06 Aug THE THING I FEAR MOST IS FEAR WE ARE LIVING IN AN AGE OF EMPOWERMENT AND HEALING

Vain Tears
At the surface, it
seems like a very unfair
response, recorded in
the Talmud:
The Torah—in
Numbers and again in
this week’s portion of Devarim—relates how
when the twelve spies returned from scouting
the Land of Canaan they frightened the
Israelites from entering it.
This is what the spies said:
We came to the land that you have sent us,
and indeed, it flows with milk and honey; this
is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in
the land are strong, and the cities are fortified
and very great; we also saw giants there. The
Amalekites dwell in the Negev, the Hittites,
the Jebusites, and the Emorites in the hills,
and the Canaanites at the sea and on the banks
of the Jordan… We cannot go up against these
people, for they are mightier than we…
They spread a negative report about the land
which they had scouted, telling the children of
Israel, ‘The land we passed through to explore
is a land that consumes its inhabitants, and all
the people we saw in it are men of stature.
There we saw the giants, the sons of Anak,
descended from the giants. In our eyes, we
seemed like grasshoppers, and so we were in
their eyes.’
As a result of this, the Torah relates:
The entire community raised their voices and
shouted, and the people wept on that night. All
the children of Israel complained against
Moses and Aaron, and the entire congregation
said, “If only we had died in the land of Egypt,
or if only we had died in this desert. Why does
the Lord bring us to this land to fall by the
sword; our wives and children will be as
spoils. Is it not better for us to return to
Egypt?”
Comes the Talmud and teaches us that the
spies, who were sent on the 29th day of Sivan,
returned after forty days on the 8th of Av. The
mass weeping of the entire nation thus
occurred on the night of the 9th of Av. G-d
declared to them, “You wept in vain, I will
establish this day as a time of weeping for all
generations.”
Indeed, that day—the 9th of Av—has
become a day of tears and grief, for the terrible
calamities that occurred on this day throughout
our history. Jews have been crying on this day
since.
Yet, G-d’s response seems amiss and unfair.
Just because someone cries in vain, is it a
reason to penalize them and make them cry in
earnest over real pain for generations to come?
The act is incommensurate with the
punishment. Just because someone weeps
over delusional misery, is it a reason to “take
revenge” and make them suffer real misery
which would illicit real tears? What is the
connection between the two? How could
“vain tears” alone warrant such a dramatic

punishment—that for all generations this
would become a night of tears and grief?
The answer of course is that this was not a
punishment. G-d was stating a prediction and
a natural one. He was attempting to explain to
the people the tragic ramifications of their
behavior. Your crying tonight in vain is what
will cause you to cry for generations. Why?
Helplessness
Why were the Jews weeping that night?
Because they saw a hopeless and doomed
future for themselves and their children. They
have been through so much; they have finally
made it out of Egypt, only to meet their cruel
deaths upon entering Canaan.
Yet there is something strange here. In all of
history, it would be difficult to find a
generation whose lives were more saturated
with miracles than the generation which left
Egypt. Egypt, the most powerful nation on
earth at the time, was forced to free them from
slavery when “the mighty hand” of G-d
inflicted ten supernatural plagues. When
Pharaoh’s armies pursued them, the sea split
to let them pass and then drowned their
pursuers. In the desert, miracles were the stuff
of their daily lives: manna from heaven was
their daily bread, “Miriam’s well” (a
miraculous stone that traveled along with the
Israelite camp) provided them with water, and
“clouds of glory” sheltered them from the
desert heat and cold, kept them clothed and
shod, destroyed the snakes and scorpions in
their path, and flattened the terrain before
them to ease their way. Above all of this, this
nation witnessed—the only time in history—
the revelation of G-d Himself at Mt. Sinai
sharing with them the ultimate truth of
existence.
For these people to doubt G-d’s ability to
conquer the “mighty inhabitants” of Canaan
seems nothing less than ludicrous. Yet this
very people embraced the notion, “We cannot
go up against these people, for they are
mightier than we” and even He!
The Power of Fear
This is the disturbing power of fear. It is not
always rational. Sometimes, it proves more
powerful than all of your previous success
stories. The fear may be baseless from a
rational and empirical point of view, yet this
does not prevent fear from paralyzing you and
freezing you in your tracks. Roosevelt was
quite correct in his quip that “we have nothing
to fear but fear itself.”
This is what happened to our people on that
fateful night of the ninth of Av. Despite all
rational and compelling evidence that they
can do it; despite the fact that G-d—the
singular master of the world—has instructed
them to do it, they were overtaken by titanic
fear. They concluded that their future was
bleak and cruel. They were powerless. They
could do nothing but weep.
Their weeping in vain on that night was not
the reason for the punishment; it was the

