My Experience Fasting for 48 Hours on the 9th and 10th of Av

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fast began at 8:30pm on Saturday (7/17) and ended at 9:00pm on Monday (7/19)

My Experience Fasting for 48 Hours on the 9th and 10th of Av

I’ve been doing intermittent fasting all year, for health and for energy. I generally fast between 17-19 hours each weekday. “Fasting” in this context means not consuming any calories. I still drink water, coffee, and tea. I had never fasted longer than the standard 25 hour taanis (fast) on Yom ha’Kippurim and Tishah b’Av, but after learning about the health benefits of fasting for 48 hours, I decided to give it a try this year. My plan was to break my Tishah b’Av fast on water and tea, then continue fasting until at least the next morning, if not longer.

In my mind, this extension of my fast had nothing to do with halacha. I figured that since I was drinking fluids, then this wouldn’t count as a halachic taanis. That is, until I saw this Tur (Orach Chayim 558):

It was taught in a Baraisa: "On the 7th of Av the gentiles entered the Sanctuary. They ate and drank and wreaked havoc on the 8th and the 9th until late in the day. Towards the evening they lit a fire in it, and it burned until sunset of the 10th." R' Yochanan said: "If I were there, I would have established [the commemoration] on the 10th, when the majority of the Sanctuary burned." It says in the Yerushalmi that R’ Avin fasted on the 9th and the 10th, [whereas] R' Levi fasted on the 9th and the night of the 10th because he didn't have the energy to fast for the entire night and day of the 10th. Nowadays, our energy has waned, and even Yom ha'Kippurim, which would be proper to observe out of safek (doubt) for two days, we are unable to do. Nevertheless, it is a proper minhag to not eat meat on the night of the 10th and the day of the 10th, but only what restores the soul, which is partial inui (affliction).

It is clear from the Yerushalmi that fasting on the 10th of Av is an ideal to strive for, since that’s when the majority of the Sanctuary was burned. The Ramban (Moed Katan 28b) explains that these Amoraim extended their fasts as a minhag chasidus (a custom of piety), and that “the more one mourns over Yerushalayim, the more meritorious it is for him.” Even a partial fast would count for something, as we see from R’ Levi’s fast on the night of the 10th.

Less clear, however, is the scope of the “proper minhag” mentioned by the Tur at the end. According to the Taz’s explanation of the Tur, the minhag is to refrain specifically from meat – a food associated with simchah (rejoicing) – but there is no kiyum (halachic fulfillment) whatsoever of abstaining from other types of food. According to the Bach, the Tur’s minhag is to refrain from eating even non-meat food, except for “that which restores the soul,” since this abstention constitutes “partial inui.” Thus, according to the Bach, my extended fast would constitute a kiyum in “fasting on the 10th of Av,” despite my consumption of liquids. If abstaining from non-restorative food is a kiyum because it produces inui, then kal va’chomer abstaining from all food!

But then I asked myself whether my fast really did fulfill the minhag. After all, I was doing this for health reasons, not as an expression of mourning, which – according to the Ramban – is what makes this fasting meritorious. In an effort to “legitimize my fasting,” I spent all morning and afternoon learning through the relevant sources to understand the purpose of what I was doing. I made it my mission to find an idea worthy of writing up as an article. The result? I learned a lot, but I didn’t find anything that I deemed profound enough for even a one-page article.

I was about to give up on the search and the article when I realized that this health-motivated 48-hour fasting experiment fit right into my goal of prolonging reflection on the ideas of Tishah b’Av beyond the demands of halacha. Indeed, my observance of this minhag caused me to spend an extra day learning about Tishah b’Av! What began as a non-halachic health experiment became a she’lo lishmah observance of a real minhag (at least, according to the Bach). This might not have yielded transformative insight this year, but it will certainly pave the way for such insight in the future. This is yet another example of “a person should always learn Torah even she’lo lishmah, because from she’lo lishmah one will come to lishmah” (Midrash Eichah Hakdamah 2). And that is a win in my book.

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If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail.com. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you. 

If you would like to sponsor an article, shiur, or podcast episode, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone. 

