Your coworker has just met with the new boss. “He’s got a bad attitude,” he tells you. “He’s trying to show everyone who’s in charge.” “Really? That was your impression?” you respond. You had a productive meeting with him the day before, and while you didn’t pick up vibes of warmth and friendliness, you certainly didn’t see a bad attitude. “To me he seemed a good guy who’s nervous about succeeding,” you add. “He knows he’s our third managing director in two years.”
This conversation illustrates why our generation has not rebuilt the Beis HaMikdash, and therefore, according to Chazal, we share responsibility for its destruction. It reflects the sin underlying the Churban—the sin of the Meraglim, the spies who gave a negative report about Eretz Yisrael and turned Tishah B’Av into a “day of weeping.” The nature of their error is alluded to in Eichah, where the alphabetical order of the verses is reversed in one place; the pasuk beginning with the letter pei precedes the one beginning with the letter ayin. This is because their mouths (peh) preceded their eyes (ayin). The Midrash explains that they spoke before they looked carefully enough to see the kedushah of the land.
This is what we do whenever we react negatively to a person’s outer layer and fail to search for the kedushah that resides within. We see “bad attitude” when a more penetrating look would reveal a good person under stress. When we train ourselves to look deeper and perceive the tzelem Elokim in each person, loshon hora and machlokes evaporate, along with our perpetuation of the Churban. We start rebuilding.
