, and I read how the author derived from Rashi’s comment that we must pray as “Lackers,” people who have a need. “Adam recognized that the creation lacked rain, and therefore prayed for it.” His approach, primarily based on the Maharal, is that we must always approach God in prayer as “beggars,” who are lacking in everything, most of all, we lack the opportunity to live in a perfected creation, unified in God.

The Da’at Tefillah is not alone in the way he reads this Rashi. His reading of this Rashi is the same as all I have heard and read my entire life. However, I cannot find the word “lacking” anywhere in Rashi’s comment! In fact, I only see Rashi describing the first step as “recognizing the benefit of rain.” I believe that Rashi is offering an entirely different approach to prayer, that of Desire:

Rashi describes a person who recognizes that more blessing and Divine Sustenance is available. The person appreciates the potential, promise and benefit of the “good,” and uses prayer to express his desire (also known as “Nefesh, or soul,) for that potential good! In this form of prayer we do not approach God as “Lackers,” but as “Desirers.” We say to God: “We see that there is more. We see that it is good. We desire that good.”

Whenever I hear someone urging us to repent, I hear a stress on what we lack. Rashi’s approach to Teshuva is to express our desire for more; to live at a higher level, to attach even more to God.

The first question we are asked by the Heavenly Tribunal is, “Tzipita L’shua?” “Did you wait for the Redemption?” The “Lacker” waits for Redemption by focusing on a world that is lacking. He waits in his need. The “Desirer” does not sit and wait in his need; he works hard to fulfill a desire for a better and more complete world. Rashi’s form of Service is to connect with our Nefesh, our passionate desire for more, and express that desire in our prayer.

I use the Nine Days to express my desire to live in a redeemed world in which my soul can live at its highest level. I offer my desire, not my lackings, to God, with hope and confidence. It is thus that my prayers are considered as Offerings on the Altar.

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In January 1864, the U.S. Army forcibly removed between 8,000 and 9,000 Navajo Indians from their traditional lands in the eastern Arizona Territory and the western New Mexico Territory to internment camps in Bosque Redondo in the Pecos River valley. They had been conquered by a campaign whereby the U.S. Army had systematically destroyed their crops and other food sources, and the old and weak among the Navajo had to either surrender or die. During the Long Walk, at least 200 died  or were kidnapped along the 300-mile trek that took over 18 days to travel by foot. Their settlement in Bosque Redondo had such catastrophic consequences in death and disease and was so disastrously expensive that the U.S. returned them to a reservation in their original homeland in a second “Long Walk” in June 1868.

We are far too familiar with such Long Walks. The Babylonians marched the Jews from Jerusalem to Babylon. We still remember the cruel taunts of the Arabs as our crushed and defeated ancestors walked out of Jerusalem. The Romans imposed their own Long Walks as they exiled the Jews from Israel. The Germans forced their infamous Death March from numerous concentration camps so that they could finish off the Jews who had refused to die in the camps. The “Walk” offers a glimmer of hope; ‘You are walking to a better place,’ but it is always “Your Walk;” you have to survive on your own. The walkers are vulnerable to enemies who attach them on the way, as the Arabs attacked us, as the Poles murdered us, and as the Zuni and Jemez tribes attacked the Navajo Walkers.

The Walkers must call on heroic strength to survive. They are helpless, starving, exhausted, vulnerable, weak, and desperate, but they are also heroes. Perhaps this is why the Sages describe our laws as Halacha – Walking: They remind us that when we continue to Walk with Halacha, no matter how vulnerable, weak, and desperate we may be, we are heroes. The Sages teach us that Halacha trains us in the heroism of these Walkers.

I can see Jeremiah linking himself to the chain of exiles so that he can walk with them. The Babylonians repeatedly refuse to allow the great prophet to join the lines of exiles, but he persists: He too wants to be a walker. He pays honor to their heroism and empowers them to survive until they reach Babylon where they can thrive. Jeremiah wants them to understand that the strength on which they call as they walk, is the strength that will allow them to continue living.

Many of us reflect on our life’s journey as we prepare for Tisha B’Av and the period of Teshuva that follows. We are encouraged to reflect on our failures and disappointments as a way of experiencing the Churban, or destruction. We should remember that when we recall the painful parts of our journey that we too, called on hidden strengths and heroism. We possess the strength to keep on marching through life; the same strength that will help us achieve our potential.

