August 7, 2022|י' אב ה' אלפים תשפ"ב Shabbat Drasha: When Shabbat and Tisha B'Av Collide
Print ArticleIt’s really tough for many of us these nine days. No meat or wine for nine days unless we have a siyum. A meme went viral comparing the siyum of Erev Pesach of macaroons and orange juice with the siyum of the Nine Days which includes fine fleishig dining to make us realize that a siyum need not include meat. Additionally, somebody had the audacity to post that he made a siyum during this past week and celebrated it with pizza and pasta. How dare you celebrate a siyum during the Nine Days without meat! But we persevere and we try to make it through another few more days when there’s no swimming either. The Nine Days are just a time in the summer when we are feeling lousy and we wonder couldn’t the Romans have just destroyed the Beit Mikdash, I don’t know, like at some point in October, when it starts to get chilly outside so you don’t want to go swimming and it’s right after the holidays of Tishrei when you’ve had twenty-five fleishig meals over the course of a week? Beginning of October – now that’s a great time for the Nine Days.
But, alas, today we find ourselves not only during the Nine Days, but we find ourselves on Tisha B’Av itself, well, sort of. Today is Tisha B’Av. Today is the ninth day of Av; however, tomorrow we observe Tisha B’Av because today is Shabbat. So I received some questions this week like can we have our regular shul simcha kiddush or can I invite company for Shabbat lunch. We find ourselves potentially in tension between Shabbat and Tisha B’Av and the question is how we deal with this tension.
The Gemara deals with this tension in Masechet Taanit 29b. There it cites a Tosefta that states:
תִּשְׁעָה בְּאָב שֶׁחָל לִהְיוֹת בְּשַׁבָּת…— אוֹכֵל וְשׁוֹתֶה כׇּל צָרְכּוֹ, וּמַעֲלֶה עַל שׁוּלְחָנוֹ אֲפִילּוּ כִּסְעוּדַת שְׁלֹמֹה בִּשְׁעָתוֹ.
In the case of the Ninth of Av that occurs on Shabbat, … he may eat and drink as much as he requires and put on his table a meal even like that of King Solomon in his time.
The Tosefta states that there are no restrictions on eating when Tisha B’Av falls out on Shabbat. We can even have a King Shlomo feast. What is a King Shlomo feast? Did he have all different types of herring and cholent and kugel? Do you think he had a smoker with top-of-the-line cuts of meat? Whatever he had, that’s what we can have today on the Shabbat of Tisha B’Av, but the question is why.
There are basically two ways to understand the nature of Tisha B’Av that falls out on Shabbat. One way to look at today is that it’s Shabbat. Shabbat is a gift from God when we should enjoy ourselves and celebrate our connection with God and the rabbis came along and said that for three weeks or for nine days we have to be sad and mourn the destruction of Jerusalem. Now the rabbis can tell us to do that, but just not on Shabbat. However we are supposed to mourn for Jerusalem, Shabbat is Shabbat, so go ahead and enjoy today. The Chiddushei Ha’Rim (Likutei Yehuda, Parshat Yitro) is quoted as saying that Shabbat takes on the character of whatever day it coincides with, whether it is Yom Tov, Rosh Chodesh or even Yom Kippur, because these are all happy days. Even Yom Kippur is a happy day because we are given the tools to achieve atonement on that day. However, אם בא בו יום מרה שחורה לא הניחו בגבולו – if there is a bitter dark day, Shabbat will not allow that day to enter its boundaries at all. That’s why the Tosefta says that on this Shabbat we should eat a feast like King Shlomo in his time. Enjoy yourselves and don’t worry that today is the calendar day of Tisha B’Av.
Hundreds of years before the Chiddushei Ha’Rim, the Rashba made a similar point when he was asked if marital intimacy was permitted on Friday night of Tisha B’Av when Tisha B’Av is pushed off to Sunday. The Rashba writes that our Gemara takes the position there is no mourning over Jerusalem on Shabbat. If someone loses a relative then on Shabbat during shiva there are private manifestations of mourning like no marital intimacy, but there is no requirement of mourning at all with regard to “avelut yeshanah,” or mourning over something historical like the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash.
However, there is another way to understand this Tosefta, that we can eat a meal like a King Shlomo feast on the Shabbat of Tisha B’Av. Yes, we can have a festive meal on the Shabbat of Tisha B’Av, but that’s because Shabbat only cancels public displays of mourning, but not private displays of mourning. Rabbenu Asher cites the opinion of Rabbi Yitzchak of Vienna that private matters like marital intimacy are prohibited on the Shabbat of Tisha B’Av.
Similarly, the Magen Avraham (Orach Chayim 552:14) writes that even though you can eat a meal like a King Shlomo feast, the meal must have a somber atmosphere and not be a “seudat chaverim” – it must not be of a social nature. However, in his Sefer Bechor Shor, Rabbi Yitzchok Shor argues on the Magen Avraham and says that if you normally have social Shabbat meals, then not having guests would be considered a public act of mourning. So, for example, if we typically have a basic simcha kiddush then even if we believe that there is some element of mourning today, we should continue to have a basic simcha kiddush. Why? Because not having a routine simcha kiddush would be a public sign of mourning which is forbidden on Shabbat.
