Shabbat Chazon
The Laws of the Nine Days
I received the following email from a leading Rav before the Nine Days, cautioning against a myopic focus on Halachik detail that excludes awe for the splendor of Creation.
“I think our generation needs a strong appreciation for the world before even beginning to understand G-d and subsequently approach Torah with some sophistication. Which would you feel more in awe of - a G-d that created protons, neutrons, electrons etc and generates the energy that holds it all together, or a G-d that tells you to wear all your garments for half an hour before the Nine Days[1] begin so that you don't get that exciting new feeling when you put on freshly laundered clothes?!”
Can laws like the Nine Days inspire us as much as a good National Geographic documentary or Scientific American article?
Science and Morality deal with different dimensions of reality. Science probes the world as it is; morality deals with how the world should be. Torah deals with both: it contains within it visions (the Prophecies) and models (the Beit Hamikdash) of how the world should be in its state of perfection. It also deals with the practicalities of life as it really is recounting stories of the frailties of even the greatest of human beings. The literature of She’eilot Uteshuvot(Halachik responsa through the ages until today) is an attempt to align the imperfections of real life situations with the perfection of the Torah’s Halachik expectations.
The Space in Between
There is yet a third dimension. The third dimension is the experience of the space between what should be, and what is. This is the space of the three weeks, the nine days and Tisha Be’Av itself. In this space we experience much more than a gap in time of nearly 2000 years. We experience a gap between two current realities. These two realities live side by side in our Torah minds and beings: the world that could be today and the world that is today.
Proud Accomplishment
In many ways the world that is today, is not such a bad place. And herein lies the danger that we find it hard to mourn for something else that could have been. Enamored with the world that is, we run the risk of not being able to feel the discomfort of the gap between what is and what could be. And if we do not yearn for what could have been, we will never transform what it is to what it could be.
There is in fact much to be proud of in the world of today, both the Torah world and the general world. It is said that more Torah is being learned today than ever before in history. This is in part due to the technology we have to disseminate Torah widely and relatively cheaply, often even freely. Partly it is due to the resurgence of interest in Torah and authentic Jewish values. There are more places of Jewish learning, more Yeshivot available to men and women, children and adults. Being observant is “cooler” than it has been for centuries (at least in the Western world). There are exceptional men and women in our global world of Torah. We have people of profound knowledge and astonishing saintliness; many of them are very private people, not well known at all but majestically great nevertheless.
Embarrassing Realities
Yet not all is well in our kingdom. Sadly but undeniably there is more corruption than there should be in religious Jewish Leadership and even in some Battei Din (courts of Jewish law). In some quarters (on both sides of the religious spectrum) there is still intolerance, sin’at chinam. There is too high an incidence of family dysfunctionality in our religious communities: broken homes, infidelity, substance abuse, wife abuse, poverty, and “off the derech” teenagers. We face growing numbers of singles. What makes these challenges all the more troubling is that in many cases the people who could do something about them are in denial of their existence. Often under the banners of avoiding chilul Hashem and protecting reputations they refuse to engage in critical conversations to confront these issues and seek solution. When leaders do address them they often deal with symptoms demonstrating little appetite to penetrate to the often uncomfortable truths buried in the root causes of these problems.
In the teaching of Torah and behavioral standards, we now accept levels of mediocrity that would not have been tolerated just a couple of generations ago. Our day schools need radical re-invention. Many people feel that we are not addressing women’s needs and aspirations adequately. Even in the most religious of circles those needs and aspirations have changed somewhat over time but we do not always recognize that in our responses. There is a general lack of urgency to face the challenges that rob us as a nation and a community of the greatness that should be ours. This is the other side of the world that is.
How different would our world look if we had large numbers of Torah leaders gigantic in stature like the Rabbanim and Roshei Yeshiva of pre-war Europe, never mind earlier times than that? How would the world look if Israel were not only a recognized world leader in technology but also in spirituality, morality and ethics? Imagine if the energy of Torah learning in the world today were engaged in setting the moral and spiritual pace for mankind? If all nations collaborated in a coalition of peace, justice and the service of G-d, each in their own unique but complementary way? If terror and war were no more? Utopian? Yes, but we have to believe in the possible reality of just such a Utopia. That is the question each of us will be asked:Tzipitta Li’shua (did you envision Messianic salvation)? Only if we do envision Utopia can we feel the pain of this space in time, the three weeks. The space between what is and what could be.
The Desire for Freshness
What has all of this got to do with wearing freshly laundered clothes in the nine days?
The difference between an unsustainable “perfect state” and a less than perfect reality is something we can experience in little trivial ways every day. We enjoy those brief moments of unspoiled ideal, and we value them. We love the feel and smell of a brand new car and will pay a premium for it even though it will be a used car half-an-hour after we drive it off the sales floor. In a similar way, we would not put on a wrinkled shirt first thing in the morning. We put on a freshly washed and crisply pressed shirt even though we know a few hours later it will have lost its crispness. We are happy to spend the rest of the day in a shirt that is not freshly laundered, but we want it to be fresh when we first put it on, and we enjoy those brief moments of savoring its ideal state of freshness.
Halacha validates this sensibility: newness and freshness nourish the soul. This is why we do not say a birkat she’hechiyanu on a used item even if we have just acquired it. This is why we may not wear a freshly pressed garment in the Nine days. We are forced in the Nine Days to confront the absence of those moments of “perfection” so that we extrapolate them to our religious, social and communal realities too. We recognize our deprivation of a state of national freshness and spiritual wholeness that eludes us now.
A similar theme underlies the Parsha, the gateway to the last of the Five Books, the Mishneh Torah. The Mishneh Torah in a large part repeats what has already been taught. Its function is not only to addHalachot. It is also to highlight the gap between what is and what should be. It is a Book of Tochachah (rebuke).
In this time of the Nine Days, when we must feel the pain of the gap between what is and what could be, we use every mechanism possible to alert us to the appreciation of that gap. By depriving ourselves of the little pleasures of freshness we remember that even though our clothes are clean and in good repair; even though the outsider could never tell that the shirt we put on in the morning had been worn for a few minutes before the nine days, we still feel the loss of that momentary daily experience: the brief experience of near-perfection.
Our world has so much to be thankful for. We have so much to congratulate ourselves for, as individuals, as communities and as a nation. Others look at us and see us flourishing so soon after our near extinction. Our State is vibrant, our societies (with all their problems) more functional than most. But we know that the shirt, although it looks good and clean, is pre-worn. The world we live in is not as crisp, as fresh and as sparklingly pure as it could be. It is for that sparkle, that thrill of experiencing the ideal and the extraordinary, that we crave at this time. The seeds of discomfort that we feel for our present reality sow the seeds for a future that is whole, and perfect.
[1] Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 551:3 (The requirement is not that we may not wear clean clothes. It is that we may not wear freshly laundered ones. This is how the custom began to pre-wear clothes for a few minutes before the nine days.)
