30 Jul THE BEST NINE DAYS YOU EVER HAD

I still remember
vividly one of the
strangest ads I have
ever seen. When I was
much younger, a
restaurant in my
neighborhood was
promoting its special
menu for the Nine Days, including fish
specials, tofu dishes, and veggie burgers.
But it was the final line in the ad, bold and
in large letters, that caught my attention: “It
will be the best Nine Days you ever had.”
Best Nine Days you ever had? That is like
saying, “We have an amazing menu planned
for you, this will be the best shiva you will
ever sit.” We don’t refrain from meat and
wine during the Nine Days as a way to
expand our palettes or as motivation to get
us to experiment with new recipes.
These Nine Days are dedicated to focusing
on our collective mourning and our
communal grief for both the tragedies and
calamities of our past and for the challenges
and suffering that continue in our present.
During these days, we abstain and refrain
from things like meat, wine, laundry, music,
and haircuts. But, there is something in
particular we should do more of during this

time, an area we should increase our
attention and focus on: saying hello to one
another.
The Talmud (Yerushalmi Taanis, Chapter
1) tells us that on Tisha B’Av we don’t offer
greetings, we don’t say hello to others. The
Shulchan Aruch (555:20) records this
practice, ein she’eilas shalom l’chaveiro
b’Tisha B’Av. The Aruch HaShulchan
suggests a reason for this unusual law. Tisha
B’av isn’t a day of shalom, it isn’t a day for
socializing and levity.
While lightheartedness is inconsistent
with the essence of the day, specifically
being cold to one another, and making
ourselves distant and unfriendly, hardly
seems like the antidote to sinas chinam,
baseless hatred, the cause of the destruction
to begin with. Wouldn’t you think on the
day we mark our suffering that resulted
from baseless hatred we should explicitly
go out of our way to be friendly, greet
others, be warm to one another?
Our prophets tells us that the destruction
was caused by the cruelty we showed
others. We criticized, marginalized, judged,
and neglected those who needed our help
and support. We made the vulnerable feel
invisible, lonely, and outcast. As a result,

yashva badad, Hashem made us feel that
way among the nations.
Perhaps the reason we don’t give shalom,
we don’t say hello to each other on Tisha
B’Av is so that each of us experiences what
it feels like to be an outcast, lonely,
estranged, and deserted. By not exchanging
greetings, by not saying hello, we learn
what it feels like to be badad.
If we want to transform Tisha B’Av from
a day of mourning in which we are
forbidden to greet, to a holiday, we must
transform these Nine Days into days in
which we are running to say hello, to offer
warm greetings to one another, we must
rush to make everyone feel and know they
belong.
The Talmud testifies (Berachos 17a) about
Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai that no one
ever preceded him in a greeting of Shalom,
even a stranger in the marketplace.” The
Mishna in Pirkei Avos (4:20) encourages us
all, “Hevei makdim b’shalom kol Adam, be
the first to greet each person.” The Maharal
explains that when you walk past someone
without offering a greeting, you make him
or her feel invisible and insignificant. By
making a point of greeting someone you
demonstrate that you don’t see yourself as
superior or better than another. Rather, by
instigating the greeting, you show that
you respect that person as an individual
and thereby you give them dignity and
worth.
Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach’s
brilliance was undeniable, and yet it was
perhaps surpassed only by his humility
and sensitivity to all. R’ Chanoch Teller
recounts the following anecdote: “When
Rav Shlomo Zalman passed away, a
beggar in Sha’arei Chesed sobbed in her
anguish: “Now who will say ‘good
morning’ to me every day?” (Mi yagid li
boker tov?)”
Casually reaching out to people in our
social circles can mean more than we
realize. New research published last year
in the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology found people tend to
underestimate how much friends like
hearing from them. An article summarizing
the findings says: “Calling, texting or
emailing a friend just to say “hello” might
seem like an insignificant gesture — a
chore, even, that isn’t worth the effort, but
it makes a huge difference and means an
enormous amount to people. Researchers
concluded that “To be functioning at our
best, we need to be in a connected state.
Just like you need to eat, like you need to
drink, you need to be connected to be
functioning well.”
Someone who moved from another

community shared with me that where they
are from, on Shabbos people walk right by
each other. In fact, if you say “Good
Shabbos,” someone will give you a funny
look and ask, “Do we know each other, do I
know you, why are you talking to me?” In
that community, smiling and greeting every
person you pass is weird, peculiar and
makes you stand out.
If we want to bring Moshiach, if we want
to repair and redeem this world, we need to
create a culture in which it is strange and
peculiar to not say hello to everyone we
meet. Wishing “Good Shabbos” to all we
pass must become the standard, the default.
There is no time of the year in which more
siyums are made than these nine days.
While many love Torah learning, some
deliberately pace their learning to allow
themselves to celebrate the siyum with
meat and wine. Indeed, there are restaurants
today that advertise siyums on the hour so
people not even connected to the one
making the siyum can attend and “celebrate”
with a big steak.
The Baal Shem Tov was a proponent of
Nine Days siyums. He suggested promoting
siyums widely and publicly and specifically
inviting many others to attend and
participate. But here is the catch. While he
encouraged a daily siyum, he also advocated
that no meat be eaten at the meal marking
the siyum. The purpose of the gathering
should be simply to say hello to each other,
to socialize and greet and to communally
bask in the light of Torah learning and Torah
living. Attending such a siyum each night
can truly make it the best nine days you
ever had.
On Tisha B’Av we can’t greet, we can’t fix
the problem, we sit on the floor and cry
about the churban going on around us, and
in too many cases, inside us. We cry and we
grieve for the pain, but we must be prepared
to get up off the floor and do something
about it, to reach out and ensure that nobody
is alone. At the end of Tisha B’av we are
allowed to break the fast, but the question is
which fast will we break first, our fasting
from food or from friends? Will we reach
first for a coffee or our cell phone? Will we
first consume or connect?