factor that revealed what might come in the
future. They wept in vain because they did not
appreciate that G-d was with them and He has
given them the power to confront their
challenges and overcome their obstacles.
When you lose sight of your inner emotional
and spiritual power, you indeed become a
victim to forces and people beyond your
control. And then you cry for real.
The Experiment
Psychology Today published some time ago
an experiment conducted by a Harvard
psychologist named Dr. Robert Rosenthal on
a group of students and teachers living in
Jerusalem. The experiment went as follows: a
group of physical education teachers and
students were randomly chosen and randomly
divided into three groups.
In the first group, the teachers were told that
previous testing indicated that all the students
had an average ability in athletics and an
average potential. The teachers were told:
“Go and train them!”
The second group of teachers was told that
students in their group, based on previous
testing, exhibited an unusually high potential
for excellence in athletic… “Go and train
them!”
And the third group of teachers was told that
their group of students had exhibited, based
on previous testing, an extremely low potential
for athletic training. “Now go and train them!”
The teachers were given several weeks to
work with and interact with their student
athletes. At the end of the training period, the
results were the same for male and female
students, and for male and female teachers.
All of those students who had been randomly
identified as being rather average in ability
performed about average on the tests. All of
those students who were randomly identified
as being above average, performed above
average. All those students who were
randomly identified as below the average,
performed below the average by a considerable
margin. The results of the test indicated that
what the teachers thought their students’
ability was, and what the students themselves
thought their ability was, went a long way
toward deciding just how well they performed
as athletes.
“Psychology Today” took special note of this
experiment because it confirmed in the
physical arena what psychologists had long
claimed to be true in the educational and

emotional arena: The concept of the self-
fulfilling prophecy. Students in classrooms,

workers in shops, and patients in therapy, all
do better when the person in charge expects
them to do well, when they themselves expect
to do well. One’s own self-esteem, one’s own
self-image, what someone thinks of
themselves and thinks himself capable of, is
an extremely crucial factor in deciding what
can be, of what one is to make of himself or
herself, and the way we see ourselves plays an
important role in the way others see us as
well.
The Circus
Did you ever go to the circus? Remember
those huge elephants that weighed several
tons and were held in place by a small chain
wrapped around one of their huge legs, and
held to the ground by a small wooden stake? If
those huge elephants wanted to, they could
walk right through those small chains and that
small wooden stake like a hot knife going
through butter. But they don’t. Why is that?
When they were little baby elephants, they
were chained down by those same small
chains and the small wooden stakes. But to
them, as babies, they couldn’t move. They
tried and tried and tried again and could not
release themselves from those chains and
stakes. And then, an interesting thing happens.
They stop trying. They gave up. They
developed a belief system.
Now, as adult elephants, they don’t try
because they are programmed to believe that
their efforts would be useless – in vain. As
huge, adult elephants, they don’t even try.
They’re held in prison by their beliefs.
The same is true with so many of us. The
spies declared: “We were like grasshoppers in
our own eyes, and so were we in their eyes.”
As a result, the nation wept in vain. The spies
caused the Jews to perceive themselves as
hopeless, small, and futile “grasshoppers.”
Thus they also came to believe that everyone
looks at them as mere grasshoppers. When
you think you are weak, you indeed become
weak, and you believe that everyone considers
you the same.
Part of leaving exile and being worthy of
redemption is that we must stand firm, united,
and filled with resolve. We must never
capitulate. As individuals and as a community,
we must dismiss the sense of powerlessness.
We can and will rid ourselves, our families,
and our communities of toxicity, abuse,
falsehood, and deception. We can heal our
world from confusion and deception. Israel
can heal itself from fear and capitulation
inviting more terror. Every one of us, in our
own lives, can confront our deepest skeletons
and work them through.
This is the age of healing. We ought to
remember that in every situation we are
empowered by G-d to create light out of
darkness and to continue our march to bring
healing and redemption to our world, with the
coming of Moshiach, so that this Tisha B’av is
transformed into a grand festival. Amen.