A number of years ago, a friend shared with me that he had a very difficult Tisha b’Av. “It was a very hard time for me,” he said. “I spent the past two days watching endless hours of Holocaust videos.” And what exactly prompted that? Well, he had booked a getaway a number of months prior to stay in Hotel Alpen Karawanserai which, interestingly enough, is run by a Jew-loving Gentile who keeps it kosher year round and was frequented by HaRav Shmuel HaLevi Wosner zt”l in the final four summers of his life. Alpen Karawanserai is located in Saalbach, Austria. They flew from Ben Gurion with a stopover in Munich National Airport in Germany. “The absolute last place in the world that I wanted to be,” my friend had lamented then, “was Germany!” The land soaked with centuries of Jewish blood.
The trip to Alpen Karawanserai was an extended family getogether and a different member of this friend’s group had a stopover in Rome. Then, a connecting flight to Munich. This, just two days after sitting on the floor and reading kinah after kinah about what the Romans – and Germans – inflicted upon our People. Realizing on Tisha B’Av where he and his family members were headed immediately thereafter didn’t sit well with him, to say the least. He didn´t find the irony humorous. Not one bit. “What in the world,” he railed inwardly, “am I doing going to these countries that reek with Jewish death and destruction?!”
A valid question, right?
I could not help but wonder, though, if it´s similar to the confounding problem faced by Yirmiyahu and Daniel in their respective times. Yoma 69b tells us that they could not bring themselves to employ the full expression, gadol gibor v’nora.
“Where,” Yirmiyahu wailed, “is the awesomeness of Hashem if the enemies of the Jewish People are wildly carrying on in His Beis HaMikdash?!”
“And where,” lamented Daniel, “is the might of Hashem now that His People are cast into exile, bent under the yoke of oppressors?!”
These were not idle musings. Yirmiyahu actually omitted nora from the davening. For all of Klal Yisrael! And Daniel omitted gibor.
The Anshei Knesses HaGedolah, though, reinstated the crown to its rightful place. “On the contrary,” they insisted, “Hashem withholding His wrath – despite the abominable actions committed in His palace – is an exquisite expression of His might.” So they reinstated gibor. “And that is precisely how we see His awesomeness,” they subsequently declared, “for how else could one nation survive scattered amongst so many others?!”
They brought back nora.
Appearances can be deceiving. At first glance, the churban and galus looks like a situation in which it is simply impossible to talk about the might and awesomeness of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And, indeed, as HaRav Moshe Twersky Hy”d emphasized, there is a facet of Hashem’s might and awesomeness that is only manifest when Klal Yisrael is sovereign in Eretz Yisrael with a Beis HaMikdash and the Shechinah is amongst them. Yirmiyahu and Daniel saw only that inestimably higher level of gibor v’nora.
Nonetheless, the Anshei Knesses HaGedolah taught us that – even in our current, deplorable situation – if you look past the surface, a fantastic expression of Hashem’s might and awesomeness comes sharply into focus.
True, travelling to Rome or Germany seems to be awfully out of place – at first glance – straight away after Tisha B’Av. But step back and think about this situation for a minute. The Romans and Germans wanted nothing more than to crush us. Judenrein was not just a central ambition of Nazi Germany, it was a full-fledged obsession. Hitler, ym”s, acted like an addict in his passion to kill as many of us as possible. Even in the midst of the German death throes of WWII, the juggernaut Jew-killing machine never let up. On the contrary, it only intensified. Hitler knew the war was lost. He saw the end coming, and he maddeningly sped up his extermination efforts while the opportunity was yet in his hands.
And now look. It’s some 2,000 years since the Romans took their stab at it, and a measly 77 since Germany had their go. And here you have large numbers of Jews – obviously identifiable as such – freely treading the ground of those who so badly wanted nothing more than to ensure that no Jew should ever lay foot in their land again. Their descendants avidly providing manifold services to frum Jews enjoying a vacation to refresh their energies to continue their meaning-laden Torah-true lives. Is that not a tremendous triumph? Is that not an inestimable mark of victory over our erstwhile oppressors?
Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch famously said that he visited the Alps so that he would have what to answer when, after 120, he would be asked, “Did you ever bother to go see my Alps?”
Yes, Europe is eternally stained with an incredible amount of Jewish blood, but at the end of the day, la’Hashem ha’aretz u’meloah. It is not their land; it belongs to the Borei Olam. And if Hashem sees fit to currently enable Jews to see His Alps, we can take that as an opportunity – even while recognizing the deplorable state of galus with which we continue to live, and intensely yearning for the geulah – to see in such a situation a tremendous expression of consolation and affirmation of the eternality of the Jewish People and the greatness and might of the Ribbono shel Olam who shepherds them through it all.