Rav Avigdor Miller on When to Weep

And the answer is as follows. עת לבכות – There’s a time to weep, ועת לשחוק – and there’s a time to laugh (Koheles 3:4).

Now, when he enumerates the various times in Koheles, he’s not saying something that we would know by ourselves. We know there’s a time to weep and there’s a time to laugh. But he means there’s certain opportunities, certain times of opportunity that Hashem gives us to gain perfection.

So we gain perfection in a time of joy; let’s say, Simchas Torah we gain perfection by joy and happiness of the Torah, in simchah shel mitzvah.

But there’s a time to weep and we gain perfection from that too. You have to weep when it happened in the past that some tzaddik passed away. A tzaddik passed away and people came to the levayah and they didn’t weep. Oh, that’s a lost opportunity! עת לבכות – That’s a time to weep! Shed tears! That’s a golden opportunity to weep for that tzaddik who has passed away.

Now, there’s a time to weep for the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. על בית ה׳ ועל עם ה׳ שנפלו בחרב. You have to weep. You have to weep endlessly. Now I can’t do it but I was told about one of the old Lubavitcher Rebbes – one of his disciples told me; this I heard fifty years ago. One of my teachers was a Lubavitcher talmid chacham; he came from Lubavitch and he told me that a grandfather of his rebbe on Tisha B’av used to sit all day and he shed one tear after the other. Now I cannot vouch for this story but that’s a tradition. He wept all day one tear after the other. Now we can’t do that because we’re not the chachamim to draw from this deep fountain of sorrow.

There is sorrow in the world for certain things and Hakadosh Baruch Hu weeps kaviyachol. He weeps for certain things. But He weeps bemestarim; He weeps in secret places when He weeps. But Hakadosh Baruch Hu openly smiles to the world and He gives us happiness and that’s what He wants us most of the time, that we should draw on this fountain of happiness. And that’s why He gave us festivals, chagim uzmanim lesason, times for joy and happiness. So there’s עת רקוד too; there’s a time to dance too. Kosher frum dancing is the will of Hashem. So on Simchas Torah don’t stand back and let other people dance. Get into it and raise up your feet on high and prance in honor of the Torah and rejoice on Simchas Torah.

So therefore all these great qualities have their places.

But suppose a person draws on his store of tears just because it’s raining. Like I told you many times, a poet saw that it was raining and he looked at the raindrops on the window pane so he wrote a sad ditty; ‘It looks like nature is weeping,’ he said. Oh, he’s drawing on that store of sadness in the most ridiculous manner. These are drops of joy, raindrops. Raindrops means good water to drink. Raindrops means wine. It means fruit. It means happiness. Water is the life of the world. So here this shoteh, this lunatic, draws from the wrong fountain. It’s like going to a place, into let’s say a drug store and you’re asking for the soda but he has another fountain where he turns on let’s say castor oil. They used to have a little castor oil barrel; they used to use it for constipation. You went to the drug store, “Give me a little cup of castor oil.”

So one customer asked for a soda and the other one asked for castor oil so he poured the castor oil in the soda man’s cup!

So castor oil is good when it’s necessary. Weeping is good for Tisha B’av. But all year round a man should weep? Hakadosh Baruch Hu says “Nothing doing!’ And therefore each fountain must be utilized properly and in the right proportions.

TAPE # 431 (October 1982)