On Tisha B’Av, We Walk with Socks Only – Rabbi Eliezer Berland Shlit”a

THE HOLY WORDS OF MOREINU HARAV ELIEZER BERLAND SHLIT”A, FROM THE YEAR 5780 (2020), DISCUSSING THE VIRTUE OF WALKING ONLY IN SOCKS ON TISHA B’AV AND YOM KIPPUR:

The first thing we need to do is to draw the light down to the heels—“It shall be because (ekev) you listen” (Devarim 7:12)—to draw the lights into the heels (ekev). “It shall be because (vehaya ekev)”—and therefore we walk barefoot on Yom Kippur: so that the lights will reach down to the heels.

The main thing is that a person should truly walk barefoot—only in socks—and then he feels every bump, every stone, every tiny piece of glass, every thorn. That’s what purifies the heels—“It shall be because you listen (Vehaya ekev tishme’un)”—because the point is to purify the heels.

If a person walks on Tisha B’Av without shoes, he is mamash mamash walking on thorns and thistles—and then he sweetens all the harsh decrees of all generations.

And when Am Yisrael walked barefoot—“before your feet stub themselves upon the mountains of night” (Yirmiyahu 13:16)—all the times that Am Yisrael walked kilometers barefoot, days and nights, they walked barefoot in Auschwitz, in Treblinka, and throughout the Holocaust, in every place, they walked barefoot for days and nights, for half a year they walked barefoot.

And when a person walks completely barefoot, both on Tisha B’Av and on Yom Kippur, he sweetens all the judgments for himself and for his children and his children’s children until the end of all generations—he can sweeten [everything].

Because the whole point is to bring the Infinite Light (Or Ain Sof) into the heels, to shine into the heels.