Daily Talk
The Rambam has a word for the person who looks at famine, plague or a collapsing wall and says that these things happen. He does not call it rational, or measured, or sober. He calls it cruel. What is cruel about explaining a disaster correctly?
The Cruelty of Calling It Chance
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About This Talk
Chapter 1 opens Hilchot Ta'aniyot with a positive commandment of the Torah, to cry out and sound trumpets over any trouble that falls on the community, and with the reason: the crying out is one of the paths of repentance, because a community that sounds an alarm has already admitted that the trouble is addressed to it. The Rambam then builds the practice around that admission, ordaining fasts that run Monday, Thursday and Monday, guarding the Sabbath and the festivals while carving out the city under siege and the ship going down at sea, exempting pregnant women, nursing women and children, and requiring that a private fast be accepted aloud the afternoon before it begins. It closes with the two hours that decide everything, ruling that a community whose prayer is answered before noon must stop fasting and eat so that the Great Hallel can be said on a full stomach, and describing the court sitting in the synagogue all morning examining the conduct of the city while the fast is still running.