22 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?