(The Real Audio file may take a few minutes to load; the shiur begins at the 5 min. mark, after an introduction. There are many Hebrew words, and allusions to Jewish concepts which may be obscure to someone unfamiliar with the tradition, but I think the concepts Rabbi Weinreb explicates are understandable to anyone.)

He uses images and allusions from Jewish texts to invert the historical fact of Tisha B'Av, in which a devouring imperialist entity cruelly attempts to obliterate a small nation, to compose a moral lesson in which the "enemy" is recast as a prophet calling out in vain, an ally of the inner soul, trying to pierce a "mechitza shel barzel," an "iron curtain."

Speaking about the power of kinot, Rabbi Weinreb says (33:00 mark) (somewhat paraphrased)

The metal wall is our own personal armor, and part of that armor is resistance to change, habit, enslavement to our past opinions, a false sense of security. . . . Ordinary words of prose bounce off our armor, but the poet uses words in ways we aren't used to, that might get behind our defenses. . . . We fail to recognize the tremedous poetry in our own tradition, of chazal, tanakh, the siddur, selichot . . . the ability to get over under through and around the iron wall.

(At the 43 min. mark, there are some interesting observations about Judaism's relationship to Christianity and Islam.)

The 19th century German poet Rainer Maria Rilke probably knew nothing about Tisha B'Av, but this poem uses the same metaphor that Rabbi Weinreb develops in his shiur: the necessity of a force which the conscious mind can only experience as an "enemy," to penetrate the defenses we use against our deepest despair and the willingness to change:

All of you undisturbed cities, haven't you ever longed for the enemy?
I'd like to see you besieged by him
for ten endless and ground-shaking years.

Until you were desperate and mad with suffering;
finally in hunger you would feel his weight.
He lies outside the walls like a countryside.
And he knows very well how to endure
longer than the ones he comes to visit.

Climb up on your roofs and look out:
his camp is there, and his morale doesn't falter,
and his numbers do not decrease; he will not grow weaker,
and he sends no one into the city to threaten
or promise, and no one to negotiate.

He is the one who breaks down the walls,
and when he works, he works in silence.

(Translation by Robert Bly; the original is here)

Bly likens this poem to the psycho-spiritual import of the fairy tale of "Sleeping Beauty."

. . . this situation of invisible siege, where the woman - and perhaps the soul - sleeps undisturbed inside a wall of thorns. No one can get through. In the fairy tale, the "man" or the "suitor" is the awakening force, who fails again and again; the Sufis interpret the last suitor as the spiritual teacher or master. in Rilke's poem the awakening force is a massive energy out there. . . . When I translated the last few lines, I felt frightened; the lines imply that the awakening force will not make the first move; perhaps no one will come to help, no parents, no gurus, no Christ.

The "enemy" is longed for, because the iron mechitza - by definition - we cannot break ourselves from the inside. Only something much stronger than ourselves can accomplish this, and to our egos, with their rampant need to control, such a force can only be seen as an enemy. To the extent that we are aware of our longing for such an overpowerment, it is not the ego that longs. And mostly we are totally unaware of the extent of our isolation, our soul's hunger for salvation from its loneliness. And the unbearable catastrophe for our soul is when the enemy never arrives.

Later (at the 1:13 mark), on his theme of slow persistent growth, Rabbi Weinreb makes a strong statement in favor of the mundane middle, in contrast to the attractions of the heroic extreme. A person should not be measured by a few elevated moments; on the contrary, the truly heroic individual is one who can withstand the daily tests of life, who does "what must be done" consistently.

This theme is stated in almost the same words by a poem I have loved for years, by Jack Gilbert, who - in an era which privileges novelty and spontaneous desire - understands the necessity of the consistent and persistent accumulations of small righteous actions which add up to an honorable life:

The Abnormal is Not Courage, by Jack Gilbert

The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.
It was impossib1e, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

Gilbert has written other poems contrasting the seemingly uneventful, even boring, elements of daily life to the compelling melodrama of heroism. A few examples: here and here and here and here.

(Cross-posted at Kesher Talk.)