The Genius "Yanuka" in a Stirring Talk for Tisha B'Av to Prison Inmates! (2026)

3:25 And indeed Queen Berenice would give it to them, to keep the peace. Of course she meant well, but little by little, when to our sorrow there is no unity among the Jewish people... At that time there were very, very great differences between the classes. On one side were the Biryonim, a group of zealots, men who were thugs, strongmen, who cared about nothing. They saw the truth and they fought. Of course, a good goal, a good intention, but it was not done in consultation with the Sages.

3:53 The zealots were on their own, the poor were on their own, the poor were despised and destitute, and there were the rich, who lived at a high level. They did not acknowledge the poor, they had no idea who the poor even were. There was Ben Tzitzis HaKeses, Nakdimon ben Gurion, Kalba Savua, very great men of wealth. Of course they gave charity and all that, but the gaps between the classes were very, very great.

4:18 We are told that Yehoshua ben Gamla bought the High Priesthood. He bought the priesthood, and he married Marta bat Baitus. In other words, you see that with money they did many things that did not look good at all. And the Temple is the holiest place. You cannot use force and improper means for the sake of the Temple. That is improper, and very dangerous. So the rich were one group, the poor a second group, the zealots a third group, and of course the other classes, each one of the people, that is, the people, together with the Sages, the Sages themselves being the great group, and the rest of the people with them, whoever listens, whoever accepts the Sages. In other words, we had the Sages: the first group was the Sages together with the people who listened to them,

5:09 the second group was the zealots, the third group was the poor, and the fourth group was the rich. Those are the groups. Four groups, each group cut off from the other. So we had four groups. These groups did not connect with one another. These did not listen to those. And when the fire and fury broke out against Queen Berenice and against the Jews, people said: How long can you sell out the Jewish people and hand the taxes to the Romans?

5:37 This has to stop. And of course, no... The rich live with their wealth, the priests eat of the meat, plenty, everything in abundance. The rich in one place, the poor going about miserable, they had nothing to eat, miserable people who could not eat anything. These are miserable poor, those are rich. The Sages sit and learn Torah and say: Don't do anything.

6:01 The Holy One, blessed be He, will act. Don't get involved. The zealots say: How long can this go on? We must rise up and take action. The Temple is in danger! They were zealous for Hashem, and so it went, And of course, in the end this outcome builds up and breeds jealousy, jealousy, hatred and rivalry, and as you can already know and understand, this is what brought about the destruction of the Temple, that Titus and Vespasian came, and all the wicked ones who came against the Temple; in the First Temple, Nevuchadnetzar, who was of the seed of King Shlomo, from the Queen of Sheba. From the union between them, he had the power to lay a hand on the Temple, and that is why it was destroyed, And truly, the Sages teach us that the Temple was destroyed for the sin of baseless hatred. And so the poor

6:50 were despised and in sorrow; they did not respect the rich, the rich looked down on the poor, looked down on the Sages, these looked down on those, and so in fact class divisions were formed, to the point that they burned all the grain that could have fed the Jewish people for 40 years. The zealots came and burned everything, all the supplies the rich had given, and so the Jewish people became gaunt, depleted and captive, and had no more strength to fight.

7:18 The siege ravaged Jerusalem and tightened its grip, and so the walls were breached, the Romans came in, burned the Temple, killed by the sword, and exiled the Children of Israel and all the people and everyone who was there, exiled from their land to this very day. Whenever you want to know how many years since the destruction of the Temple, take the secular year we are in, if we are in 2010, if we are in the year 2000, we are in the year 2026: 2026 minus chaim, "life," 68 is chaim, you do 2026 minus chaim, and the result we get is the time since the destruction of the Temple.

8:02 Whatever secular year you are in, 2030, 2000, 1999, 1957, 1950, any year, we do minus chaim, minus 68, because life was taken away. The Temple is called the House of Life, for that place revealed all life to the world. In its merit people did not die; in its merit people were not found with sin, for "whoever dwells in the Land of Israel lives without sin," in Tractate Kesubos, page 110.

