[Avodah] Customs without explanations

[Joel Rich]

>From another list:

Poster- What might not be "appropriate" about an aveil who, absent aveilut,
would ordinarily daven on, say, Yamim Noraim, from doing so as an aveil?
Neither Rama nor any other source I've seen has explained just why it is
customary for a generic aveil not to daven on shabbat or holidays.

Me-That’s a great question on a meta-basis. What do we do when we have an
ancient tradition which was not accompanied by an explanation. Two more
extreme examples I can think of are drinking/ crossdressing on Purim and
having a chutz laaretz minyan on the second day of yom tov in the land of
Israel. From first principles neither of these would be the accepted
practice and yet the practice is ancient and accepted.
There are a number of approaches that can be taken in these cases. The
first is to ignore the old practice because we can’t root it in the law.
This is rarely done because it might lead to mixed dancing. A second
approach is to leave it on the books but chip away at it when possible- for
example limiting drinking on Purim to just enough to take a nap. The third
way is just to leave it as is and observe it as is.

It seems to me in this case the chipping away has already been done. For
example, the original practice did not note an exception if there were
nobody better.
To me It all depends how seriously one takes it. Putting oneself in the
situation to take advantage of the exception would be viewed as a good
thing by those who don’t think there was a good reason for the original
practice. On the other hand I doubt that somebody would say it’s fine to go
to a place a month before the new year that did not have a shofar and then
just claim that they were ones when Rosh Hashanah came around.

Thoughts?

KT
Joel Rich
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