Among the more brazen schemes of the modern era, the sale of "carbon offsets" stands out for its sheer audacity. Purveyors of carbon offsets, being putative protectors of the planet from pollution, are gravely concerned about the carbon emissions resultant from human activity. Every time you release CO2 into the atmosphere, say by driving a fossil-fueled-car or exhaling, you ought to compensate for the damage caused, Bava Kamma-style, by contributing to a fund or organization that promotes green energy or plants trees that cleanse the atmosphere. An ethical lifestyle is a carbon-neutral one, and they can help you achieve that. But not by reducing your CO2 emissions! Instead, carbon offsets allow you to maintain, or even increase, your CO2 emissions as long as you pay the blood money to offset the damage you are causing. So, feel free to fly your private jet to the next climate conference, and then assuage your guilt by contributing to an organization that will install a solar farm in Saskatchewan in 2037. Go ahead and take your massive SUV on the road instead of public transportation; just add some carbon offsets to the tab while you engage in your destructive behavior. This might not close the hole you have gouged in the ozone layer, but it will allow you to sleep better at night.

Carbon offsets are akin to telling someone it's OK to savagely beat up your neighbor as long as you donate to a foundation that researches reconstructive surgery. And it actually encourages rich people to not change their behaviors; they can just throw their money around in order to live the way they want to live. 

Now, before you indulge in a self-righteous chuckle at the hypocrisy of the rich, perhaps you should ask yourself if the modern-day American Jew is not guilty of the same in a religious sense. Could our fastidious observance of Tisha B'Av be considered the lamentable carbon offset of the Jewish calendar, enabling us to do whatever we want in exile as long as we get together once a year for some faux mourning?

First, consider the cottage industry spawned by Tisha B'Av: We have become Bein Hamitzarim professionals. Our shuls have invested in hardcover Kinnos books. Starting Chanukah time, major organizations begin planning, scripting, and filming their annual Tisha B'Av videos, all slickly produced and promoted, and many serving as stealth fundraisers. New, beautifully crafted sefarim containing the halachos and hashkafos of national tears hit the market each summer. Every camp goes to town on Tisha B'Av trying to outdo the competition to create the most immersive experience. In the week leading up to Tisha B'Av, swimming becomes more "instructional," travel becomes more "educational," and siyumim become a nightly pre-BBQ feature. And if you're making plans for the 10th of Av, you will undoubtedly be treated to a tentative "if mashiach doesn't come by then (wink wink)." Perhaps we have gotten so good at Tisha B'Av that we have rendered it utterly meaningless.

Second, as we double down on building our homes and schools and communal institutions in exile, as we amass power, prestige, and influence and rise to the highest echelons, and as we create a protective bubble of Jewish life from cradle to grave despite raging antisemitism, perhaps Tisha B'Av has just become the annual fee we pay for all this investment, a Korban offset in lieu of the Beis Hamikdash depicted in our homes but not necessarily engraved on our hearts. So we'll fast for a day and sit low on the ground and then we can go right back to enjoying a full, glorious, guilt-free life, as if there were no hole in the ozone layer of our heart.

The ritualized mourning we undergo this week has obscenely allowed us to place our self-created communal tragedy in a box, tie it with a pretty bow, and place it back in the basement for the next 51 weeks of the year, when we will dust it off and taste its contents. We feel churban a little now so we can not feel it when we recite Mussaf every Shabbos and say וַתְּצַוֵּנוּ ה' אֱלהֵינוּ לְהַקְרִיב בָּהּ קָרְבַּן מוּסַף שַׁבָּת כָּרָאוּי. יְהִי רָצון מִלְּפָנֶיךָ ה' אֱלהֵינוּ וֵאלהֵי אֲבותֵינוּ. שֶׁתַּעֲלֵנוּ בְשמְחָה לְאַרְצֵנוּ. וְתִטָּעֵנוּ בִּגְבוּלֵנוּ וְשָׁם נַעֲשה לְפָנֶיךָ אֶת קָרְבְּנות חובותֵינוּ. תְּמִידִים כְּסִדְרָם וּמוּסָפִים כְּהִלְכָתָם, and you commanded us, our God, to offer the Korban Mussaf on Shabbos properly. May it be your will, our God and God of our fathers, that you bring us up in happiness to our land, and establish us in our borders, and there we will make before you our obligatory sacrifices, the daily offerings according to their proper order and the additional sacrifices according to their laws. We feel it now so we can not be pained by it when the fancy wedding singer unloads his powerhouse rendition of Im Eshkochaich Yerushalayim accompanied by a choir and twenty-piece orchestra, and the glass is joyously broken amid shouts of Mazel Tov!

