Not Eating Meat and Drinking Wine on the Nine Days in Judaism: The Value of Diminishing Happiness

I am sure you read that title and are wondering what the world is going on in my head. "Diminish happiness?! Why would you want to do that?!" Although multiple countries place value on the concept of happiness, it is especially pronounced in the United States. In the United States, the idea of "pursuit of happiness" is in the cultural DNA and the Declaration of Independence. The United States has been referred to as the "land of opportunity." The "American Dream" entails opportunity, success, material wealth, freedom, and happiness as ideals. Since positive psychology was founded in 1998, we have become even more obsessed societally speaking with a happy, carefree life focused on positivity and well-being (see here, here, and here). Placing such value on happiness plays a major role in why contemporary Jews have difficulty connecting to this time of year on the Jewish calendar.

We are currently in what is referred to as the Nine Days period, which takes place during the first nine days of the Jewish month of Av (אב). These Nine Days represent the communal and personal suffering that commemorates the calamities that have befallen the Jewish people. The list of tragedies include the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, the expulsion of the Jewish people on the ninth of Av in the Gregorian year of 1492, and the outbreak of World War One. These Nine Days are treated inauspiciously and are traditionally treated as a time of danger, even in the year 2020. One of the aspects I found of intrigue this year is a passage in the Talmud (Ta'anit 26b):

משנכנס אב ממעטין בשמחה.

From the beginning of Av [to the Ninth of Av], one decreases acts of rejoicing.

Although this Talmudic passage does not prescribe what that entails, it has become tradition that we abstain from consuming wine and meat (Shulchan Aruch 551:9) since they represent joy (Talmud, Pesachim 109a). Other prohibitions have also been included, such as listening to music, shaving [for men], bathing for pleasure, laundry, or buying and wearing new clothing. What took me most aback about this is that that one decreases rejoicing. What is implied is that one actively becomes less joyful. Why would anyone do that? We should do what we can to be as happy as possible. Trying to lower one's happiness is counterintuitive to such concepts as self-care and wellness. 

Part of the answer can be found in a practice found on another Jewish holiday: Sukkot. On this harvest festival, a common custom is to read the Book of Ecclesiastes during the Shabbat of Sukkot. For anyone who has read Ecclesiastes, it is hardly an uplifting text. Yet we read it on a holiday referred to as "a time of our joy" (זמן שמחתינו). According to such rabbinic commentators as Avudraham and R. Azaryah Figo, we are meant to diminish our joy so it does not turn into frivolity. This is to help us better focus on serving G-d. 

If curtailing joy during a joyous occasion can have utility, I wonder if diminishing happiness during the saddest time on the Jewish calendar has value. While negativity bias hardwires us to think more pessimistically, the pursuit of happiness dates back to antiquity, whether that is Aristotle, Epicurus, or Confucius. Especially in a culture that highly values the pursuit of happiness and positive psychology, becoming less joyful is countercultural, to say the least. That might be true, but I think there is merit in doing so.  

If we lived happily all the time, we would have nothing with which to compare happiness. It would get old really quick. Paradoxically, we need difficult moments in life so we can better appreciate the happier moments. 

Here is another salient point. We live in a society with such material wealth. We value comfort so much that we do everything possible to avoid pain and discomfort. That might sound nice in theory, but it ignores the fact that the world has been, is, and always will be full of problems. The first of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism is that life is dukkha. This word is commonly translated as "suffering," but I prefer the translation of "unease." Even with the seemingly good times, there is still a layer of anxiety and uncertainty underneath, and that is because of attachment to impermanence. As Mark Manson brings up in his book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck," "You may salivate at the thought of a problem-free life full of everlasting happiness and eternal compassions, but back here on earth, the problems never cease...they merely get exchanged and/or upgraded." 

The Book of Ecclesiastes reminds us there is a season for everything, including a time to weep and a time to mourn (Ecclesiastes 3:4). The Jews who lost the First and Second Temples lost their homeland, a sense of unity, and their spiritual epicenter. It is okay to not be okay because that is part of the human experience. So many of us are experiencing that feeling of loss and uncertainty right now during this pandemic. The reason why I think this has hit so many people so hard is because it has shattered the illusions of certainty and comfort. The pandemic has imposed upon us that life is more fleeting and ephemeral than we could imagine. We are mourning what we consider the "old normal." 

We are allowed to mourn our losses, but we are not meant to get stuck in the past. More importantly, we are not meant to despair and give into hopelessness. When we read the book of Lamentations (איכה), there is a litany of calamity, ranging from raping and pillaging, starvation, and the seeming abandonment of G-d. Yet despair is not how the biblical text ends. Towards the end, there is a plea to "bring us back to G-d, and we shall return, and renew our days as of old (Lamentations 5:21)." Plus, if we go back to the Talmudic text cited at the beginning, it says that we are to diminish our joy. We are never meant to eliminate it. No matter how bad things got for the Jewish people (and believe me, there has been plenty!), giving up on hope has never been a Jewish value. 

Tragedy hits. That much is inescapable. As I brought up shortly before Passover, bitterness is a part of life. We choose whether to add some sweetness in our lives or not. We also see that concept in the climax of the Nine Days mourning, Tisha B'Av. Even as soon as the afternoon service (Mincha) of Tisha B'Av, we begin to pick ourselves up and start to remove the mourning practices that we take on during Tisha B'Av. Maimonides taught that Tisha B'Av represents that through destruction and loss comes new beginnings. Passover teaches us a similar lesson because the seder starts with brokenness and ends with praise and redemption. Another quote from Mark Manson: "Happiness requires struggle. It grows from problems. Joy doesn't just sprout out of the ground like daisies and rainbows. Real, serious, lifelong fulfillment and meaning have to be earned through the choosing and managing of our struggles." 

Ultimately, I think the certain practices of abstention during the Nine Days teaches us that we cannot run away from problems. Not every year is a pandemic year, but life is not all sunshine and rainbows either. Tangentially, the Stoics realized this by practicing negative visualization. In Stoicism, one meditates on dreadful scenarios. This hardly seems like a way to be happier because it focuses on the negative. However, it allows us to prepare for the worst, as well as acknowledge the nature of life. Rather than be about pessimism, it is about being prepared and being grateful for what one has. Since the ritualistic abstentions during the Nine Days act a metaphor to readily accept pain, uncertainty, and loss as a part of life, I would argue that they engender similar outcomes as the Stoic practice of negative visualization. 

Not accepting these facts of life could be making us more unhappy because it sets us up for unrealistic expectations and chasing an impossibility. Think of that irony: focusing on being happy all the time can lead to greater unhappiness, whereas cutting back on happiness from time to time and properly focusing on the negative can lead to greater happiness. By accepting the inevitability of unpleasantries in life, we create resilience, take the steps towards a new beginning, and bring greater meaning and happiness to our lives because we came to terms with the suffering and loss that we are bound to experience.