30b: Workin' It

I find it interesting that with all the similarities flying about between Tisha B'Av and Yom Kippur, and with the explicit linking of the two on this amud, we do not end with a firm prohibition against work. We get some homiletic attacks on the practice, to be sure, but nowhere does the gemarah declare work to be asur. Homiletic broadsides aside, the rabbis do not seem able or willing to prohibit work on Tisha B'Av.

What is stopping them? Is it a strict constitutionalism, to use an anachronistic phrase? The Bible does not prohibit work as such on this day, therefore we can not? Is it a general desire not to increase the number of averot which people could transgress? Is it the sense that, ultimately, the day just is not as important as chagim? Whatever the reason, the resulting situation is odd: we have only two full day fasts on the calender, and the gemarah goes out of its way to point out that what is prohibited on one is prohibited on the other (food, drink, oil, sex) but with one glaring exception. In the end, therefore, custom rules: if you live in a place where work is done, you work, if not, not.

This all important day, this paragon of memory and mourning, this day on par with Yom Kippur...go ahead and open your shop.

I do not know what to do with that, but the oddness of it never struck me fully until now.

I will stop learning now. See you in NYC for the last amud.