I’ve been thinking of late about how helpless I often feel – in the face of climate, violence, pandemic. Our ancestors had practices that they engaged in in times of peril and plague. The tractate of Talmud called Ta’anit explores the use of community-wide fasting and prayer and even mourning practices to ward off drought and pestilence. Even if our theology is not the same as theirs, we can see that a community-wide fast says something about how seriously a community takes a threat.

So I’ve been wondering: what might a practice of fasting in the face of peril or in response to tragedy do for us? Not instead of acting in the world, but in support of acting in the world? Declaring a fast after a terrible event like the school shooting in Uvalde, TX, might have been a powerful way of standing in solidarity, taking on some of the suffering, making a statement about the seriousness of what happened and the need for our society to reexamine its values. Standing in protest, in witness, in solidarity. In other words, a communal fast (and fast might be from food, or speech, or something else) could be a kind of powerful, visible protest, and could also give a sense of empowerment and agency to all of us who grieve at the news and then don’t know what to do.

So this is what I’m thinking about these days. And here is a first conversation about it, held during our Ner Shalom Tikkun Leyl Shavuot, June 4, 2022. I invite you to watch it (less than an hour!). A lively conversation among serious people. Even exploring ACTUP protests of the 1990s as spiritual practice.

Be sure to send me your thoughts about how a modern retooling of such a practice might look and land for you.