Rabbi Ido Pachter has launched a sharp attack on what he describes as a spreading practice within the religious community: holding staged completions of a Talmudic tractate, known as a siyum masechet, during the Three Weeks and the Nine Days specifically in order to create a halachic workaround allowing people to eat meat or hold celebrations and watch festive events, according to Srugim News.
Speaking out against the trend, Rabbi Pachter addressed the public directly, saying, "Please, don't hold tractate completions just to permit yourselves to throw a party around the World Cup final or simply eat meat because you feel like it." He followed with a pointed question: "Who do you think you're fooling when you do this?"
The rabbi drew a direct line between these staged completions and other public issues, arguing that using Torah study for personal or political ends causes serious damage to the standing of Torah itself. "Anyone who uses Torah study to achieve worldly goals is demeaning it," Rabbi Pachter said, stressing that the point applies across every context: "It doesn't matter if it's welfare payments, draft exemptions, the World Cup final or meat."
He closed by sharpening the religious and moral severity of the practice, saying that circumventing halacha in this way is far worse than a straightforward violation of the customs themselves. "And by the way," Rabbi Pachter concluded, "this kind of disgrace is far worse than someone who simply doesn't bother to limit his joy during these days."
The custom of holding a siyum, a celebratory meal marking the completion of a tractate of Talmud, traditionally permits those in attendance to eat meat and wine even during periods of communal mourning such as the Nine Days leading up to Tisha B'Av, when such consumption is otherwise restricted. Rabbi Pachter's comments target the practice of scheduling such completions opportunistically, timed to unrelated events like the World Cup final, purely to create a halachic loophole rather than out of a desire for genuine Torah study.