If we are going to recall our Long Walk, we would do well to rejoice in the strengths we discovered. It will be those strengths that will allow us to repair the effects of Tisha B’Av.

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In the 1500s and 1600s, the experience of two countries seemed to defy all that had gone before. Spain had amassed the largest supply of gold in history thanks to its New World conquests, but saw inflation and near bankruptcy as a result. In Holland, the Dutch were gaining greater wealth than most any country on earth by trading in fish and other mundane items – in the beginnings of a strange new way that came to be known as a market economy:

During the seventeenth century, the Dutch extracted tons of herring from waters that washed on English shores, had the largest merchant fleet in Europe, drew into their banks Spanish gold, borrowed at the lowest interest rates, and bested all comers, in the commerce of the Baltic, the Mediterranean, and the West Indies. Dutch prosperity, like Dutch land, seemed to have been created out of nothing. The inevitable contrast with Spain, the possessor of gold and silver mines now teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, only underscored the conundrum of Dutch success. Joyce Appleby – The Relentless Revolution

The Midrash on Lamentations is filled with fantastic tales of the greatness that was Jerusalem’s before the destruction of the Second Temple. Although there are numerous stories describing people’s great material wealth, there are far more tales of the incredible brain power in Jerusalem. They are tales of a different form of wealth. They are tales of a people with absolutely everything they needed to succeed and thrive, and yet they failed, disastrously so.

These Midrashim are the stories of creative people, entrepreneurs, who expended effort after effort only to fail. They are the story of gifted people who did not know how to manage failure. They lost faith in their gifts. They did not appreciate their unusual form of wealth. They were exiles long before they were exiled. They lost their connection with their gifts. They lost their connection with themselves.

Theirs are the story of the student who struggles with Talmud study and does not become known as a Talmud Chacham, and never experiences the joy of Torah. He may possess numerous gifts, but he desires the one that all others honor; he desires the Spanish gold, rather than enjoying his particular gifts.

Theirs are the stories of the people who pray every day, and work hard to fulfill all the commandments but never experience joy in their prayer and observance. They want to pray with the same passion and insight as the great rabbis and Tzaddikim, and perceive themselves as spiritual paupers when they cannot. They have forgotten that there are many forms of wealth, and that rather than focus on accumulating Spanish gold they should begin by identifying their particular strengths; their form of wealth.

We can better prepare for Tisha B’Ab by focusing on what makes us, “Rabbati Am,” – great and unique among others. We can better repair the destruction of Tisha B’Av by refusing to be exiled from ourselves, by focusing on our gifts and strengths; the wealth that is ours and can only be lost when we define our wealth by the parameters of others.

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The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight.

“One sees the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the check tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.”

Albert Camus’ description of Sisyphus’ curse rings in my ears each year on Tisha B’Av. We have climbed great peaks: We left Egypt a nation of slaves, struggled up the mountain of Sinai, only to let the rock roll down the slope because of the spies. We pushed our way up again and we entered Israel. We fought. We pushed our bodies against the weight of the great stone, but we achieved the summit. The land was ours and we built the Temple. But, its place was not secure and we allowed the stone to roll down the mountain and crush the Temple and the land. We pushed up again when we returned from Babylon. We pushed up toward the summit again in Spain, and again in German, and yet again in Iran and all over the world.

On Tisha B’Av we stand at the peak and watch that great stone of our achievements roll down, and down again and yet again, each historical 9th of Av.

As Camus points out, Sisyphus’s heroism is in that moment when he turns around after his long struggle up the mountain, feels the stone slip from his grasp and roll all the way down, and he leaves the heights and gradually goes down the slope to begin his efforts yet again.

Our heroism is in the moment after we have seen the repeated fall of the stone and we simply turn around and begin again, determined that this time we will not be Sisyphus. This time we will achieve Nachamu – We will hear God reach out to comfort us and assure us that our suffering is over.

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My first nightmare was of being attacked by the monsters described by my brother in a bedtime story. My father came running when he heard me scream and took care of the nightmare (and my brother). The monsters metamorphosed over the years into tests, my experiences as a prison chaplain, certain congregants, and then into some doctors. Tisha B’Av is when all of us relive the terrifying nightmares of our long exilic history.

