(no subject)
Sep. 9th, 2013 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretYesterday was Tzom Gedaliah, the fast day observed the day after Rosh Hashanah.
Stuck between the immense beauties of the Rosh Hashanah service and the more intense, longer, and more solemn fast of Yom Kippur, we have a tendency to not pay much attention to Tzom Gedaliah.
This is made easier by the obscurity of its rationale. It commemorates a political assassination from the Book of Jeremiah, an event which put the lives of the Jews living under Babylonian rule in peril. Gedaliah was a Jew appointed by the Babylonians to serve as governor of the Jews. He was assassinated by another Jew for various political reasons that aren't very clear.
It's a weird fast because you would expect, upon learning that in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur there is another fast day, that the reasons would have to do with repentance. Our Rabbi lightheartedly referred to it as a warm-up for Yom Kippur, a shorter, less momentous fast to help get you in the appropriate spirit of regret for the Ten Days of Awe. But that isn't the reason why. It's a historical remembrance, not a spiritual observance.
I wish I had some insight into that to offer. I think generally speaking the Rabbis teach that don't be stupid, it falls on the day after Rosh Hashanah, of course it carries a message of repentance. The Rabbis will say that God had Gedaliah killed in this season to teach us that our lives are always in God's hands and judgement can come at any moment. Or they teach us that we commemorate his death as a lesson that if we honor the deaths of the righteous and commit ourselves to living lives inspired by their model, we will merit positive Judgement.
And I find meaning there, I do. But I wish I could tangle with Gedaliah's assassination on its own terms, as a thing separate from the whole rush of High Holidays festivities. I wish we thought about the idea behind mourning this death by fasting, a murder by one Jew of another. It's a death that is separated from us by two thousand years of history so that I can't properly say whether it was a justified killing. Do you think when Yishmael ben Netanya killed Gedaliah, he knew that he would cause Jews to fast one day a year two thousand years later? I think he probably figured he was doing what served him and his family best. Perhaps that's a lesson to take out of Tzom Gedaliah: actions have consequences far beyond what you would predict or control. Only God comprehends the patterns of history.
Certainly not an unreasonable message for this season.
Stuck between the immense beauties of the Rosh Hashanah service and the more intense, longer, and more solemn fast of Yom Kippur, we have a tendency to not pay much attention to Tzom Gedaliah.
This is made easier by the obscurity of its rationale. It commemorates a political assassination from the Book of Jeremiah, an event which put the lives of the Jews living under Babylonian rule in peril. Gedaliah was a Jew appointed by the Babylonians to serve as governor of the Jews. He was assassinated by another Jew for various political reasons that aren't very clear.
It's a weird fast because you would expect, upon learning that in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur there is another fast day, that the reasons would have to do with repentance. Our Rabbi lightheartedly referred to it as a warm-up for Yom Kippur, a shorter, less momentous fast to help get you in the appropriate spirit of regret for the Ten Days of Awe. But that isn't the reason why. It's a historical remembrance, not a spiritual observance.
I wish I had some insight into that to offer. I think generally speaking the Rabbis teach that don't be stupid, it falls on the day after Rosh Hashanah, of course it carries a message of repentance. The Rabbis will say that God had Gedaliah killed in this season to teach us that our lives are always in God's hands and judgement can come at any moment. Or they teach us that we commemorate his death as a lesson that if we honor the deaths of the righteous and commit ourselves to living lives inspired by their model, we will merit positive Judgement.
And I find meaning there, I do. But I wish I could tangle with Gedaliah's assassination on its own terms, as a thing separate from the whole rush of High Holidays festivities. I wish we thought about the idea behind mourning this death by fasting, a murder by one Jew of another. It's a death that is separated from us by two thousand years of history so that I can't properly say whether it was a justified killing. Do you think when Yishmael ben Netanya killed Gedaliah, he knew that he would cause Jews to fast one day a year two thousand years later? I think he probably figured he was doing what served him and his family best. Perhaps that's a lesson to take out of Tzom Gedaliah: actions have consequences far beyond what you would predict or control. Only God comprehends the patterns of history.
Certainly not an unreasonable message for this season.