Tisha b'Av

Last week when my rabbi and I met, he asked me if I fast for Tisha b'Av. (I forget how this came up. It wasn't him being nosy.) I said "not any more" and explained my reasons (I wrote about this a few months ago). He agrees with me about (not) mourning the Temple but he sees it as broader than that, a day when we commemorate all of the calamities that have happened through the years. (Though the Shoah, the Holocaust, has its own day.) I thought about that, but I ended up deciding that I can appropriately commemorate the day without necessarily "afflicting myself" in the prescribed manner. I will give it more thought before next year.

My rabbi told me that he didn't fast on this day and then one year, completely by accident, he found he had gone most of the day without eating so he decided to finish it. Since then he has done a proper 25-hour fast every year.

( services and stuff )

One thing that stood out in today's services is the amount of petitionary prayer. Most of our prayer, most of the time, is not especially petitionary; this stood out as different. One of the topics in my queue is the problems of a God who intervenes in individual affairs, so maybe I'll tackle that soon now that I've gone and brought it up. But not tonight.

how involved is God?

Well, all right. Maybe I will write more tonight. (I was going to watch West Wing, but Dani has already gone to sleep.)

I suspect that most people who believe in God believe in a God who intervenes, who (potentially) responds to individual prayer, who involves himself at least a little bit in each person's life. I'm not really any different here except to the extent that we might differ in degree. But there are problems with believing this.

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