Weeping relates to the essence of revealing a secret that is hidden in the future. The Zohar explains that when Joseph kissed all his brothers and wept, he was crying over the destruction and exile of their descendants, the Ten Tribes. Similarly, when Joseph and Benjamin wept on each other’s necks, Joseph wept for the two Temples that were destined to be built and later destroyed in Benjamin’s land-inheritance. Benjamin also wept for the Shiloh Tabernacle that would be erected in Joseph’s territory and would be destroyed.
Similarly, the Zohar relates that when Rabbi Akiva heard the hidden secrets of the Song of Songs from his teacher, Rabbi Eliezer the Great, “his eyes poured with water.” Such weeping results from the revelation of one’s soul-root; the “singular” level of the soul, where the deepest Torah secrets are hidden. When Jeremiah describes the final redemption, we find a similar type of weeping:
Behold, I bring them from the northern land and gather them from the loins of the earth; among them are the blind and the lame, the pregnant [woman] together with the birthing [woman]; a great company, together they shall return here. They will come weeping, and with supplications I will lead them, I will conduct them along rivers of water, upon a straight road upon which they will not stumble; for I have become a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn.
The tears of the future redemption are the tears of the reunion between the Jewish people and their Father in Heaven, tears of intimacy and arousal of great compassion, influential tears, tears of the revelation of the innermost secrets.
(from The Inner Dimension, based on a class given on 30th of Kislev 5772)
