Tzom Gedaliah

This was an interesting fast day- somehow it fits much better into my ritual/religious vocabulary than the other fast days in its category. Somehow the assasination of a single governor is easier to connect to, or to derive meaning from than fast days commemerating assorted historical destruction, even though there was more suffering by more people that actually went on. But here the themes are more interpretable and more useful for me at least. Between the connecting of this fast with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin (a man who I didn't even know about until the day of his death, but I still remember the rabbi at the shul I grew up at gather all the Hebrew school kids together and explaining what had happened), and the idea I ran across today about the fast showing that the death of a righteous person is just as much a tragedy as the destruction of the Temple, I can find important lessons from the day and the practice. Somehow even if I didn't think about it all that much today besides the inconveniences of fasting and the interesting experience of travelling while fasting (really not so hard in some ways: you're sitting still, and I don't tend to get as hungry while on buses and such), it still somehow fits into my religious mindset in useful and easy ways.

Unfortuantely though, it has left me with a headache, so I'm going to go drink some more water and shower and head to bed in the near future.

Tzom Gedaliah

This was an interesting fast day- somehow it fits much better into my ritual/religious vocabulary than the other fast days in its category. Somehow the assasination of a single governor is easier to connect to, or to derive meaning from than fast days commemerating assorted historical destruction, even though there was more suffering by more people that actually went on. But here the themes are more interpretable and more useful for me at least. Between the connecting of this fast with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin (a man who I didn't even know about until the day of his death, but I still remember the rabbi at the shul I grew up at gather all the Hebrew school kids together and explaining what had happened), and the idea I ran across today about the fast showing that the death of a righteous person is just as much a tragedy as the destruction of the Temple, I can find important lessons from the day and the practice. Somehow even if I didn't think about it all that much today besides the inconveniences of fasting and the interesting experience of travelling while fasting (really not so hard in some ways: you're sitting still, and I don't tend to get as hungry while on buses and such), it still somehow fits into my religious mindset in useful and easy ways.

Unfortuantely though, it has left me with a headache, so I'm going to go drink some more water and shower and head to bed in the near future.