This week, we will usher in the month of Av, and with it, the 9 days – including the Ashkenazi custom not to eat meat.*

This will lead to a flurry of fancy restaurants reconfiguring their menus to include extended fish and other pareve offerings, alongside numerous siyums that provide a loophole in the no-meat rule.

However, both of these trends miss the point: The custom not to eat meat is part of the general principle, expressed in the Shulchan Aruch, that “when Av enters, we minimize our joy.”**

 If, in fact, Av becomes a month of fancy fish meals and festive siyums held in the name of eating meat, then the month becomes a season of its own special kind of fun, instead of a season of mourning.

Granted, there may be plenty of times that we fulfill the letter of the halacha without adhering to the spirit; indeed, halachic commitment warrants fulfilling the law even when it doesn’t resonate with us. It is impossible that every Jew will connect with each of the 613 mitzvot. Obligation means that we perform the law even when we struggle with a lack of meaning in doing so.

But in this case, we are speaking about customs, not laws, whose entire existence is there to inculcate us with a certain emotion. If the entire community flouts the custom by actively looking for every loophole, this raises questions about the custom’s validity.

The Shulchan Aruch records that: “There are those who have the practice” to not eat meat during the 9 days, while adding that “Whoever eats meat in a place where they have the custom to forbid it is trampling a fence and will be bitten by a snake”. This phrase is the language used by classic halachic sources that wish to express the strong force of a custom that lacks the weight of halachic obligation.

The source of the loophole for eating meat at........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)