Preparations helped me realize that my even my Tisha B’Av nightmares have changed.

My Tisha B’Av nightmare is that we stop dreaming of the impossible: Even as Isaiah and Jeremiah continued to dream no matter how dark their situation, Pindar, the greatest of the Greek lyricists, wrote: “O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.” That, is my Tisha B’Av nightmare! The only way we will overcome the destruction of Tisha B’Av is by aspiring to “the immortal life”. The Jewish people have survived, even thrived under the most terrible circumstances only because they held fast to their aspirations to the immortal existence of our nation.

Jonas Salk had it right when he said, “I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams.”

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“The city that was great with people (Lamentations 1:1).” The Midrash goes to great lengths to describe the wisdom and wealth of Jerusalem’s inhabitants before its destruction by the Roman.

I appreciate the point of describing the wisdom, but why spend so much time describing the wealth? Does wealth make a city great? New York City has many wealthy people, but also many poor and homeless. Does its wealth make NY a great city?

Perhaps the issue addressed is the kind of wealth, and how it shaped peoples’ behavior. There is a difference between wealth and the projection of wealth:

“Increasingly over the last two decades, women and men with higher salaries and more college classes under their belt broke away from the sensible middle class and engaged in a new round of conspicuous consumption. … Yet they also wanted to show off their education and know-how. That is where the authenticity part mattered and where it became, under Starbucks and Whole Foods and so many other natural-looking chains, more about status and sophistication than it was about the counterculturally tinged consumption and rebellion against the fake that Jerry Baldwin and his fellow travelers favored. Post-post-hippies, like [Starbucks CEO] Howard Schultz, associated authenticity not so much with the search for more genuine products, wrote consumer behavior specialist Michael Solomon in 2003, as with a range of upscale values, ‘like a better lifestyle, personal control, and better taste.

“To display smarts, superior tastes, and even enlightened politics, the upper classes of the 1990s focused their buying on things that looked natural and rare but also required special knowledge to fully understand. They bought a California wine to demonstrate that they knew about exceptional vintages, or a Viking stove because they knew that real cooks used these oversized machines, or a bike trip through Provence because they knew from their college art history classes that the hills and sun there inspired pained and brilliant painters. … Buying in post-Reagan America was not about keeping up with the Joneses; it was about separating yourself from the Joneses, the conformists in the middle.”

(Bryant Simon; Everything But The Coffee)

“It was about separating yourself from the Joneses, the conformists in the middle,” is a description of wealth as a source of disunity. Such wealth does not make a city “great with people.” Jerusalem’s wealth was different.

Of course there were the conspicuous consumers, as there always have been in every city in the world, but Jerusalem’s wealth, even as the people dealt with a different consumption; being consumed with Baseless Hatred, Sinat Chinam, was used to feed those who did not have the basic necessities. The wealth was used to make everyone benefit from the city’s greatness.

The tragedy was, “How could such a city of shared greatness fall so low?”

“Has become like a widow,” explains that people experienced the loneliness of a widow. The people of the city cared for the financial needs of the masses, but from a distance, through a government agency, but did not take the time to pay attention; “She sits in solitude.” Ironically, the same solitude as the people who live just to separate themselves from the Joneses.

We may not have the funds, but we have the phones. We can each call someone who lives alone just to wish them a Shabbat Shalom. We can stop and say hello to each person who is standing alone in the Synagogue.

This is a lesson we can learn on Tisha B’Av when we do not greet each other and experience the loneliness of the person to whom no one says hello. Just paying attention to the experience is a step forward; a fixing of the “city great with people,” that now, “sits in solitude.”

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“When God will return the captivity of Zion, we will be as dreamers (Psalms 126:2).”

Everyone dreams. What is different between our dreams and those of our enemies? Why will we be “as dreamers,” rather than dreamers?

