Every year, the same line: the Second Temple fell for baseless hatred, so fix the hatred and the redemption comes. But baseless hatred was the sin of the second churban — and the second Temple was never a real redemption to begin with.
The teshuva we owe is for a First Temple sin we aren't actively committing — idolatry. But what teshuva could possibly apply to a sin nobody's really doing anymore?
Here's the answer: the Men of the Great Assembly didn't cure the urge for idolatry — they caged it. And the same faculty that once burned for false gods was the faculty that burned, period. The God-wired capacity behind idolatry and the God-wired capacity behind prophecy were never two different things. Cut one, you cut the other. What was left standing after that exorcism was a people that couldn't rage for the wrong god anymore — and also couldn't rage for the real One. Empty. Running on nothing.
That emptiness curdles into rivalry, because someone has to sit at the top of the value-hierarchy, and if it isn't da'as Hashem, it's the ego. Baseless hatred is not a failure of niceness, but the predictable output of a hollow nation with nothing left to be passionate about except itself.
So the teshuva Tisha B'Av actually demands isn't nicer people. It's un-hollow ones. Not baseless love — there's no such thing; love without a cause is a category error, not a virtue — but a people who burn for something real again.
Mashiach isn't waiting on us to like each other more. He's waiting on us to want Hashem again.
Unapologetics · Jul 23, 2026
There's No Such Thing as Baseless Love: The Real Teshuva Tisha B'Av Demands
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