[Avodah] Extending restrictions of 9 days

[Akiva Miller]

R' Ben Waxman asked:
> Is there any concept of extending the basic minhagim restrictions
> of the nine days like no meat or no wine to other "fancy" type
> foods? A great salmon steak is just as good or even better than
> many types of meat, certainly it is more expensive and can be seen
> as a delicacy. Similarly good beer or whiskey is certainly just as
> "sameach" as wine. Or do we say "the minhag is the minhag and
> don't go adding even more items to the list". IOW it is entirely
> possible to fulfill the letter of the minhag and yet not feel the
> nine days at all.

> Has this been discussed here?

Wine is avoided, but not because it is fancy. Meat is avoided, but not
because it is a delicacy.

Aruch Hashulchan 551:23 explains that we abstain from meat and wine on
these days to remember the korbanos and nesachim which have been batel.

Rav Shmuel Pinhasi (on R' Eli Mansour's website at
<http://www.dailyhalacha.com/m/halacha.aspx?id=2730>)
says that this logic ought to apply even to water and bread, but the
rabbis specifically exempted these staples.

Note also that Rama 551:11 explicitly allows beer and mead, though he
does not explain *why* he allows them.


[email #2]

I feel that I should point out that until a few hours ago, I was
not aware that the restriction on wine and meat is because of the
korbanos. If anyone thinks I was displaying my knowledge of this topic,
they are wrong. I had thought the same thing that R' Ben Waxman did,
that we avoid meat and wine because they are fancy delicacies. I'd like
to share the logic I used to discover the truth.

To cite R' Micha Berger's reference to sneakers on Tisha B'av, I can
very easily understand that to Chazal, the phrases "leather shoes" and
"comfortable shoes" were synonymous. The idea of comfortable non-leather
shoes was probably beyond their imagination. But RBW's post was not
about shoes, it was about fish and beer. And this bothered me, because
these are not recent inventions. Chazal DID consider fish a delicacy,
as millennia of eating fish on Shabbos will attest. And they knew about
good beer too (though I can't come up with a citation to prove it).

So I worked in reverse. I started with some convenient "Hilchos 9
Av" sources, and figured it would be easy to find sources to allow
beer and fish, and then I'd look up the sources. It was easier than I
dreamed. "Moadei Yeshurun" by Rabbi Aaron Felder, page 131, pointed me
straight to the Aruch Hashulchan.

Then I saw Rav Shimon Eider's "Halachos of the Three Weeks". On page 6 he
too cites this Aruch Hashulchan and the reference to korbanos. But that's
Rav Eider's *second* explanation. Before that, he cites unnamed "poskim"
who say that "The reason for this minhag is that one experiences simcha
by eating meat and drinking wine." This matches what RBW had thought,
and I am curious who those "poskim" are.

Akiva Miller