After a good break, we are back briefly to discussing the fasting. Again I am struck by the belief of fasting as an insurance policy for all things from sea and desert traveling to pregnancy and children's health. Though we previously discussed the reasons for no fasting on Friday and Shabbat (except for the strange exception of a bad dream), we now have an interesting sidebar about why there is no fasting on Sundays either. The answers essentially boil down to the following question: Is the no fasting on Sundays policy in response to other people (in this case early Christians) or is there a good internal reason for it?
How much of our practice is in response to something external verses as a result of something internal? Does it matter? It seems like it does. Our movement is often criticized for reacting to external factors instead of finding meaning internally. There seems to be a similar effort here, as the two word answer by R' Yohanan that we don't fast on Sundays b/c of the Notzrim is met with two other possibilities that seek to justify the practice from within our tradition.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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In addition, there seems to me good evidence to suggest that we celebrate Shavuot when we do primarily to distance ourselves from other interpretations of what 'mimacharat ha-shabbat' means. Certainly, according to the mishnah (I think) the big deal we make over aspects of the omer ceremony is explicitly to make clear that we are following one interpretation of that verse over another.
I wonder how much, in the end, it matters how we come to do what we do. Surely if our decisions are entirely outer-directed (we do this or that because others do not and le'hefech) we run the danger of having nothing of our own to fall back on. Similarly, if we simply pretend that outside forces should have not influence on us, or on our ability to seem different in a homogonizing world, we run the risk of living in a fantasy air-tight space.
No good answers here, but the Talmud (as always) raises the good questions.
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