Q&A: Leather Shoes on Tisha B'Av
Leather Shoes on Tisha B'Av
Question
Hello Rabbi,
With your permission, I’ll open with a short funny story: during my army service I was a tank corps combat soldier in a hesder yeshiva company. We were doing advanced unit training in the Jordan Valley in the blazing heat of August. Tisha B'Av arrived, and we, the hesder guys, got permission not to wear army boots but rather Shoresh sandals. So it turned out that throughout the fast we walked around comfortably in Shoresh sandals, smiling in every direction. And then, a few minutes later, when a secular soldier ran into us and asked how we were walking around like that without army boots, we would put on a serious expression and answer that today was Tisha B'Av and we had to afflict ourselves…
My question is this: I heard the Rabbi in his lectures bring the "swimsuit example"—that the Sages did not say to walk around in a swimsuit, but rather to adjust clothing to the weather, and therefore a change would specifically be walking around in a swimsuit in the cold. Why can’t we say here too that the Sages wanted us to afflict ourselves, and in their time affliction meant going without leather shoes, so today affliction would דווקא be wearing army boots, while Shoresh sandals and Crocs (which are really ugly sandals, whose only justification is their comfort!) should be forbidden on Tisha B'Av?
And similarly, regarding the prohibition on eating meat during the Nine Days—if one is eating "non-festive" meat (barbecue and the like), but just an ordinary quarter chicken that is considered a healthy, nourishing portion and not necessarily something joyful, why not permit that and forbid ice cream and other desserts?
Answer
In principle you are right, but there is a rule in Jewish law that we follow the body of the enactment and do not interpret its rationale, just as with Torah law we do not generally derive law from the reason for the verse. There are halakhic decisors who argue stringently to adapt the fast laws to our times (for example, not to wear Shoresh sandals), but not leniently (to permit wearing leather).
Discussion on Answer
It’s not different, but the swimsuit example was brought in order to describe one aspect of the issue of change in Jewish law—the conceptual aspect (what counts as change). Beyond that there is also another aspect, namely the question of authority and the question of whether we follow rationales. Everything is explained in the third book of the trilogy; there is an entire section there on the theory of halakhic change.
So how is this different from the swimsuit example, where the Rabbi argues that we go by what the poet meant?