Translation by Yehoshua Siskin
The following comes from Natanel Peretz from Ashdod:
"We need Tisha B'av if only for what happens at midday. On the saddest day of the Jewish year, midday is when everything flips. We get up from the floor and may even start cleaning the house. In the midst of the fast, the delightful smells of cooked dishes are being wafted between walls that only yesterday witnessed a meager pre-fast meal eaten on the floor. Suddenly the atmosphere is completely transformed and our inner voice changes its tune. Its a voice with a message of belief that has accompanied our little nation for thousands of years: everything will soon be better.
In other words, it can be said that midday on Tisha B'Av is the moment when a most dramatic change occurs in our souls. Miraculously, we are infused with the readiness to adopt an optimistic attitude all over again.
There are many things that we need at this time. A vaccine, a steady income, stability, unity. Chaos without precedent runs rampant in the world and it seems to be getting worse. But what is needed to overcome all of this is a most basic yet evasive capacity or frame of mind that is lacking: the capacity to believe yihyeh tov (it will be good).
So we are longing to practice ahavat hinam (love for its own sake) and to rebuild the Holy Temple, but before we do this we need the transformation that happens when everything flips at midday today."
