The Yanuka Rav Shlomo Yehuda-הגאון הינוקא - לכבות את אש החורבן ליל תשעה באב סמוך לשריד מקדשנו The Yanuka - English CC

3:20 You know, now in the exile, we look and see how... many people do not merit a share in the Torah; they look at the Torah from very far away. And whoever does not look to us the way one should be in Torah, then they already say, "Look, he is far, he is a sinner"... and they push everyone away. And this is only the smallest bit of the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash: that they did not say the blessing over the Torah first, and there was baseless hatred, and the sin of lashon hara that was among them, and there are informers among them.

3:55 And so too then, when we wanted to go out of Egypt, then the Holy One, blessed be He, says: how will He redeem them, when there are informers among them who speak lashon hara? The holy Shelah explains that a person who speaks lashon hara about the Jewish people is as if he says to the Holy One, blessed be He, "Such and such are Your children"... Therefore Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz explains: know that a person who is a speaker of lashon hara is called an "impure dog".

4:24 He becomes a chariot for the kelipah, and all the kelipos dwell on him at the time he speaks evil about the Jewish people. Every word of disgrace, every evil word about the Jewish people — this dog, this kelipah, clothes itself in it. And therefore it says, "But against any of the children of Israel no dog shall whet its tongue." And every year on Tisha B'Av this kelipah of the dog awakens, which comes to remind us that our Beis HaMikdash was destroyed because of the sin of hatred, because of the sin of lashon hara.

4:58 And when we are the opposite — strengthening among ourselves in baseless love and not speaking lashon hara — we build the Beis HaMikdash. Therefore one must know that the Beis HaMikdash — it is each and every one of you. Each and every one of you is the Beis HaMikdash; he is a small Beis HaMikdash. But the Beis HaMikdash — it is us. The Holy One, blessed be He, destroyed His house in order to leave us.

5:26 And when the Shechinah went out of the Beis HaMikdash, she would say, "Farewell, My house; farewell, My palace." And so she parted, and kissed all the walls of the Beis HaMikdash, the Holy of Holies, and went up, higher and higher. And only when Mashiach comes and when the geulah comes will we see all of this return to its place. But the Holy One, blessed be He, chose to destroy His house, when in fact this house was the connection between us, so that we could see this connection throughout all the generations.

6:00 When the Jewish people went out of Egypt... We wanted to know whether to go make war or not — King David would ask through the "Urim and Tumim".. Since then there are no more Urim and Tumim, and there are no kohanim, and there is no Beis HaMikdash and there are no offerings. So the distance is so, so great. And the connection that joined us to see the Hashgachah and the revelation of G-dliness — that was the Beis HaMikdash. On the day it was destroyed, we need to understand that the place that united us was destroyed.

6:29 It would unite all of us, the Jewish people, all the peoples, all the created beings. Even to the nations of the world the Beis HaMikdash was of benefit. If they knew the greatness of the Beis HaMikdash, they would go themselves, go and build it, the House of Hashem. How great is the House of Hashem. And so, when we fast on Tisha B'Av, we need to understand that the fast and the afflictions are for how we did not stop in time and did not listen to Yirmiyahu the prophet.

7:09 King Yeshayahu, before he passed away, murmured and said, "Hashem is righteous, for I have rebelled against His word." And then Yirmiyahu lamented over him, "The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Hashem." So he said about Yeshayahu, whose body they made like a sieve. They shot three hundred arrows at him — that is an exaggeration — but they made him like a sieve. And he was the anointed of Hashem. But what was his sin?

7:34 He had no sin at all; he was clear and holy and pure and clean. But if he had lent an ear to Yirmiyahu and had taken counsel with Yirmiyahu, he would understand things differently, he would have seen that Yirmiyahu was right, he would have prevented many of the troubles and calamities from coming, and the war from dragging on for nothing.

7:58 But if he had paid attention, he would have listened to Yirmiyahu. His whole sin and his whole transgression was only not lending an ear to Yirmiyahu. And over the years, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent prophets time after time. They gave us a message, they gave us prophecies, they warned us, they saved us.

8:22 And the most important thing they taught us, what the holy Torah says: "Love your fellow as yourself"; what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash. This Beis HaMikdash that was destroyed — for this sin of baseless hatred and for lashon hara. Each one must always remember: when you speak lashon hara about your neighbor, about your friend, about the farthest of the far, even about the lightest of the light, when you speak about him, picture the Beis HaMikdash destroyed, and picture how you are adding fire and making it burn more.

9:04 And then the Holy One, blessed be He, says: is this how you speak about My son? Is this how you speak about My people? You are not of My people, you are not My son, if you speak evil about My people... What happened to the prophets who spoke lashon hara? What happened to Yeshayahu, who said, "I dwell among a people of impure lips"? Yeshayahu said this.

