Larry Taylor stood on the platform and spoke loudly to the auction crowd. It had been his own idea to auction off goods and services, and it was going well. He was making lots of money for the synagogue's building fund.

"Oh, here's one that's really special. A 45-minute airplane tour in a small plane. See your house from the sky. I'll start the bidding with 100 dollars. Do I hear 150?" Larry saw a hand in the audience go up. "I have 150. Do I hear 200? Two hundred!" The bidding increased steadily until it reached 300 dollars.

Larry was surprised when he suddenly heard a familiar voice that until now had not entered a bid. "Three-fifty!" Nobody else bid higher, so Larry called out. "Going once? Going twice? Sold to my son Jason for 350 dollars!"

After the auction, Larry said to his son, "I never knew you wanted the airplane prize." He chuckled. "If I did, I would have made the bidding even higher!"

"Actually, Dad, it's your birthday present. I figured that you, me, Mom and Charice can go."

Larry was surprised, then smiled with pleasure. He had a good son, all right. "You know, I always wanted to see our house from the air. Elaine will be so thrilled."

Larry came home with the same broad smile still on his face. He walked into the kitchen and told his wife, "Guess what, dear? Jay bought the airplane tour for the four of us."

"Oh, that's wonderful! When will it be?"

"Let's see... Sunday, August 6."

Elaine opened the kitchen cabinet and checked her calendar. "Did you say the sixth? Oh, I can't make it that day. I'll be at a meeting; we're planning a tour to Israel."

Larry squinted at the calendar. "Can't you change something? Maybe postpone the meeting?"

"I don't know, it's so hard to get everyone to agree on a date. I just don't see how I could change it. I really have to get moving to get this tour together in time for Batsheva's due date."

Larry tilted his head slightly and sighed. "What a pity. We'll just have to go without you."

                                                                      A TINY TASTE

The night before the plane tour, Larry's heart was beating so hard with anticipation that he had trouble concentrating on the movie the TV was showing.

Exactly that same moment, 5,000 miles away, his son Baruch joined the crowd slowly getting off the bus at the Western Wall. On Tisha B'Av, when most restaurants and bars are closed, the Kotel plaza was jammed.

Baruch took one look at the Wall as he walked up the steps to the Jewish Quarter. The people near the Western Wall were sitting on the floor reading from the book of Lamentations, but many other teenagers at the back of the plaza were socializing as if they were at a cocktail party. Well, he thought, at least they came to the Kotel on Tisha B'Av, even if they weren't showing proper respect. "And anyway," he thought, "do I know any better than they do what today is all about? I barely understand the Kinot; I don't really know what the Temple meant to our people. I sure don't feel much bereavement."

The custom at the yeshiva was for each student to give an introduction to one of the Kinot. Baruch prepared Kinah number six. When his turn came, he got up and said what he'd been thinking. "One of the problems we all have on a day like Tisha B'Av is that it's so hard to internalize what went on during the destruction of the Temples. It occurred to me that to get a taste of what it was like, while we're saying the Kinot each one of us could think about a tragic thing that happened in his own life. It would only be a tiny taste, but it would be something."

Late on Tisha B'Av afternoon, while Baruch was at the Western Wall, his father Larry, his brother Jason and his sister-in-law Charice drove out to tiny Bi-State Parks Airport. Larry felt like a millionaire going to his own private jet.

But then, seeing the sorry excuse for Air Force One that awaited him, his dreams shattered. The single-propeller plane was not much larger than his car. The door opened to reveal the stairs, and the three climbed in and took their seats.

"Hello," announced the pilot, "my name is Yarom and I am your pilot today. Our tour will be about 45 minutes and will be sure to fly over your neighborhood."

"Yarom?" asked Larry. "What kind of name is that?"

"It's a common Israeli name. I was a pilot in the Israeli air force before moving here six years ago."

"Is that so? My son Barry lives in Israel. Now he goes by the name of Baruch."

Jay insisted that Larry sit up front next to the pilot. Yarom started the engine and explained some of the instruments on the control panel, but with the noise from the propellers it was difficult to hear. The plane quickly picked up speed on the runway and took off. The passengers were surprised how bumpy this ride was compared to the jumbo jets they were used to. It was hard even to pay attention to the landscape under them.

