The following is a fascinating historical fact. During the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, three hundred thousand Jews left Spain on Tishah B’Av in 1492. At the time, there was a psak issued by the gedolei Yisrael, among them the Abarbanel. The ruling issued — a hora’as sha’ah for that specific time and place — that they should be accompanied on their journey by orchestral music. They left Spain amidst music and song. On Tishah B’Av, the musicians played — something we normally regard as forbidden.
There were a few reasons for this interesting ruling.
The rabbanim sought to boost the spirits of the exiled multitudes who were forced to abandon their homes. They wanted to encourage them, to infuse them with hope and bitachon that Hashem was with them.
Furthermore, they were employing music as a way of expressing gratitude to Hashem that they had withstood the nisayon and did not convert to Christianity. They were zocheh to be mekadesh Sheim Shamayim, to sanctify God’s Name, and that was a cause for celebration.
Rav Eliyahu Ki Tov tells us another reason for the music that filled the air as the Jews were expelled from Spain. There is a fundamental lesson being taught by this seemingly incongruous act. The rabbanim wanted Klal Yisrael to learn that we never cry when we leave galus. We shed tears only when we leave Yerushalayim. Therefore, they were directed to leave Spain not with tears, but with music and song.
It was a tragedy, a devastating event. Over three hundred thousand Jews were left homeless, evicted from a country where they had flourished for centuries.
But they had never truly belonged in Spain. They were not really leaving their homes. They were leaving a place of exile, a stopping place along the long road of galus. A Jew does not cry when he leaves a place of exile. Because we don’t belong there.
Rav Yechiel Halperin records the following startling comment in his entry for the year 1620. In writing about the suffering at the hands of the Crusades, the author of the Sma (Sefer Me’iros Einayim) was asked why the community of Worms (Vermaiza) suffered far more persecution, pogroms, and gezeiros ra’os, evil decrees and edicts, during the times of the Crusades than any other kehillah.
The Sma writes that the kehillah of Vermaiza was founded by Jewish exiles who made their way to Germany following the destruction of the First Beis HaMikdash. After seventy years of exile, many Jews returned from Babylon to Eretz Yisrael, but none returned from Worms.
The community in Yerushalayim wrote to the people of Worms, urging them to join them in their new homes, in their settlement in Yerushalayim. The complacent Jews of Worms dismissed the invitation. They responded, “You stay where you are, in the great Yerushalayim, and we will stay where we are, in the little Yerushalayim.”
They were too comfortable in galus. That is why they suffered more devastation than the rest of European Jewry.
Rav Avraham Saba, one of the great Kadmonim, was one of the leaders among the gerushei Sefarad and author of the classic work on Chumash, Tzror HaMor. He was similarly asked why the Jews of Spain suffered so much. What was the reason they suffered such a terrible fate? The Tzror Hamor answered, “It was their arrogance. They were under the illusion that they were in their own land, and they constructed homes that were grand and ostentatious — like palaces.”
The lesson is an obvious one. We are in galus. We are not yet home. And we must not feel comfortable until Hashem enables us all to return, together, to the Holy Land. (R’ Doniel Glatstein shlita)
