Hello <i>chevra</i> and thank you for joining as we learn together. And welcome to part one of our series of the <i>Churban</i> as seen through the prism of the <i>Mishna</i>.

The destruction of the <i>Beis Hamikdash</i> changed our world. No question about it.

And the <i>chachamim</i> will discuss those changes in the <i>mishnayos</i> for sure. But before we ask what the destruction changed in the world or in the law in <i>halacha</i>, we have to begin with the more immediate question, which is the day itself and how a nation holds its grief.

How is it that we mourn the lack of a <i>Beis Hamikdash</i>? So here is how we should frame it in our minds.

Judaism does not let a catastrophe pass unmarked. But we reach for it in our oldest language of mourning, which is fasting, and it fixes that mourning into the calendar itself so that the loss returns to us every year at its appointed time and cannot fade.

And that's really what this part of the series is about. We're not yet up to the deep changes that the <i>Churban</i> brought about, but the human response to it.

How do we mourn, how do we mark, and how do we carry that national wound through time? And notice what the tradition insists on even here.

It refuses to let the grief become the whole story. In fact, as we will see, the very <i>mesechta</i> that gathers all the <i>mishnayos</i> about our fast days turns at its very close towards the most joyous day of the year, because even in mourning in our <i>mesorah</i> it's pointed at hope.

So as we learn this part of our <i>Mishna</i> series together, listen and hear carefully the people learning how to grieve a loss without being consumed by it. And with that, I wish you continuing <i>hatzlacha</i> in all of your learning.

Let's begin.