How, then, are we supposed to feel today, on Tisha B’Av of Shabbat? One way is to forget it’s Tisha B’Av today. We are a generation that needs to feel happy, to feel good about ourselves. Yes, we have one day every year that is designated for us to feel the pain of all of our national tragedies and that is the day when we unload and unpack all of our negative emotions about our unfortunate national fate over the course of thousands of years. Normally that day is Tisha B’Av, but this year it will be tomorrow, the tenth day of Av, so today, let’s celebrate Shabbat and only focus on Shabbat. And that’s a totally legitimate approach.
However, there’s a more complex approach of acting festive externally because we don’t want to publicly disrespect the sanctity of Shabbat, but internally feeling the loss of Tisha B’Av because, after all, today is Tisha B’Av. But what does that look like in practice?
After all, when someone loses a relative, he naturally feels the pain of the loss. As such, during Shabbat when he sits shiva, he doesn’t feel the happiness of Shabbat. So as not to disrespect the sanctity of Shabbat, he goes through the motions and externally does all the normal Shabbat mitzvot, but internally, he feels the pain of his loss. That is why when someone is sitting shiva, the private manifestations of mourning are applicable on Shabbat to reflect the mourner’s natural state of mind.
But what about today? Do we naturally feel the loss of a Beit Hamikdash? We don’t. That’s the reality. We must manufacture these feelings during this time just as we must manufacture the feelings of happiness of a Shabbat once a week. Today we try to manufacture and create two internal feelings that oppose each other. We try to create a feeling of happiness and enjoyment of Shabbat and we try to create feelings of loss and pain of Tisha B’Av. How do we do that?
If you think about what the celebration of Shabbat is all about and what the mourning of Tisha B’Av is all about, on one level they are not really connected. Tisha B’Av mourns the destruction of the Mikdash, which is holiness in space. During the Three Weeks, during the Nine Days and especially during Tisha B’Av, we mourn the loss of holiness in space. However, this should have nothing to do with Shabbat. After all, Shabbat is about holiness in time. In Parshat Vayakhel, we juxtapose the obligation to build the mishkan with the prohibition to do work on Shabbat. The reason is that for six days we build a mishkan to bring God’s shechina down to earth by creating holiness in space, but on Shabbat, the entire world becomes a mishkan, a dwelling place for the shechina, which is why Shabbat is referred to as “mai’ain olam haba” by Chazal, a taste of the World to Come. Why should we mourn the loss of a mikdash on Shabbat? Why should we mourn the loss of holiness in space on Shabbat when we have holiness of time? The mikdash is unnecessary on Shabbat!
And the answer, of course, has to do with Yael’s wifi problem. You see, in our home, I have my one home office, by the side of my house. Yael, sort of, has three home offices. Sometimes she uses Netanel’s old room. Sometimes she uses Ahava’s old room. Most of the time, though, she uses an office in the basement. When does she choose to use each room? You need to ask her. I think she prefers the basement office, but the problem is the wifi. We have our router and even have an extender on the main floor, but sometimes her wifi is spotty in the basement and we may need a new router or another extender. Now Yael's wifi problem is between us and Verizon, but it’s really more than that. Yael’s wifi problem is our Shabbat problem.
The loss of a Beit Hamikdash is not only a loss of holiness in space. After the Six Day War when we recaptured Jerusalem, Rav Ovadia Yosef ruled that we still must recite nachem on Tisha B’Av, the special prayer commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem, because no Beit Hamikdash ultimately means a weakened connection with God. No Beit Hamikdash doesn’t just mean that my holidays suffer because I can’t ascend to a built Beit Ha’Mikdash and offer korbanot, but it means that my Shabbat suffers, as well, because the Beit Hamikdash was our router and no Beit Hamikdash means that our wifi connection to God is weak. I don’t feel God’s presence in Oceanside the same way as if the Beit Hamikdash was standing in Jerusalem. I will have a feast of King Shlomo this Shabbat with the kugels and the herrings and cholents and the different cuts of smoked meat, but even with that, today is the day that I realize that something is missing. If we had a Beit Hamikdash, if Jerusalem was truly rebuilt, if we had our spiritual router, then our Shabbat observance would be infused with more than halachic observance. It would be infused with more inspiration, more of a feeling of “mai’ain olam haba,” more of a sense of the presence of the Divine in our lives on Shabbat.
Today, as you sit down to your Shabbat meal, if you want, you can forget all about Tisha B’Av and say, “Tomorrow I’m mourning and today I’m happy.” That approach is totally legitimate and you can celebrate Shabbat in all its festivity. But maybe, some of you can sit down at the Shabbat meal and reflect on what your Shabbat would be like if there was a Beit Hamikdash, if you truly sensed the presence of God in Your lives. Maybe you can reflect how this spiritual router could impact the way you observe Shabbat, both the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, the inner experience and the feeling. And maybe then we can resolve to do better, and we can resolve to compensate for this loss, and we can resolve to work a bit harder to make Shabbat more of what it was supposed to be even though we don’t have a Beit Hamikdash. And maybe if we work towards creating a more messianic view of Shabbat with more quality conversation and zemirot and ruach and quality family time, a Shabbat with a standing Beit Hamikdash feeling, a Shabbat when we truly sense the presence of the Divine, then we can inch forward in our march to transform the day of Tisha B’Av from being a day of sadness to being a day of festivity with the rebuilding of our Beit Hamikdash speedily in our days.