8:30 On page 110 the Sages teach the importance of the Land of Israel, the holiness of the Land of Israel, what the standing of the Land of Israel is. The Pnei Yehoshua, on page 110, the Pnei Yehoshua writes in his novellae that truly, one of the most meaningful things for receiving the holiness of the Land of Israel is to understand that one does not live in it as "a commandment of men learned by rote." And to appreciate the Land of Israel that we are in. You, even whoever is in captivity and is now in prison, still, you are in the Land of Israel.

8:57 You do not know the greatness, the measure and the reward each one has for every moment you sit in the Land of Israel. You are here... Yosef HaTzaddik sat in the pit, and all the holy ones and all the tzaddikim, and you are in a test, and even one day that you are in prison, and your pain and your sorrow... surely the Holy One, blessed be He, pardons, forgives, atones and loves you. All the holy ones were in prison, many tzaddikim, especially Yosef HaTzaddik who was inside the pit and suffered so much. And as you know, it was surely a dungeon, a dungeon. The conditions today are a hotel compared to Yosef, who was inside the pit with snakes and scorpions crawling over him and touching him and gnawing at his flesh, and he had sorrow and pain. He was so handsome, and he came out of there green

9:44 from the sorrow and the blood that poured from him, and he had no peace of mind at all, he was in such sorrow. Years upon years! In a pit like that you cannot be for one hour, all the more so not one month, and all the more so in a pit like that you cannot be one year, and not two, and not three, and not four, and not five, and not six, and not seven, and not eight, and not nine. You cannot be in that pit even one moment. And Yosef HaTzaddik is inside the pit, praying to the Holy One, blessed be He. And in the Tikkunei Zohar it is written, in Tikkun 48: "And the pit was empty, there was no water in it"; but snakes and scorpions there were in it.

10:18 And you must know that you are in the hardest moments, know this. You are in moments when a person is inside... within the time he is in prison is the time when the Holy One, blessed be He, says: I am with you. Your closeness to Hashem is very great, and there is teshuvah, there is hope, there is a remedy for everyone. And you must also respect and love your guards, for they too are doing their job, and none of them has anything personal against anyone, to hate him or be his enemy. They too must have compassion on you, and you on them, and together create love, brotherhood and unity.

10:54 For the Temple is Da'as, knowledge. The Temple is knowledge; it is the place that brings all the hope to the world, where we know there is no despair at all in the world, and there is hope for everyone. The Temple is the place where the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed His light and His goodness to the whole world, and everyone saw the greatness of Hashem. Everyone understood there is hope for everyone; they would lift their eyes to Heaven and know they could get out of anything. This is the wondrous strength of the Jewish people, that at the time they were at the feast of Achashverosh, it says he gave each one "according to the wish of every man"; he made them a banquet and a feast, he gave them wine as old as each one,

11:31 and honor, and feasts, and... What did he not give them? Everything, right? Achashverosh gave them. But there was one thing that was not at Achashverosh's feast. That thing that was missing: there was no music at Achashverosh's feast. For Achashverosh knew that if they had music, the music would awaken them and strengthen them, and they would be stirred and return to their G-d, and so they would do teshuvah. And so I say to you: make yourselves a niggun, sing to Hashem, make music, hold yourselves strong, very strong, so that no one takes his own life, G-d forbid, and no one breaks or falls into the depths of despair.

12:09 There is hope for everything. Every one who is there, it is surely all by precise, exact and ordered Hashgachah. And train yourselves to say every day Psalms 25 and 51, and to intend that the holy King is the One who will have mercy and bring us out. As with "But remember me... and mention me to Pharaoh," which Yosef HaTzaddik said, and Hashem did not like it. And who said it? Yosef HaTzaddik. How can you mention remembering twice?

12:35 Wait another two years in prison! The Holy One, blessed be He, teaches us: I am the One who brings out of prison. I am the Redeemer. I am the One who frees the imprisoned, the only One in the world, only Me. And may you strengthen yourselves and be full of hope and full of strength, and know there is no despair in the world at all. Strengthen yourselves strong, very strong, with all strength and hope, for there is hope in each and every one of the Jewish people. Yosef Meshita: the Romans brought him into the Temple and told him: Whatever you plunder is yours. He brought out the Menorah; they took the Menorah from him there.

