We fast in memory of the disaster of Jew against Jew violence. It always leads to disaster.
Good morning. Now for a quick Torah.
As we know, there are certain days on the Jewish calendar when we fast. The most famous, of course, is Yom Kippur, the biblical fast that we will observe shortly. There is also the Fast of Esther, whose background is connected to the events commemorated in the Book of Esther.
But there are four other fast days whose historical context tells a remarkable story. Taken together, they trace the destruction of Jewish sovereignty in the First Temple period.
The first is the Tenth of Tevet. This commemorates the day when the Babylonian army under Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem. It was the beginning of the end.
Next comes the Seventeenth of Tammuz, commemorating the breaching of Jerusalem’s walls. Again, the message was clear: the end was approaching.
Then comes Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av, the great day of national mourning on which we commemorate the destruction of both the First and Second Temples.
Finally, we come to the Fast of Gedaliah.
What are we fasting for?
After the destruction of the First Temple, the Babylonians exiled much of the Jewish leadership and many prominent Jews to Babylonia. But they did not completely empty the land. A poor agricultural population remained in Judea.
Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah ben Ahikam as governor over those who remained. Gedaliah had an extraordinarily difficult job. On the one hand, he had to accept Babylonian rule. On the other hand, he was trying to rebuild what remained of Jewish society after an unimaginable national catastrophe.
Then came Ishmael ben Nethaniah.
Ishmael was of royal descent, and he apparently regarded Gedaliah’s leadership as unacceptable. According to the Book of Jeremiah, Ishmael’s plot was also connected with Baalis, the king of Ammon.
Gedaliah was warned. Johanan ben Kareah specifically told him that Ishmael intended to murder him. Gedaliah refused to believe the accusation.
Ishmael and his men eventually came to Gedaliah at Mizpah, where they ate together. Then Ishmael and his men rose up and murdered Gedaliah.
The consequences were catastrophic.
The surviving Jews feared Babylonian retaliation. Despite the prophet Jeremiah’s warning that they should remain in the land, many eventually fled to Egypt. The fragile Jewish community that had begun rebuilding after the destruction of Jerusalem was shattered.
And here is what makes the Fast of Gedaliah different.
The Babylonians destroyed the Temple. The Babylonians conquered Jerusalem. The Babylonians destroyed Jewish political independence.
But Gedaliah was murdered by another Jew.
That is why this fast carries such a powerful lesson about the danger of internal Jewish conflict. Even after an external enemy had devastated the country, there remained a possibility of rebuilding something. Internal violence helped destroy that possibility.
There is a lesson here that echoes throughout Jewish history.
Think about the Altalena affair during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. The Altalena was carrying weapons for the Irgun at a moment when the newly established State of Israel was fighting for its survival. A confrontation developed between Menachem Begin’s Irgun and David Ben-Gurion’s government over control and distribution of those weapons.
The confrontation became violent. Israeli forces fired on the Altalena, and the ship burned off the coast of Tel Aviv.
Begin’s followers wanted to fight back.
Begin refused.
Whatever his disagreements with Ben-Gurion—and they were enormous—Begin understood that there was something even more dangerous than losing that confrontation: a Jewish civil war.
He famously insisted that there would be no fratricidal war.
That is one of the great lessons of the Fast of Gedaliah.
We can disagree. We can argue passionately. Jews have been arguing with one another for thousands of years. But there is a line that cannot be crossed. When political disagreement becomes hatred and violence between Jews, history tells us that the consequences can be disastrous.
And perhaps it is no accident that the Fast of Gedaliah comes during the Ten Days of Repentance, immediately after Rosh Hashanah and before Yom Kippur.
Because Yom Kippur is not only about sins between ourselves and God. Before we can truly repair that relationship, we must confront the damage we have done to one another.
The Fast of Gedaliah reminds us that sometimes the greatest danger to a people does not come from the enemy outside.
Sometimes it comes from the divisions within.
Something to think about.
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