Q&A: Opening Businesses on Tisha B'Av
Opening Businesses on Tisha B'Av
Question
Hello!! What do you think about opening businesses on Tisha B'Av?
Should we intervene when the status quo is being violated, or not intervene because it leads to the good goal of separating religion from the state?
Thank you very much
Answer
Why did you suddenly remember opening businesses on Tisha B'Av? What about Sabbath desecration, same-sex couples, eating kosher food. Does the state you live in observe Jewish law? That's apparently not the state I live in. To worry that on Tisha B'Av the businesses selling non-kosher food should be closed sounds absurd to me. It's not because it leads to a good or bad goal, but because it's absurd.
By the way, the more you make sure that businesses are closed on Tisha B'Av, the closer you get to separating religion from the state.
Discussion on Answer
Rabbi, if we think like that, then we'll also open food businesses on Sabbaths, because why should we let our brothers buy non-kosher or unsupervised food?
In any case, there is no blessing in money earned by working on the Sabbath or in money earned on fast days. Guaranteed!
Indeed, it's no different so long as there is broad agreement about it (as on Holocaust Remembrance Day). But there is no room for coercion when most of the public does not identify with it.
Maybe.
On the other hand, it's possible that the fact that dozens of percent of the public identify with it, and a few dozen more are probably indifferent (that is, not opposed), is enough if it is enacted into law.
In the end, it would have been disgraceful if the State of Israel had ignored the greatest disaster that happened to the Jewish people before the Holocaust.
It's no different from closing businesses on Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day.
The partial closure to begin with was based on the idea of a day of mourning for the Jewish people, not in order to enforce fasting (after all, no one is going to fast because his favorite restaurant is closed on the eve of Tisha B'Av).
It has nothing to do with the status quo at all.