13:08 Yosef Meshita said to them: It is enough that I angered my Creator once; I will not anger Him a second time. They laid him on a carpenters' table and sawed at his flesh until his soul left him. He did teshuvah. See, even he, who committed such a great crime, stole from the Temple, took the Menorah, carried it outside, and the Romans sawed him with a saw. Slowly, slowly they sawed at him until his soul left him, and he wailed and wept and cried out to Hashem for having done such a wrong.

13:39 And so with Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya, whom they call "Rabbi," who had not passed up a single harlot. In the end he sat with his head between his knees and wailed until his soul left him. And a Heavenly voice came out and said: Fortunate are you, Rabbi Elazar, for you are destined for the World to Come. Nothing stands in the way of teshuvah. In Tractate Yoma, page 86: It was taught: for the sake of one individual who did teshuvah, he and the whole world are forgiven. "For My anger has turned away from him": it does not say "from them" but "from him," for the sake of one individual who did teshuvah.

14:06 And how great is the power of teshuvah! Certainly you are, you are in a place and on a level of teshuvah, and the Jewish people pray for all of you. And there are some who are here over blood libels, over troubles, over all kinds of problems and matters, upheavals and matters. And I know the Holy One, blessed be He, sees and rejoices in all of you, and I pray for you, and may He bring you out of darkness to a great light. And to our sorrow, we learn from Tisha B'Av, from Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, that Jerusalem was destroyed. To our sorrow, all the disasters that come to the world are because of people who lie, because of people who multiply disputes, because of people who speak lashon hara, because people speak lashon hara.

14:45 These are the very breeds of people who ruined and destroyed the Temple. The most dangerous breed in the world is not the breed of the robber, it is not that breed; it is the breed of the greatest murderers, the masters of the tongue, with a double-edged sword in their tongue, who cut and encourage hatred. And it says about this: "Let him not be like Korach and his congregation"; about "Cursed is he who strikes his fellow in secret"; that, G-d forbid, any person... "Do not go about as a talebearer among your people," And in this way they do so much evil, stirring up hatred among the Jewish people, stirring up jealousy among the Jewish people.

15:18 And then, as we see, through this sin our holy Temple, our glory, was destroyed: through the sin of baseless hatred and the sin of lashon hara, which pains the Holy One, blessed be He, so much. In the Yerushalmi, Peah, chapter 1, on its importance and on the prohibition; in Tractate Arachin, page 15, how forbidden it is to speak lashon hara, how it is the worst thing there is. Always know: a person who speaks lashon hara, whoever speaks lashon hara, that alone is surely the testimony that he is impure through and through, says Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz, and all of him is a chariot for impurity and the kelipah.

15:50 He can never be truth. The very fact that there is lashon hara in his mouth: he can no longer be truth. That is the rule. How can he speak lashon hara? It is forbidden to speak, and it is forbidden to speak lashon hara about anyone of the Jewish people, and to encourage jealousy, hatred and strife, for in the end lashon hara gives birth to hatred. Hatred gives birth to enmity, until in the end one rises up and kills his brother, and in the end come the disputes and the hatred, one quarrels with the other.

16:16 Do everything in your power to awaken goodness and unity and baseless love. And I, the small one, bless you that this day be turned into a Yom Tov, and that you have blessings and salvations and much good. And I wish you salvation and geulah, that today Mashiach come at once and you quickly go out from darkness to a great light, for when Mashiach comes and the geulah comes, everyone will go free, and all human beings and all creatures will change, and there will be no more sword.

16:41 As the Rambam says in Hilchos Melachim, at the end of Hilchos Melachim, in chapter 10: at that time there will be no jealousy, no hatred and no rivalry. "For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Hashem, as the waters cover the sea," and everything will come to its place in peace. May the Holy One, blessed be He, bless you. I love you and pray for you, and bless all of you with salvations, miracles and wonders, and love you very, very much. With Hashem's help, be strong and be joyful, and may they put on some of my niggunim for you there, niggunim and writings. And may they be considerate of you, have mercy on you, give you better conditions, encourage you, rehabilitate you and build you up, and may you have only good, the very best in the world. How are you?

17:25 Good. May the Holy One, blessed be He, protect you.