9:28 So we need to understand that there is a line. The Beis HaMikdash that was destroyed comes to tell us: a red line. We have already crossed all the lines. We permit ourselves to speak such and such and such about the whole world. What is the permission for this? There is no permission for this at all. We are not fasting over what once was, over history. We are fasting over now, because now it is not built.

9:54 So it is as if it was destroyed in his days. Why does the Holy One, blessed be He, not want to come and dwell with us? Why — because we are not Torah scholars in this generation? Is that why He does not build the Beis HaMikdash, because we are not wise and understanding enough? Certainly not. Because we are not holy and pure enough? Also not. Because maybe we do not have ruach hakodesh?

10:18 Also not. Rather, what is the reason He does not build the Beis HaMikdash? Because of the baseless hatred there is among us, because of the lashon hara there is among us, because of a person who gains honor from the disgrace of his fellow. He wants to disgrace the other, and by disgracing him, he gains honor and he will rise up. And how many quarrels come about because of this, between people and between business people, and quarrels, that they only want to disgrace the other.

10:47 And know a simple thing, this is guaranteed: it will never be. A person who tries to win by the power of the tongue, by the power of his mouth, and thinks that they will advance him in his livelihood, he thinks he will advance in his job if he speaks and goes about as a talebearer; he thinks that if he will advance another child in the Talmud Torah and he will hurt the other child; he thinks that if he will disgrace the avreich in the kollel, so that it gives him more closeness to the head of the kollel — all these things in which a person uses the sin of lashon hara — time will pass, a year, two years, three, but the Holy One, blessed be He, will exact payment from him in the end,

11:23 because on the sin of lashon hara the Holy One, blessed be He, does not let go. He does not forgive it. And why does He not forgive it? Why does the Holy One, blessed be He, not let go of it? And why is the Holy One, blessed be He, so particular..? When a person speaks lashon hara, it is as if, Heaven forbid, he is speaking about Hashem, blessed be He. You are speaking about the Jewish people, you are speaking about the people of Hashem, you are speaking about the Holy One, blessed be He, you are speaking about the holy Torah.

11:50 And know that this is the root of all the troubles. All the troubles and all the calamities, all the worst things, in all the generations — it is all from the power of lashon hara. And if we will have holiness of speech and holiness of the mouth, never to speak evil, Heaven forbid, about any Jew, ever, and to know that among us, all these informers do not belong to the people of Hashem; they are not of us.

12:18 Anyone who has this sin in him and holds on to the sin of lashon hara is not of the Jewish people. And not to look for permissions, because there is no permission at all for lashon hara. Only a person who is expert in the book Chofetz Chaim by heart, thoroughly, word for word he knows the Chofetz Chaim by heart, and he has a great need, and after they see that same person who holds on to a dispute, who transgresses the prohibition "and he shall not be like Korach and his assembly", and this person causes disputes and disorder, and they warn him, and they see that he sins and causes others to sin, and he is a heretic and an apikores, and all this, and with all that, perhaps — even this needs consulting and taking counsel,

12:54 and asking a Torah scholar, and several Torah scholars, in order to look into how to keep that person away from the prohibition. And of course also not by way of disgrace and ruin and pain. All these things pain the Holy One, blessed be He; they pain Hashem, blessed be He, when they disgrace His people. Therefore this Beis HaMikdash that we pray for and weep over, and pray and ask Hashem that He build it — we can simply make this much easier: that we will build it.

13:30 If we change and we think differently, and we cause one more and one more to stop doing evil, to stop lashon hara, to stop baseless hatred, and to love the other, to be like Aharon, who goes and makes peace, to make peace, to go to one and say, "You know, he said about you that you are such and such, how he loves you and how he cares for you"; to go to the other: "You know, he spoke about you like this, for the good"; to make peace between them, and to keep neighbors from quarreling, to keep people at work from quarreling, avreichim in the kollel, that they should not quarrel; to prevent disputes, to keep the hatred from spreading, to stop this hatred, to stop, to put out the fire.

14:12 Because every time we encourage it.. or especially, Heaven forbid, a person who rejoices in evil — his root is not from the seed of Israel. The sign of the Jewish people: they are bashful, merciful and doers of kindness. Know that this is the most important thing; there is nothing greater than this. And this, in the simplest words to explain to you, is what the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash is.

14:41 To explain what the Beis HaMikdash is — it is impossible to explain. To come and say what was destroyed — this too is impossible to say. But at least one can see with the eyes what was destroyed. We see today with our eyes the hatred, the competition, that there is no truth. That if today we see someone who is all right, so, nu, there was a yeshiva boy who would drift away, drift away, drift away from the path; they see that he no longer manages to learn, and he does not manage to serve Hashem, then they already permit disgracing him, and they permit his blood, and they disgrace him, and they spill his blood.

