Monday, January 09, 2006

10 Tevet

Tomorrow is the fast of 10 Tevet, when Nebuchadnezzar's armies laid siege to Jerusalem. Today we are besieged in our own homes, wherever we are.

In September I posted:
As a followup to a previous post about fasts, I'm now declaring by fiat that (for American Jews) Tzom Gedaliah is dedicated to the rest of the world (outside the US and Israel), 10 Tevet to the US, 17 Tammuz to Israel, and 9 Av as the uber-fast that encompasses all of them.
Therefore, on this fast day, we mourn everything that is happening here at home, and seek to repent. Think of the 50 million Americans without health care, the 37 million living in poverty, the Gulf Coast residents who are still displaced from their homes four months after Katrina, and the society that allows this to happen.

3 comments:

  1. will you be fasting? I've never felt easy with fasting, but I could never find the proper bible verses to read to put me in the mood. does reading dailykos.com count?

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  2. I'm fasting. The fast day afternoon haftarah rocks my socks, but that's already in consolation mode. For the depressing stuff, I think the daily headlines (from Kos or elsewhere) are more than adequate.

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  3. You rock my socks.

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