Daily Talk
A town has fasted its way through thirteen decreed days and the rain has still not come. The court has one obvious move left and the Rambam forbids it. There is no fourteenth fast, and once the spring has passed even the scholars stop, because rain arriving then would be a sign of a curse. Why should there be a ceiling on asking?
Thirteen and Not One More
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About This Talk
Chapter 3 lays out the graded series of fasts decreed when no rain has descended from the beginning of the rainy season, opening on the seventeenth of Marcheshvan with three fasts the Torah scholars accept upon themselves without any decree and without the town being told, moving on Rosh Chodesh Kislev to three communal fasts on which eating is permitted at night, and then to three more on which the eating stops while it is still day in the manner of Yom Kippur and work, hot bathing, anointing, relations and shoes in the city are all forbidden. If those pass unanswered the court decrees seven more, and only on these are the trumpets sounded, prayer moved into the street, an elder called to admonish the people, six blessings added so that twenty-four are recited, and the stores closed, with the Thursday exception that still lets a town buy food in honor of the Sabbath. Thirteen is the ceiling and no further communal fast is decreed for rain, after which the response is not more fasting but a smaller life, reducing commerce and joyful building and myrtle planting and marriages except for the man who has not yet had children, until the scholars alone carry the fasts to the end of Nisan and then stop, because rain descending in that season would be a sign of a curse rather than an answer.