Who can blame us for being so good at Tisha B'Av? God knows we've had ample time to perfect our skills. The tears of centuries are reflected in our Kinnos collections. Our mesorah includes so many wise halachos and minhagim that evoke a proper frame of mind for the day. Our greetings are muted and our bellies are empty, but it's all de rigueur when the sadness is supposed to be raw and unpolished and unscripted. When is the last time you saw someone crying with genuine grief like our mothers and fathers and great gedolim used to? They lived and breathed the pasuk in Tehillim (80:6) הֶ֭אֱכַלְתָּם לֶ֣חֶם דִּמְעָ֑ה וַ֝תַּשְׁקֵ֗מוֹ בִּדְמָע֥וֹת שָׁלִֽישׁ, You have fed them tears as their daily bread, made them drink great measures of tears. 

Here is a Korban Offset we struggle to fulfill:

וְאָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר: מִיּוֹם שֶׁחָרַב בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ נִנְעֲלוּ שַׁעֲרֵי תְּפִלָּה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״גַּם כִּי אֶזְעַק וַאֲשַׁוֵּעַ שָׂתַם תְּפִלָּתִי״. וְאַף עַל פִּי שֶׁשַּׁעֲרֵי תְפִילָּה נִנְעֲלוּ, שַׁעֲרֵי דִמְעָה לֹא נִנְעֲלוּ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״שִׁמְעָה תְפִלָּתִי ה׳ וְשַׁוְעָתִי הַאֲזִינָה אֶל דִּמְעָתִי אַל תֶּחֱרַשׁ״

Rabbi Elazar also said: Since the day the Temple was destroyed the gates of prayer were locked and prayer is not accepted as it once was, as it is said in lamentation of the Temple’s destruction: “Though I plead and call out, He shuts out my prayer” (Lamentations 3:8). Yet, despite the fact that the gates of prayer were locked with the destruction of the Temple, the gates of tears were not locked, and one who cries before God may rest assured that his prayers will be answered, as it is stated: “Hear my prayer, Lord, and give ear to my pleading, keep not silence at my tears” (Psalms 39:13). 

A sober taste of the realities of 2025 outside our communal bubble may help us produce some tears. On the other hand, there is another form of Korban Offset at which we excel and of which we can be proud:

מסכתות קטנות מסכת אבות דרבי נתן נוסחא א פרק ד
פעם אחת היה רבן יוחנן בן זכאי יוצא מירושלים והיה ר' יהושע הולך אחריו וראה בית המקדש חרב אמר ר' יהושע אוי לנו על זה שהוא חרב מקום שמכפרים בו עונותיהם של ישראל. א"ל בני אל ירע לך יש לנו כפרה אחת שהיא כמותה ואיזה זה גמילות חסדים שנאמר כי חסד חפצתי ולא זבח (הושע ו' ו')

Once Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was leaving Yerushalayim and Rabbi Yehoshua was walking after him and saw the destroyed Beis Hamikdash. Rabbi Yehoshua said, "woe to us that it is destroyed, the place where the Jewish people's sins are atoned." Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai said to him, "my son, don't be so aggrieved, there is another form of atonement like it, and that is acts of kindness, as it says (Hoshea 6:6) I desire kindness and not sacrifices."

Our hearts are wide open to others, and we witness acts of care and concern on a daily basis. In Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai's estimation, chesed is a substitute form of avodah. It means we think beyond ourselves. This has kept the Jewish people intact during our millennia of fine-tuning Tisha B'Av. 

Finally, another Korban Offset that has the power to be transformative is prayer itself. It is a well-worn principle that prayer can take the place of sacrifices, תפילות כנגד קרבנות. Daily prayer helps us internalize the true purpose of life, which is not self-aggrandizement or hedonism but rather service to our Creator and perfection of His world. Through prayer, we come to recognize how broken the world is. Pleading for things like justice, reward for the righteous, and healing for the sick reminds us that the planet has a ways to go. Proper prayer should produce dissatisfaction with the status quo. As redemption unfolds in an excruciatingly slow fashion, we are not Korban Neutral. We anticipate the world's problems being rectified, justice being served, a nation being restored to its former glory, and peace being realized. I wish we would flunk mourning from inexperience, and I pray that after Tisha B'Av is over, we refuse to put it neatly back on the shelf.