In 1918, after one final military assault that fails, Germany is defeated. Young Adolf Hitler, blind after a mustard gas attack, and humiliated after the Fatherland’s defeat, vows to enter politics:

“As the train took Hitler to a hospital in the Pomeranian town of Pasewalk, his own pain and despair obliterated any such aspiration, but after several weeks of medical treatment be began to regain his sight. Inflammation of the mucous membrane and swelling of the eyelids had receded; ‘the piercing in my sockets’ began to diminish and ’slowly I succeeded in distinguishing the broad outlines of things about me.’ With sight came an end to depression and the mental instability that had required special treatment from a consulting psychiatrist, Professor Edmund Forster, chief of the Berlin University Nerve Clinic. Little was known about mustard gas and Hitler’s inexplicable recovery confirmed Dr. Forster in his diagnosis of the blindness as hysteria. In fact, the patient had experienced the usual symptoms of moderate mustard gas poisoning – burning, swelling, moaning, depression – and recovery in several weeks.

“Sight also brought Hitler hope and renewed interest in the events of the day. Berlin itself was in a state of virtual siege as the new Chancellor urged the Kaiser to abdicate so that an armistice could be signed. Hitler had heard stories of rebellion throughout Germany but discounted them as rumor until a delegation of Red German sailors burst into his ward early that November in an attempt to convert the patients to the revolution. … Indignation was followed by shock. Hitler took to his bed. ‘I lay there broken with great pains, although I did not let on how I felt; for it was repugnant to me to cry out at a time when you could feel that the collapse was coming.’ A little later, on November 9, a dignified elderly pastor arrived at Pasewalk hospital to confirm news of the uprisings. Revolution had even broken out in Munich.

“The patients were gathered in a little hall and the pastor, so Hitler recalled, ’seemed all a-tremble as be informed us that the House of Hohenzollern should no longer bear the German imperial crown; that the Fatherland had become a ‘republic.’ ‘ As the aged speaker eulogized the services rendered by the Hohenzollerns, he ‘began to sob gently to himself – in the little hall the deepest dejection settled on all hearts, and I believe not an eye was able to restrain its tears.’ The pastor went on to say that the war must now be ended, that all was lost and they had to throw themselves upon the mercy of the victorious Allies. To Hitler the revelation was intolerable. ‘It became impossible for me to sit still one minute more. Again everything went black before my eyes; I tottered and groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself on my bunk, and dug my burning head into my blankets and pillow.’

“It was the first time he had wept since standing at his mother’s grave eleven years earlier (she had died in agony of cancer), in the churchyard of the Austrian village of Leonding. He had borne the fear of blindness ‘in dull silence,’ endured the loss of so many good comrades. ‘But now I could not help it. Only now did I see how all personal suffering vanished in comparison with the misfortune of the Fatherland.’ Out of his black despair came a decision. ‘The great vacillation of my life, whether I should enter politics or remain an architect, came to an end. That night I resolved that, if I recovered my sight, I would enter politics.’ There was no medical reason for Hitler’s second blindness and Dr. Forster reinforced in his initial conclusion that his patient was definitely ‘a psychopath with hysterical symptoms.’ Hitler, however, was convinced he was permanently blind.

“The shame of Germany’s surrender on November 11 in the forest of Compiegne overwhelmed him. Life seemed unbearable, but that night, or the next, Hitler was abruptly delivered from his misery, as he lay in despair on his cot, by a ’supernatural vision’ (perhaps deliberately induced Dr. Forster). Like St. Joan, he heard voices summoning him to save Germany. All at once ‘a miracle came to pass’ – the darkness encompassing Hitler evaporated. He could see again! He solemnly vowed, as promised, that be would ‘become a politician and devote his energies to carrying out the command he had received.’”

(John Toland; “Adolf Hitler”)

Hitler ysv”z, dreamed as a response to tragedy. The verse describes us as dreamers after the troubles are over and all is well. What were we before God returned the captives of Zion? Were we not dreaming all along?

Our dreams are not a response to tragedy, but maintaining a sense of reality and perspective. We will be “as dreamers,” when we have the privilege to see that reality is even better than what we believed. There will be a day when we look back on our visions of redemption were simple dreams in comparison to reality!

We remind ourselves now, that no matter how clear our vision, we will one day know that we were only dreamers; we know that there is much more to see. We are aware, even now, that our vision is limited. We want to see more. We need to see more.

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“If only someone would turn my head to water and my eye to a spring of tears.” Jeremiah 8:23

I was taught and always read this as Jeremiah frustrated by the inadequacies of his tears. I imagined him weeping and wondering if he could possibly cry enough to express his anguish. I thought of this verse as I read Abu bin al-Abras: “My eyes seep sorrow; water skins with holes.”