15:22 Nu, so why not bring him close? Why not shine the Torah at his level? It is impossible to expect everyone today to be at the same level in intellect and learning and everything.. and that they have the same blaze for Hashem. But if he does not have it, then one needs to bring this blaze to him, to bring him close. What is written about Aharon? He loves the creatures and brings them close to Torah. Take the person who is far, bring him close to Torah, light up for him the sweetness of the Torah, bring its light, its sweetness, close to him.

15:54 But Heaven forbid, never disgrace any person who has drifted away from Hashem. Even a person who is the farthest of the far and the lightest of the light, who drifted away — one needs to shine the light of the Torah into him, and to shine the light of Hashem into him, so that he too merits to come close to Hashem, blessed be He. And know that these are the things "which a man shall do, and live by them". These are the things that whoever has them as the light of his eyes — these are the things he goes by.

16:21 He does not know how much these things are a precious light, a precious light, pure and shining, that lights up the person and brings him all the abundance. All the abundance from above flows from this. And this is more than holiness of the eyes, and more than holiness of the bris, and more than holiness of thought. And look at such a person who only thinks all the time about the eyes, about the eyes, and he is not careful with his mouth; he transgresses severe Torah prohibitions and speaks evil things about the Jewish people.

16:55 In the end, certainly, this person will not be a holy person. A holy person — first of all, it is holiness of the mouth. Guard your mouth from speaking, Heaven forbid, about a Jew; do not speak about the people of Hashem. Look what fear... to speak about the people of Hashem — who dares to speak about the people of Hashem? Here, this day has arrived, the day on which we come together and say what befell us: the sin of the selling of Yosef.

17:25 Those killed by the kingdom go and die for the sanctification of Hashem's Name, each one by a strange death. For what? Because of the sin of the selling of Yosef. And how did the sin of the selling of Yosef begin? From jealousy, from lashon hara, their evil report to their father. Here is the evil report — the evil report begins, the lashon hara begins. Here is the destruction — this is how it begins, and it goes on.

17:49 And the Holy One, blessed be He, strikes for this, even many generations. But He does not let it go. And therefore one must do very great teshuvah for this, and keep away from the prohibition. And of course to be careful.. If you know of masters of lashon hara, of people who are masters of lashon hara, who are talebearers, people who speak lashon hara — about them it is permitted to speak, them it is permitted to rebuke.

18:18 It is a mitzvah to publicize them, that they are talebearers, sinners, so that people keep away from them, so that they do not listen to them, because they multiply hatred and disputes in the Jewish people. But a person who, blessed is Hashem, is careful not to speak about any Jew, not to speak evil — just beware of talebearers. No matter what, one must always keep a person away from a prohibition.

18:42 "These are the things which a man shall do, and live by them." This is the building of the Beis HaMikdash; this is the Beis HaMikdash: to feel that you love the other the way you love your son, the way you love your brother, the way you love your father. This is one, this is the Beis HaMikdash, this is the holiness and the purity. What is holiness and purity? Only to feel in the mikveh that I am pure for myself?

19:08 Holiness and purity is all of us feeling one another. Look, Rabbi Shimon says, "one gathering, as one". If we will be united like this and think... that's it, the exile will end — ended, ended. We will not continue it any more. It depends on each one of us. This one will spread more love and more baseless love, and one more will go and spread more baseless love, and we will use the power of the pure Torah.

19:33 The holy Torah is pure, it is sweet, it is beautiful and shining. One needs to shine its sweetness. The Torah is not fear, it is not pain. The Torah is sweetness, it is light, it is good, it is joy, it is hope. One needs to let the world taste of it. And for this, the sweetness of the Torah is the good for the Jewish people. This is the caution to understand from this, that on Tisha B'Av the Beis HaMikdash was destroyed.

20:04 May it be His will that the Holy One, blessed be He, help us, that we merit that the House be built, that the Beis HaMikdash be built, that Hashem, blessed be He, have satisfaction, amen; that He put baseless love among us, that there be no lashon hara, that there be no disputes at all in the Jewish people, that there be satisfaction before Him, blessed be He, amen.

20:32 - (A question from the audience) A woman who did not fast — does she need to make Havdalah today? - Yes, certainly. - How? What, does she drink wine? - At the end of the Havdalah, yes. We make Havdalah according to the opinion of the Geonim. So the Shulchan Aruch ruled, on the night after Tisha B'Av. The Ramban says that there is no need to make Havdalah in such a case, where one is already not fasting.

20:57 The Manhig says, "to make Havdalah and give a child to drink". Rabbi Avraham ben Nasan (the Ramban). We all make it on the night after the fast, but one who is not fasting needs to make Havdalah, and may drink as usual, and he has no need to fast. Rabbi Shalom, do you want to read?