You’re supposed to FAST on New Years’s Eve?

With Hanukkah over for another year, we can get back to random Faithhacker rantings about non-holiday topics.  At least until later this week, when we’ll all be celebrating the Tenth of Tevet, of course…

What? 

What’s that, you say?  You mean you’ve never heard of the Tenth of Tevet?

Me neither, until now.

But it would seem that while the rest of the world is getting rested up for a night of New Years Eve-ing, observant Jews will be fasting on December 31 (beginning at sundown December 30).  Because we were oppressed (no surprise there). 

Specifically, this holiday commemorates Babylonia’s siege of Jerusalem in 589 BCE, and (as a result) the first destruction of the Temple.  But I find myself reading about the siege, and the ensuing famine… and thinking about… other things.  About Iraq. 

'The essential significance of the fast of the Teth of Tevet, as well as that of the other fast days, is not primarily the grief and mourning which they evoke. Their aim is rather to awaken the hearts towards repentance; to recall to us, both the evil deeds of our fathers, and our own evil deeds, which caused anguish to befall both them and us and thereby to cause us to return towards the good. As it is said (Vayikra 26): 'And they shall confess their transgressions and the transgressions of their fathers.' (Rambam: Hilchot Ta'anit Chapter 5).

Now, I don’t know if I’m going to fast on December 31 (I doubt it, as I’m knocked up right now) but considering the state of our world… this is worth thinking about… our own "deeds" and our own complicity.  We all cause suffering, and we all suffer.