A few minutes later, without warning, the plane began a downward spiral toward the ground. At first, Larry thought Yarom was showing off, but the look of terror on Yarom's face told Larry to fear the worst. All he could do was hold on and await the impact. The crash occurred not far from the spot they had taken off from seven minutes earlier.

                                                                         ASKING THE WHY?

Baruch was breaking his fast when the phone rang. Who would call so soon after Tisha B'Av had ended? He reached across the kitchen table and answered the phone on the second ring. "Hello."

There was a long delay. He wondered if anyone was there.

"Hello?" he said a second time.

Finally he heard a faint voice, so soft that he barely recognized it. "Barry?" His mother's voice was shaky, barely audible. Obviously something wasn't right.

"Mom? What is it? I can barely hear you."

"So terrible," she said in a whisper.

"What's terrible? What happened?" Baruch said, trying to hide the panic in his voice.

"Your father... brother... sister-in-law... in a plane crash."

"Hello? Mom? Are you there?!" Suddenly all Baruch heard was a dial tone. He dropped the phone and stared at the table for many long seconds. He felt his whole world crash; it was Tisha B'Av all over again.

His wife sat staring silently at him. Finally, when she thought he could hear her again, she simply asked, "What happened?"

Baruch drew a sobbing breath. "My mom just said that my father, brother, and sister-in-law were in a plane crash," he said as he looked at the floor, dazed.

What had his mother just said? Were they dead? How could that be?

His thoughts were interrupted when the phone rang again. "Mom?" Baruch said without even a Hello. The voice was slightly more audible this time. "They took a flight in a small plane, and it crashed. Nobody survived."

"They flew today? On Tisha B'Av?"

"Yes. It happened today. Barry, please come back to St. Louis right away."

Baruch managed somehow to get a seat on the very next flight. He arrived in time to help with the funeral arrangements.

One day after davening at the shiva house, Baruch asked Rabbi Pressman how to make sense of this tragedy.

Rabbi Pressman thought a moment and answered, "I can't tell you how to make sense of this. The tragedy is beyond words. But I can tell you that this is a taste of what Tisha B'Av is all about. You've had your own personal destruction, and you know how mourning feels. Perhaps you, with your heartfelt mourning, will be the one to bring the rebuilding of the Temple and the Jewish nation nearer."

Baruch was speechless. He remembered only too well what he himself had said at the yeshiva, just a few days ago. Now he would have to live up to his own words.

The next year, on Tisha B'Av morning, Baruch once again spoke about Kinah number six at his yeshiva. This time, however, he didn't need much preparation.

"Last year I suggested a way that everyone can internalize some of the meaning of Tisha B'Av. Well, for the rest of my life I have that lesson internalized. Tisha B'Av is my father's and my brother's yahrtzeit."

Reprinted  from "Monsey, Kiryat Sefer, and Beyond," by Zev Roth (Targum Press, 2002). The story is true; the names have been changed.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

On the 9th of Av we can understand the source of the senseless hatred that caused the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and dedicate ourselves to "senseless love."

Mourning is never easy, nor is it meant to be.

Recognizing that there is an empty space that can't be filled with distraction or replacement is one of life's most awesome experiences. There are losses that are so profound that words, no matter how carefully selected, are cheap and banal at best and patronizing at worst. When there is nothing to say, nothing is more eloquent than silence.

There are losses that not only defy any lexicon, but they are so enormous that even our minds cannot grasp them, and we find ourselves in emotional denial. When we realize that the life of any Holocaust survivor will have chapters that cannot even be digested let alone expressed, we can begin to understand the awesome silence of loss.

When we have no words, there is no way to transmit information. A tragic result is that the losses that are most profound are often the ones that are least understood, and most often forgotten. To our great-grandchildren, the Holocaust will be a dusty relic of antique memory, much as the Spanish Inquisition is to us.

