As we approach the consciousness of Tisha B’Av, we have to remember the astonishing language of Chazal: “Karai alai moed.” Tisha B’Av is called a moed. On the outside, it is the day of churban, concealment, kinos, and tears. But hidden within it is the secret light of geulah, the inner point of Yom Tov, the future revelation of the binyan Beis HaMikdash.
Rebbe Nachman, in Likutey Moharan רמ”ז – 247, gives us a short insight, almost only a remez. (And that itself is part of the remez. Reish-Mem-Zayin spells ReMeZ, a hint. We usually understand the phrase “dai l’chakima b’remiza” to mean that a wise person only needs a hint, and then he can figure out the rest. But there is a deeper meaning: for the chacham, the remez itself is enough. The hint does not merely point somewhere else. The hint contains the whole thing inside it.
This is the secret of tasting the future before it arrives. Like ta’am k’ikar, the taste already contains the essence. Like toameha chaim zachu, tasting Shabbos before Shabbos, drawing redemption before redemption. A remez is not just information.
As Rav Kook says, remez is re’eh mah zeh — “see what this is.” See the inner point that is already here.)
Rebbe Nachman brings from the Zohar HaKadosh that every teiku in Shas is mechusar tikkun. Something is missing from the word tikkun, and when the final nun is removed, it becomes teiku. A teiku is an unanswered question, a difficulty that cannot yet be resolved until Eliyahu HaNavi comes: Tishbi yavo veyetaretz kushyos ve’ibayos.
But this is not only about Gemara. Life itself is filled with teikus. There are questions we cannot answer, pains we cannot explain, contradictions we cannot settle. This is the reality of the chalal hapanui, the vacant space that Hashem created so that reality could unfold. There are places where Hashem is hidden so deeply that the mind cannot resolve the paradox. For Rebbe Nachman, the answer to these questions is not always an answer. Sometimes the answer is the silent song of emunah.
The missing nun of tikkun is the Sha’ar HaNun, the fiftieth gate of Binah. The first forty-nine gates are questions and answers. But the fiftieth gate is a question without an answer, because its answer belongs to the next world of consciousness. Its answer is emunah. To restore the nun to teiku does not mean that suddenly we understand everything. It means that we can live inside the unanswered question with the light of faith.
When the nun is whole, it is a nun peshuta, an elongated final nun, a straight line from above to below, like the Kav (line) of Ohr Ein Sof drawing Hashem’s light into the lowest places. But when that nun falls, it becomes bent and closed, a nun kefufa. Then teiku does not become tikkun. It becomes kinos.
That is the whole avodah of Tisha B’Av. The same letters can become either kinos or tikkun. If I meet the unanswered questions of life without emunah, they become lament, pain, bitterness, and endless lack. But if I attach the Sha’ar HaNun of emunah to the doubtful realm of teiku, then the very same questions become tikkun.
As my saba R’ Yisrael Rosenfeld, zechuso yagein aleinu, would say after Auschwitz in the name of the Chofetz Chaim: with emunah, there are no questions; without emunah, there are no answers.
Kinos are the language of what is missing. And in our time, kinos are not only the poems of Tisha B’Av. Almost every conversation holds a form of hidden lament. We speak from lack, from longing, from what has not yet been redeemed. But Rebbe Nachman teaches us that the purpose of kinos is not to remain in sadness. The kinos themselves can become the tikkun.
This is the secret of Tisha B’Av as a moed. We come to the day feeling like an unanswered question. Eicha. Where are you? How can the Beis HaMikdash be destroyed, and yet already hidden within the light of rebuilding? How can we be in galus and yet waiting for geulah?
The answer is the 516th tefillah. Moshe Rabbeinu davened 515 tefillos, the gematria of Va’eschanan and of shirah. But beyond all answered prayers is the tefillah of teiku, gematria 516: the prayer that does not demand an answer, because it has entered into the realm of pure emunah.
That is Rebbe Nachman’s final tefillah: Hashem yigaleinu, veyehapchu hakinos letikkun. May Hashem redeem us, transform our kinos into tikkun, sweeten every teiku, and reveal the true song of emunah, the shofar of Mashiach, the song of Moshe Rabbeinu, Mashiach ben Yosef, Mashiach ben David, and Eliyahu HaNavi, speedily in our days.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 89.
