Devarim

Sefer Devarim  (the Parsha which always precedes Tisha B’Av), opens with Moshe rebuking ‎the Jewish people for their past sins. Moshe, knowing the spiritual challenges that the Jews would face upon entering the land, feared they would view these challenges complacently, confident in their ability to resist the influences of the Canaanite land. Therefore, he admonished them with their previous failings to warn them that they might fail again. Moshe intended that his admonition would awaken a spirit of vigilance & self-scrutiny that would protect them in the years ahead. 

However, the opening posuk doesn't seem to be saying anything more than the location where this took place. Rashi explains that each word is alluding to various incidents that took place over the years where the Jews had sinned. 

Reb Chaim Shmulevitz explains that the reason the Torah just alludes to these sins rather than saying them explicitly is to teach us that, even when one has a legitimate reason to rebuke, he must exercise the utmost care not to embarrass those that he's rebuking. 

The Ben Ish Chai quotes the Maharam Shiff who explains the posuk הוכיח תוכיח את עמיתך, you shall reproof your friend. He says that it means that you shouldn't rebuke someone in a way that will embarrass him; rather you should rebuke your friend, someone who never did that sin, & discuss it with him within earshot of the sinner so he will hear the reproof without being embarrassed. 

It is said that when Reb Zisha had to rebuke someone he would go within earshot of the individual & talk to himself saying "Zisha how could you do something like this? I feel terrible, I'll never do it again" and the person would hear & get the message without any embarrassment. 

The gemara tells us that it's better to throw yourself into a burning furnace than to publicly embarrass another Jew. There’s a story told about Reb Yisroel Yaakov Lubchansky that exemplifies this. The shul in Baranovitch was heated by a wood burning stove which, if no one fed the stove wood overnight, the shul would be ice cold in the morning. The shamas was supposed to come early in the morning to feed the stove so it would be warm when the people came in the morning. However, he relied on the poor people that would sleep there to keep the stove going. 

One morning, the Rabbi comes in & it's freezing in the shul. No poor people slept there that night & the shamash didn't show up to warm the shul. So the rabbi, not wanting the people to blame the shamash for the cold shul, started the fire in the stove & started loading the wood into the stove. The shamash walks in & sees someone loading the stove & calls out "good morning". Now the rav didn't want the shamash to know that he was the one who was doing the shamash's job loading the stove because then he would be embarrassed, so he didn't respond.

The shamash, just seeing him from the back, thought it was one of the poor people who was disrespecting him by not responding, so he called out again " good morning". By now, the fire had caught on & Reb Yisroel’s face was getting hot.  He prayed that the shamash would just move on so he could get out without the shamash knowing who was loading the stove. The shamash, though, was waiting for his response. Furious, the shamash yells, “you ingrate; you don't respond when someone talks to you”. He pushes him almost right into the oven & then walks away. Only then, with his beard badly singed, did the rabbi pull himself out of the oven & leave the shul before the shamash could see him.   

So great was his resolve not to embarrass the shamash, he let himself get burned!

The Torah is teaching us here how careful we have to be not to cause anyone, no matter who, any embarrassment. The commentaries find many different things alluded to in the words of this posuk. In a similar vein, the  Gra' says אלה הדברים אשר דבר משה , these are the words that Moshe spoke. What are the words? As the posuk continues אל כל ישראל , to all of Israel, that we should be one nation together, peaceful, that we should all just get along & have unity between us. 

The first step toward that unity could be if we are careful about what we say to others & make the utmost attempt not to embarrass one another. Doing so, we could repair the hatred that caused the destruction of the Bias Hamikdash & have it rebuilt speedily in our day!