גדליהו בן אחיקם

In the year 3339 (roughly 422 BCE by the traditional reckoning), barely two months after the First Temple in Jerusalem was burned by Babylon and most of the nation had been marched into exile, only a thin remnant of vinedressers and farmers was left in the land. