A close friend of mine once called just days before Tisha B’av and asked if I had an idea for a Tisha B’av presentation. “I want to do something different this time,” he said. “I’m looking for something uplifting.” I asked him what he had in mind so far.
“I’d love to stage a play,” he said, “depicting a day in the life of a young boy living in Yerushalayim when the Beis Hamikdash still stood.”
I was intrigued. “And what would that look like?”
“You know,” he replied, “the miracles that happened daily in the Beis Hamikdash—the smoke rising in a straight column, the fire from Heaven, the absence of flies despite all the korbanos. It would be amazing.”
I paused and asked him, “That’s beautiful, but what about the boy growing up in Haifa? Or Tzfat? Or Netanya? He never witnessed these miracles firsthand. How was his life different? What was he missing when the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed?”
He grew quiet.
As I thought to myself, I was reminded of a story that speaks to this question.
Rav Yisrael Salanter once visited a very wealthy family in London. This couple had been childless for many years, but after many tefillos and much pain, they were finally blessed with a son. Naturally, he was the center of their world, and he grew up surrounded by every luxury imaginable. Servants followed him wherever he went, and he never had to lift a finger. If he dropped something, someone was there to pick it up. If he needed anything, even to scratch an itch, it was done for him.
Rav Yisrael turned to the mother and asked, “Tell me something. If your son wants to take out a handkerchief and he accidentally puts his hand in the wrong pocket, what do you do to prevent that from happening?” The woman laughed. “Rabbi, come on! If it’s not in his right pocket, he’ll just check his left. No big deal!”
Later, Rav Yisrael shared this exchange with a close student, and he began to cry. “Rebbe, why are you crying?” the student asked.
Rav Yisrael replied by quoting a remarkable Gemara (Arachin 16b). The Gemara asks, “How far do yissurim, suffering, extend?” And it proceeds to offer examples seemingly trivial: buying new clothes that don’t fit properly; being served a hot drink instead of a cold one; putting on your shirt backwards. Even something as minor as reaching into your pocket for a dime and accidentally pulling out a quarter, which requires the extra effort to reach back in again. That, says the Gemara, qualifies as yissurim.
Why?
Because Hakadosh Baruch Hu, in His infinite mercy, uses even these tiny inconveniences to atone for our misdeeds in this world, so we need not face punishment in the World to Come.
Rav Yisrael continued. “Look at the world Hashem created. It’s a perfect world. A world where, in theory, every coin should be right where you placed it. Why should anyone have to reach into their pocket twice? Why should milk spoil? Why should children ever suffer, or illness ever exist?”
And the answer is: They shouldn’t.
In a world untouched by sin, in a world fully aligned with Hashem’s will, there would be no cancer, no tragedy, no war, no confusion. No pain.
That is the world Hashem originally created.
But we’ve strayed from that world. Through our actions, we’ve brought distortion, suffering, and chaos into existence. And Hashem, in His kindness, uses even the smallest inconveniences as part of a cosmic accounting.
But when Mashiach comes, when the Beis Hamikdash is rebuilt, all of that ends.
We’ll once again taste the perfection of a world in sync with its Creator. No more spoiled milk. No more reaching into the wrong pocket. Every detail will be in harmony.
That, I told my friend, is what we’re missing. Not just the miracles of the Bes Hamikdash, but the wholeness of the world that it anchored and a world where Hashem’s presence was manifest to perfection.
And that’s what we yearn for. Not just a Temple made of stone, but the restoration of a G-dly world made whole.