Be sure to check out my YouTube channel and my podcasts: "The Mishlei Podcast", "The Stoic Jew" Podcast, "Rambam Bekius" Podcast, "Machshavah Lab" Podcast, "The Tefilah Podcast"  For the full guide to all of my Torah content, click here. 

The Tenth of Av, Seven Haftaros of Consolation, and Life After the Pain

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The Tenth of Av,  Seven Haftaros of Consolation, and Life After the Pain

Every year, after Tishah b’Av is over, I find myself eager to just put it all behind me and get on with enjoying my summer. (To be honest, I think some of this attitude is residual “halachic resentment” from when my friends and I followed a psak which prohibited almost all social gatherings of more than two people; suffice it to say, that put a dent into my summer vacation.) It’s always a drag to break the fast after Tishah b’Av and still be bound by many of the prohibitions of the Nine Days until midday on the Tenth of Av.

This year, however, I am going to attempt to relate to the Tenth of Av differently. Tara Brach’s book, Radical Compassion, is about the mindfulness practice of RAIN: an acronym for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture. There is a fifth step called “after the RAIN,” which she describes as follows:

The four steps of RAIN involve active ways of directing our attention. In After the RAIN, we shift from doing to being. The invitation is to relax and let go into the heartspace that has emerged. Rest in this awareness and become familiar with it; this is your true home. Now, paying attention to the quality of your presence – the openness, wakefulness, tenderness – ask yourself: “In these moments, what is the sense of my being, of who I am?” “How has this shifted from when I began the meditation?”

There are examples of “after the rain” type practices in halacha as well, most notably in tefilah:

And he should not make his tefilah like one who is carrying a burden who casts it off and goes on his way. Therefore, he must sit for a little while after tefilah, and only then may he depart. The early pious Sages would pause for an hour before tefilah, and an hour after tefilah, and they would extend tefilah for an hour. (Rambam: Hilchos Tefilah 4:16)

What are we supposed to do during this post-tefilah “pause”? Presumably, we engage in a process akin to what Tara describes: to reflect on what transpired during our davening, to allow our thoughts and feelings to integrate the effects of our tefilah, and to prepare to reenter life enlightened by the experience.

We observe mourning practices of the Tenth of Av because the Beis ha’Mikdash continued to burn. On a basic level, turning away from our metaphysical trauma and running back to our normal lives would reflect a callous attitude towards the tragedies of Tishah b’Av and their implications. Imagine someone in the middle of a commemorative ceremony at Auschwitz saying, “Sorry, I gotta go. I have tickets to the new Marvel movie, and it’s starting in an hour.” The extension of mourning protects us from this insensitivity.

However, I would like to suggest that the extension of our mourning into the Tenth of Av can function as an “After the RAIN” pause – a time when we can sit in the aftermath of our painful reflections and our national teshuvah and reflect on how to reenter our lives in light of these transformative three weeks.

This function is also served by the Sheva d’Nechamta – the seven haftaros of consolation we read between Tishah b’Av and Rosh ha’Shanah. I haven’t learned these haftaros in-depth, nor have I learned about why we read them, but I know one thing for certain: if we took the messages of these haftaros to heart, then we would not simply cease thinking about the Three Weeks, the Nine Days, and Tishah b’Av at midday on the Tenth, and then return to our lives. Instead, we would utilize this period of seven weeks to build a bridge from our metaphysical trauma and subsequent teshuvah, through the remaining summer months, until the Moadim of Tishrei. I don’t know exactly what this bridge is supposed to look like, but I’m sure that if it’s done correctly, the experience will be transformative. I’d like to give it my best shot.

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If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle/Chase QuickPay and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail.com. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you. 

If you would like to sponsor an article, shiur, or podcast episode, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone. 

Be sure to check out my YouTube channel and my podcasts: "The Mishlei Podcast", "The Stoic Jew" Podcast, "Rambam Bekius" Podcast, "Machshavah Lab" Podcast, "The Tefilah Podcast"  For the full guide to all of my Torah content, click here. 

