Rav Leib Minzburg (Ben Melech on Yemei Bein HaMetzarim, p. 11ff) suggests an additional understanding of this festival-like quality of the time “between the straits.” Both the Seventeenth of Tammuz and Tishah B’Av were originally designated to be times of joy - the former as the day that our ancestors were to receive the First Tablets, and the latter as the day they were to contemplate the reports of the spies encouraging them with reports about the goodness of the land to which they were returning.
Because of our sins, however, we transformed them from days of joy into days of mourning – days on which we caused the Tablets to be shattered and on which we shed tears of no substance, rejecting the land of our fathers.
When our repentance and atonement are complete, these times will revert to being the times of joy they were always meant to be, when the shattered and scattered fragments of our people are made whole again in our Holy Land and the tears are dried from upon every face.
Reprinted from the Parshas Devorim 5783 edition of At the ArtScroll Shabbos Table. Excerpted from the Kleinman Edition Midrash Rabbah – Eichah.
