Editorial: On Recapturing our Lost Glory

As we reach the waning hours of this day of mourning, a Tisha b’Av like we have not had in a very, very long time, we reflect together. We reflect on Klal Yisroel’s lost beauty and glory; on how our closeness to Hashem, which was so starkly felt in the Beis Hamikdosh, recedes from us with every passing year. 

On one hand, when we look around our beautiful community of Boro Park, we see Yiddishkeit blooming and growing; we see abundant shuls, yeshivos; we behold chessed organizations where truly selfless chessed is done on an incredible scale—truly a manifestation of the beauty and the glory of the Jewish soul, a nation that refuses to be denigrated. 

Yet at the same time, we are witness, time and again, to events in which it becomes clear that the outside world does not view us as possessed of beauty and glory; that the bloom has, chas v’shalom fallen off of Torah Jewry’s rose…

When politicians single us out during measles and corona outbreaks, in a fashion eerily evocative of sentiments that we have heard in 1930’s Germany… that is galus, that is lost glory. When forces attack our chinuch system, and manage to co-opt the government into threatening that system as it is currently constituted (with a stronger emphasis and priority on Torah learning)... that is an outgrowth of lost glory. 

We need Moshiach, and we desperately need an end to this bitter galus whose suffering only seems to get worse—especially in recent years. 

May we suggest that we need to do more to earn back the glory and the beauty of our Yiddishkeit. 

It is really a personal matter for each and every individual to ask themselves, and not something that is universal; everyone must rectify the things that they know deep in their own hearts to need rectification. But there is clearly something amiss… it seems that the foundations, beneath the surface, are not as they should be. 

And in order for us to retain our identity in the bitter galus, so that we earn our way out of here, these foundations of true yiras Shomayim and true ahavas chinam, must be shored up. 

In order for our thriving world of Yiddishkeit all around us to be truly stable and strong for the future, these foundations of true dedication to carrying out Hashem’s mitzvos with emunah and Yiras Shomayim, and to treat our fellow Yid with true unconditional love, must be undergirded. 

May we each reflect inwardly upon what we have lost, and may this bring us to merit the true, ultimate, and everlasting glory.