The Induction of Metaphysical Trauma

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The Induction of Metaphysical Trauma

This morning I read the following idea from Rav Soloveitchik about the uniquely Jewish phenomenon of aveilus yeshanah (mourning a past tragedy), as opposed to aveilus chadashah (mourning a present loss):

A Jew lives with a unique time consciousness. He experiences time not in the standard tripartite division of past, present, and future; rather, all three dimensions converge into a single integrated existence. This unique orientation toward time enables a Jew to pre-experience events of the distant future and to relive occurrences of the ostensibly dead past … A Jew has the unique capacity to relive past tragedies and to experience them anew as if the wounds were still fresh. As a result, the abiding sentiments of grief, the resulting sense of void, and the hopeless feelings of groping in the dark are felt just as powerfully when mourning for past events.

I am in the middle of reading The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. One of the key characteristics of trauma is the reexperiencing of past events as though they are happening in the present. Van der Kolk writes: “Long after the actual event has passed, the brain may keep sending signals to the body to escape a threat that no longer exists.”

In this sense, aveilus yeshanah is metaphysical trauma. It is “trauma” in that it is a reexperiencing of a painful event from the remote past as though it were happening in the present. It is “metaphysical” in that its aim is the perfection of the soul, as opposed to psychological or neurological functions. This aim is reflected in the Rambam’s statement about the purpose of all national fast days in Hilchos Taaniyos 5:1:

There are days on which all of Israel fasts because of the catastrophes that occurred on them, in order to awaken the hearts [of the people] and to open the paths of teshuvah (repentance). This will be a remembrance of our corrupt actions and the corrupt actions of our fathers that were like our actions today, which ultimately reached the point that [these corrupt actions] caused these catastrophes for them and for us. Through the remembrance of these matters we will return to do good, as it stated: “they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers” (Vayikra 26:40).

This Rambam underscores a key point: the metaphysical trauma of aveilus yeshanah must be artificially induced. In aveilus chadashah, which is triggered by the death of a close relative, grief is a natural reaction which is then harnessed and directed within the framework of the laws of mourning. In aveilus yeshanah, the natural reaction of grief is no longer extant; the catastrophic events we mourn happened so long ago that they have faded from our national consciousness. Instead, the mourning customs and laws we observe during The Three Weeks, The Nine Days, and Tishah b’Av are designed to awaken, generate, and cultivate a sense of tragic loss. It is from those “abiding sentiments of grief, the resulting sense of void, and the hopeless feelings of groping in the dark” that the real work of national teshuvah can begin.

This is another feature which makes aveilus yeshanah a uniquely Jewish phenomenon. The world views trauma in an entirely negative light. Trauma is something to be avoided or gotten rid of at any cost. Who in their right mind would seek out trauma? Ironically, the answer is: one who seeks to be in their right mind. Only the Jew, who lives not for the body but for the soul, will artificially induce a painful state of trauma each year for the sake of teshuvah. Only the Jew sees teshuvah as essential for the life of mind.

[1] excerpted from the Reshimot of Rabbi Menachem Genack in the appendix of The Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinot

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If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle/Chase QuickPay and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail.com. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you. 

If you would like to sponsor an article, shiur, or podcast episode, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone. 

Be sure to check out my YouTube channel and my podcasts: "The Mishlei Podcast", "The Stoic Jew" Podcast, "Rambam Bekius" Podcast, "Machshavah Lab" Podcast, "The Tefilah Podcast"  For the full guide to all of my Torah content, click here. 

A Halachic Response to the Murder of Naftali, Gilad, and Eyal

On June 12th, three Israeli boys went missing: Naftali Frenkel and Gilad Shaar, both aged 16, and 19-year-old Eyal Yifrach. They were kidnapped while hitchhiking for a ride home - allegedly by Hamas operatives. For three weeks Israel searched in vain for the captives.

Today we received the terrible news that the bodies of the three boys were found in a shallow grave near Hebron. The precise details surrounding their murder are not fully known. The Jewish people are in a state of shock, mourning, and rage. The world waits with bated breath to see what Israel will do to avenge the loss of its sons.

It is especially at times like these that we must look to halacha for guidance. Rambam writes in Hilchos Avel 13:12: 

Any person who does not mourn as the Sages commanded is achzari (lit. "cruel" or "indifferent"). Rather, he should be fearful and worried and should examine his deeds and return in teshuvah (repentance). If a member of one's chavurah (social group) dies, the entire chavurah should worry [in the aforementioned manner]. 

