Rav Lach sheves b’eimek ha’bacha, v’Hu yachmol alayich chemlah.
Too long have you dwelled in the valley of weeping; He will shower compassion upon you.
During the weekdays, Klal Yisrael dwells in the eimek ha’bacha, valley of tears. We are in galus, exile, without our Bais HaMikdash; our place in the status of the world’s nations is far from the top. Klal Yisrael cries out, “Hashem, shoin genuck! It is enough already!” We have no greater pain than the pain of watching how the low, base nations of the world treat us, Hashem’s emissaries, as trash. What we seem to often forget is that our pain and sorrow is sustained by the Shechinah when He sees the degradation to which we are subjected. We cry out to Him: “Hashem, we know that You feel our sorrow, and we feel Yours. We cry out in repentance with our eyes Heavenward hoping, yearning, begging for it to stop, so that the glory of Torah, the pride of Klal Yisrael, will return. This occurs on Shabbos, an island in time when, for twenty-five hours, we ignore the world and inhale the pleasant fragrance of Olam Habba. We hope that He will take pity on us.
