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Rabba Sara Hurwitz

ON TZOM GEDALIAH (THE FAST OF GEDALIAH)

Although the Fast of Gedaliah memorializes the assassination of the Jewish governor by the same name, this fast day commemorates something far more tragic. The story of Gedaliah’s death is recounted at the end of the book of Kings, which completes the narrative of the biblical story of the Jewish people. In other words, the story of the Jewish nation begins at the end of Genesis, with Jacob taking his family down to Egypt, after he learned his son Joseph was still alive and living there, and ends in the book of Kings, with the Jewish people fleeing back to Egypt after the First Temple is destroyed by the Babylonians. Seen in this light, we are fasting not only for the death of one person, but for the tragic cyclical story of our nation—one that began and ended in Egypt—the symbol of our people’s destruction. But, just as the Jews were redeemed from Egypt the first time, each year, we pray for redemption: an everlasting, but ever-elusive, freedom from injustice and oppression.