For the first three days, one should see himself as though a sword is resting on his shoulder. From three days until seven days, [he should view it as though the sword is] waiting in the corner. From then and on, [he should view it as though the sword is] passing before him in the marketplace. All of this is so that a person should prepare himself to return [in teshuvah] and awaken from his slumber, for it is written, "You have stricken them, but they have not felt sickened" (Yirmiyahu 5:3). The implication is that one should awaken and tremble.

While we may not have known these boys personally, the overwhelming outcry of the Jewish people around the world during the search is evidence of how many people identified with their plight. To the extent that their death impacts us, this halacha applies. 

A question one might harbor but be hesitant to ask is: "What kind of teshuvah am I supposed to do? I mean, is halacha suggesting that I react to the deaths of our fellow Jews by increasing my vigilance in lighting Shabbos candles? Should I take it upon myself to learn extra mishnayos each day? Should I start keeping cholov Yisrael? Should I stop relying on the local eiruv? Should I stop watching rated-R movies?" 

While it is true that all teshuvah is good at any time, I'm not quite sure that the aforementioned examples of teshuvah are what Hilchos Avel 13:12 is referring to. Rather, the type of teshuvah that the halacha is talking about is clear from the context of the pasuk cited by the Rambam: 

Walk about in the streets of Yerushalayim, see now and know, and search out its plazas; if you will find a [real] man - if there is one who does justice and seeks truth - then I will forgive her (i.e. the city of Yerushalayim). And even if they say, "[I swear,] as Hashem lives!" they will surely be swearing falsely. Hashem, are Your eyes not toward truth? You have stricken them, but they have not felt sickened; You have [nearly] annihilated them, but they have refused to accept discipline. They made their countenances harder than rock; they refused to repent (Yirmiyahu 5:1-3).

Doing justice and seeking truth - these are the personal qualities that the navi urges us to cultivate through our teshuvah in the wake of tragedies like these. When our brethren are slaughtered by evildoers, and halacha urges us to worry about our deeds, to awaken ourselves from egocentric slumber of complacency, and to tremble in self-reflection which leads to teshuvah, it is with the goal of becoming "a [real] man - one who does justice and seeks truth." 

To reiterate: it is certainly appropriate to do teshuvah for all of our actions which can be corrected - from the most major aveiros (transgressions) to the smallest halachic minutiae. However, if the ultimate extent of our teshuvah is merely a renewed commitment to the observance of technical halacha, but our inner orientation towards truth and justice remain unchanged, then we have missed the point. Yeshayahu ha'Navi condemns this surface-level "token teshuvah" again and again:

They pretend to seek Me every day and desire to know My ways, like a nation that acts righteously and has not forsaken the justice of its God; they inquire of Me about the laws of justice as if they desire the nearness of God, [asking,] "Why did we fast and You did not see? Why did we afflict our souls and You did not know?" Behold - on your fast day you seek out personal gain and you extort all your debts. Because you fast for grievance and strife, to strike [each other] with a wicked fist; you do not fast as befits this day, to make your voice heard above. Can such be the fast I choose, a day when man merely afflicts himself? Can it be merely bowing one's head like a bulrush and spreading [a mattress of] sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast and a day of favor to Hashem? Surely, this is the fast I choose: To break open the shackles of wickedness, to undo the bonds of injustice, and to let the oppressed go free, and annul all perversion [of justice]. Surely you should break your bread for the hungry, and bring the moaning poor [to your home]; when you see a naked person, clothe him; and do not hide yourself from your kin. Then your light will burst out like the dawn and your healing will speedily sprout; your righteous deed will precede you and the glory of Hashem will gather you in. Then you will call and Hashem will respond; you will cry out and He will say, "Here I am!" If you remove from your midst perversion [of justice], finger-pointing, and evil speech, and offer your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul; then your light will shine [even] in the darkness, and your deepest gloom will be like the noon.

Do justice, and seek truth. Nothing can undo the horrific tragedy that has transpired, but if we - as a people - move past this event unchanged, then the deaths of Naftali, Gilad, and Eyal will have been in vain. 

May their souls rest in peace, and may our neshamos have an aliyah.

Baruch Dayan ha'Emes. Hashem yikom damam.

Blessed is the True Judge. May Hashem avenge their blood.