I imagined the scene and wondered why my eyes are dry. I am not a crier by nature. I tear when I see someone who is suffering, when I read stories of the countless horrors imposed on Israel over the course of history, but I do not cry. I used to recite Jeremiah’s words whenever I felt I should cry but could not.

Perhaps, Jeremiah’s eyes were also dry. I see the prophet begging the Babylonian soldiers to chain him to the exiles; his people. I can picture the prophet of doom using every ounce of his strength to console and give hope. Jeremiah’s eyes were probably dry as he assumed his new role to lay the groundwork for Israel’s survival in exile.

Yes, his eyes were dry. They probably were filled with light and hope.

I heard a story of a young woman with five children, whose passionately adored husband suddenly died. She did not shed a tear. She took care of her children, went to work and raised 5 extraordinary human beings. Twenty five years later she married a man she did not love but who gave her comfort and security. He died less than a year later. She wept oceans of tears at his funeral.

The officiating rabbi, who had buried her first husband, asked her why she cried for this man, whom she did not have the same love, but not for her first husband, whom she adored. “Rabbi,” she answered, “for whom do you think I am crying? I never had time to cry for my first husband. I had to raise my children with laughter and light. I can only afford to cry now.”

Jeremiah’s eyes may very well have been dry. He too, had to raise his “children” and give them hope and light. He did not have an opportunity to weep as he traveled among the ruins caring for the crushed, wounded and ill.

Why are my eyes dry? Because I see life as having to be lived with that same joy and light. Yes, I can echo Jeremiah, “If only someone would turn my head to water and my eye to a spring of tears”, but even on Tisha B’Av, I see the glory of the Jewish People. I see our incredible will to flourish, not just survive. I rejoice in the thousands who study and ask. I see light in the countless acts of Chesed and compassion.

Yes, I mourn on Tisha B’Av; I mourn in awe for a people that keep through their mourning, the Temple alive two millennia after its physical destruction. I mourn in wonder that we continue to read Jeremiah’s rebukes 2400 years later as if they were meant for us. I mourn and can detect just that little sparkel in Jeremiah’s eyes.

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They have been married for so long that they don’t remember why they are fighting. They simply know that they are in an argument. There is no single specific issue. They fight. They stopped listening to each other many years ago. The only thing they do hear is criticism. There is no “reason” for them to argue other than their being so accustomed to fighting. That, I believe, is the definition of Sin’at Chinam, or, hatred for no reason. They are stuck in their argument and, when asked, admit that they cannot picture how to live with each other without arguing.

I spend a great deal of time working with people, many of whom are sinking in a quagmire of resentment and anger. People carry their anger for years, even after they have forgotten what provoked their anger. The hatred takes on a life of its own. That is Sin’at Chinam.

It is even more frustrating to observe people seeding such long-lasting resentments. One person phrases something in a poor manner, the other person is hurt, the first person is shocked that he provoked such a response and becomes so angry that he will say something hurtful and the conflict takes root. Neither one will recall exactly how the argument began, but it doesn’t matter; it takes on a life of its own. That is Sin’at Chinam.

I have often heard Rav Kook ZT”l quoted as saying, “The only way to repair Sin’at Chinam is Ahavat Chinam.” It seems that Rav Kook was focusing on the Sin’a, the hatred. I suggest that we focus instead on the Chinam, or ‘Free.’

People have difficulty acknowledging they pay a price for an argument. We pay a steep price even when we are 100% in the right. There is no Chinam – argument without a price – just as there is no Ahavah, or love without a price.

Love is not only experienced; it makes demands. Love demands patience, generosity, selflessness, understanding, empathy and much more. We make our first mistake when we think that either love or hate is Chinam – free, meaning that we do not pay a price.

When one person hears an insult he has a choice whether he is willing to ‘pay,’ meaning to invest effort in understanding what the other said or meant, or what the other was feeling that led him to speak the insult. When we are willing to ‘pay’ we will be able to find a solution.

However, if we focus on ‘Chinam,’ our desire to have love without having to pay, we will certainly be unwilling to ‘pay’ to repair a situation of Sin’a – hatred.

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