Tell me again why the Batei haMiqdash were destroyed. I have a thought...

17 Elul 5778

Stones from the Western Wall thrown down by Roman soldiers in 70 CE - Wikipedia

 
Tell me again: Why were the Batei haMiqdash (Holy Temples) destroyed?

The rabbis tell us that the second one was burned down because of the hatred of one Jew for the next (sinath hinam - a very difficult phrase to translate properly). We all learn this; we are also taught that if we would love our fellow Jews unconditionally that it would solve the problem.

But we must not forget why the first one was destroyed: Idol worship, sesual immorality, and murder, known as the "three cardinal sins." We haven't stopped facing these issues, either. Why, at the beginning of August 2018 Jerusalem saw a "Pride Parade" that would have made the sinners of olden times green with envy - and with an air of righteousness to boot.

At least one person has written about it (I appreciate this so much, you don't know...). Because we're so focused on the fact that the second Temple was built so quickly, compared to our current situation where rebuilding is impossible, we think that the gratuitous hatred is so much worse than the three sins for which the sentence is capital punishment in the Torah!

Just a suggestion: we need to go one more step: It may not be a question of choosing which reasons are worse, but of combining them both. How do we know we're done dealing with the first set of sins? We still face them all the time, not always knowing what we are looking at, due to the changing "mores" around us. How many of us have understood that homosesuality comes under "sesual immorality"? So, I don't think the "three cardinal sins" are off the table just now.

The question really is: How can we act so that we nullify both sets of reasons simultaneously? Can we love every Jew AND acknowledge how the three cardinal sins relate to the need for teshuva on the part of Jewish violators, and their acceptance as human beings, at the same time so that the People as a whole is guilty on neither of these counts?

We all seem to be on one side or the other and we cannot address one half of the equation without addressing the other. I visualize them as a see-saw:

Sinath hinam-------------|-------------murder, idolatry and immorality

I believe this is an important question because the answer may lead us in a major way to the welcoming of Go'el Zedek Yisrael.


Here's an interesting article concerning the root of homosesuality (Hidabroot in English!).

Comments are welcome below. None of us can do this by ourselves!

Thank you in advance.