One of the few segments of Torah we are permitted to study on Tisha B’av is a section in the 5th chapter of Gittin. The Gemorah relays that in response to his several counts of violating the holiness of the Beis Hamikdash and explicitly challenging Hashem to a battle, Hashem plagued the Roman general Titus with a single gnat which entered through his nose and endlessly pecked at his brain for 7 years. One day Titus passed by a blacksmith at work banging away with his hammer. The Gemorah states that the noisy banging caused the gnat to stop pecking. Realizing this, Titus declared “So there’s a cure!” and for the next 30 days he had a noisy blacksmith follow him around everywhere he went banging his hammer so as to prevent the pecking.

Now, it is unclear from the Gemorah if Titus even realized that his one-of-a-kind extreme migraine was a heaven-sent punishment, but even if he did, his reaction to discovering the temporary noisy remedy is astounding, it sheds light on his overall defective perception of things. He was not at all in tune with the message Hashem was sending him, he did no introspection or teshuvah, all he focused on was his pain and his temporary relief, and he did not utilize either of those stages to read in to what was happening here and repent. After 7 years of nonstop anguish which began immediately following his blasphemous conduct, all he could say was “Aha, so I can stop this thing!”

As frum Jews and intelligent people, it behooves us to live in a state of alert, looking for and often even squinting to see the truth, to be aware of what Hashem wants from our lives and the messages that Hashem tries to send us. It is imperative that we wake up to detecting these things, and not be willing to live in denial or to constantly rationalize when faced with reality. Our connection with Hashem is the single most important thing in our lives, and we must focus on it, allowing nothing to disrupt or distract us from this most important goal. Living with this approach will undoubtedly lead to our final geulah.

Rabbi Noach E. Peled of Yeshivas Ohalei Yaakov