I don't like the Nine Days

I am not a superstitious man. I don't agree that the 9-Days are a Bermuda-Triangle-like period of time, a time when bad things are more likely to happen. I think it's silly to avoid plane travel, for example, or to avoid going out alone at night. There are no statistics which suggest that bad things occur during the 9-days any more often than they do during the rest of the year. If there were, the non-Jews would have cought on by now.

But still, something strange and altogether emotional happens to me when we enter the 9-days. I feel something, not unlike what I feel around the Yomin Noraim. I am more mellow, more serious, and touchier about small slights.

There are those of you who will insist that these unhappy feelings are caused by something real in the air, the koach zmaniyot, for example. But I don't buy it. Other say the melencholy comes from being deprived of protein, but I am a big fan of fish, and I've enjoyed a large slice of it every evening this week. And, I don't mind hot weather. Usually, I revel in it.

In my humble opinion, this strange gloom that overtakes me year after year is simply one of the unhappy by-products of my all-too-succesful Jewish education.

I was taught to be sad during the nine days, and so I am.