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Our ancestors fasted when the rains were running late.
Tisha B’Av, coming up in a few weeks, might be a cautionary tale. This is what destruction looks like. This is what it looks like when there’s nothing left to be done. But the 17th of Tammuz is a blueprint for possibility. “Do something now,” it seems to tell us. Fast. Plead. It’s not too late. It’s not over yet.
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A story from the Book of Judges about an angel prophesying the miraculous birth of a child, and the unnamed woman who was to be Samson's mother.
Read moreOur ancestors had practices that they engaged in in times of peril and plague. 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? Standing in protest, in witness, in solidarity. And giving a sense of empowerment and agency to all of us who grieve at the news and then don’t know what to do.
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If there is some balance between human and nature, and between human and Divine, that’s represented in the Book of Leviticus, then these terrible consequences are not a doling out of punishment, but the natural outcome of letting the delicate balance fail. We understand this now, in a new way, in this time we live in where every year we wonder if the sky will be like iron and the earth like copper.
Read moreA little about what Torah, time, and community might mean.
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