We ourselves have never met anyone who even began to understand the enormity of the loss of the Temple -- the Bait HaMikdash. When it stood the Temple let us experience our spirituality directly. There was no external catalyst needed. God's presence could be felt in every stone, in every corner. We have been mourning the loss of this connection for thousands of years, and no longer have the words to convey its meaning. We go through the motions of mourning, but we need words to make it real.

Let us focus on what the loss of the Temple in Jerusalem two thousand years ago means to us in the new millennia.

THE TEMPLE AS "HOME"

The words Bait HaMikdash literally means "The Sanctified House." A house by definition is a place in which to find shelter, comfort and express our identity.

Without a house to call our own, we Jews are not comfortable in the world. We are not comfortable physically in the face of the ceaseless persecution from which our generation is relatively free. We are not psychologically comfortable unless we have spiritual means of being ourselves. Without it, our collective life is not only gray, but also painful.

Our need for expressing our most genuine selves is expressed at times in pursuit of justice. This is reflected in our social activism. Our collective need to give has been reflected in our caring and generosity. We are an extraordinarily interactive people, but we are still restless. The inner serenity that we seek eludes us; we are not quite at home.

The reason for this is that the world that fulfills us also distracts us from our search for our deepest sense of identity, and at time corrupts us. Other religions have recognized this and therefore they idealize "rising above" worldly desire. We recognize the power and beauty of the world as a catalyst for our capacity to live meaningfully, and we embrace it. But our two worlds, the outer one and the inner one, sometimes remain separate realms. In the Bait HaMikdash the spiritual world was not obscured by the physical -- the two worlds existed perfectly together through the grace of God's presence.

God Himself is referred to as "The Place" -- He is the place in which the world exists. The engaging nature of the world conceals God from us and we drown in the endless pursuit of what the world cannot give us. The exception to this was intense realization of God in the Temple, where the physical stones revealed more holiness than they concealed. It was a place of intense joy. There we were truly home -- we were ourselves, at our best.

THE TEMPLE AS A "BOND"

The Bait HaMikdash was the glue that held us together as a people. This resulted in our developing a collective identity. Not only were we "at home" but also we were one family with common goals and identity, while retaining our individual roles. The external differences between us faded leaving only our yearning for goodness.

When our ability to see the common bond of goodness that binds us together fades our focal point changes. Inexorably we focus on the limitations that separate us. Our sense of justice is degraded into ceaseless negativism and biting criticism. This eventually leads to senseless hatred.

Hatred is senseless when there is no desire to improve the relationship between oneself and another person. The fact that "they" are not you, is enough of a threat to first fear them, and then hate them. The more different they are, the greater the threat.

The Temple's destruction was caused by senseless hatred. The factionalism and xenophobic fear of others took us to a 2000-year journey towards rectification that is still incomplete. We are not at home. The world has not always been kind to us, and we have not always been kind to ourselves, or to each other. We are held together by the world's hatred rather than by love for each other.

While the physical return to Israel has given us for the first time in centuries a physical means of redefining our nationhood, is there anyone dishonest enough to say that we have successfully done so? Will we ever be truly home? Is there a way out?

Maimonides gives us a formula that has often been referred to as "senseless love." We must reach out to each other without "agendas" that corrupt into another form of acquisition. The process is transformative in the way that it changes our focus. This is what it consists of:

We are obligated to speak well of our fellow Jew. When someone displays his/her inner beauty let us share it with another. The act of speaking positively allies us to each other. It makes us aware that we are on one team.

We are obligated to care for each other's material needs. By being aware of how frail and needy our bodies make us, we become more forgiving and tolerant.

We are obligated to seek out situations that will bring status to others. We give them the precious gift of self-esteem and simultaneously remove ourselves from center stage.

This three-step process is so deceptively simple. Yet it can change us dramatically. It can change not only change our relationship to others, but it can lead us to rediscover ourselves. The endless mourning for our lost selves, and our tragic history will cease.

The 9th day of Av, which is the day in which we lost the First and Second Temple, is also the day in which the Inquisition edicts were signed over 500 years ago. It is also the fateful day in 1914 that started the First World War, which inevitably lead the world to the worst atrocity that mankind has ever experienced -- the Holocaust.