About fifteen years ago, a curious question reached one of the leading rabbinic authorities of the generation. Seminary principals in Bnei Brak approached Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a towering figure in the ultra-Orthodox world who passed away in 2022, with an inquiry about a well-known song. The lyrics, popularized by singer Yisrael Prins and later re-recorded by Avraham Fried, declare: "The Third Temple is not built from stones --- it is built from tears."
The educators wanted to know: Does this poetic claim have roots in classical rabbinic literature, specifically in the midrash (the ancient Jewish interpretive texts)?
Rabbi Kanievsky's response was unequivocal. No midrash contains such a statement, he said, suggesting the idea may have been invented by someone in later generations.
Indeed, a search through classical rabbinic sources yields no such quotation. However, the concept does appear in later mystical writings, offering a window into how kabbalistic ideas sometimes enter popular Jewish consciousness through music and poetry.
Rabbi Shmuel Laniado, in his work "Kli Paz," cites Rabbi Gedaliah Cordovero, son of the renowned 16th-century kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (known as the Ramak), as teaching that tears shed over the destruction of the Temple become, with divine assistance, precious stones for the future Temple's construction. The Ramak explained this through metaphor: just as heartache and sorrow over the destruction burn like fire, they transform into precious gems, and the greater the grief, the greater the joy and splendor in the future edifice. He supported this teaching by referencing the well-known rabbinic statement that G-d stores and counts the tears of the righteous in His treasury, as reward for those who weep.
The Shelah HaKadosh (Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, a major 17th-century authority) took this concept further, writing that since our weeping builds the Temple, one is forbidden to cry over the Temple's destruction on Shabbat, because doing so would violate the prohibition against building on Shabbat, and construction of the Temple does not override Shabbat restrictions.
In other words: those seeking an explicit classical midrashic source will come up empty-handed. But kabbalistic masters recorded this teaching and found foundations for it in earlier rabbinic literature.
Later authorities also cited this idea. The Chatam Sofer (Rabbi Moses Sofer, 1762-1839), in his collection of sermons, wrote that "the weeping and sorrow of the mourners of Zion, that is its construction."
(Acknowledgment to Rabbi Raphael Rapoport for providing source materials.)
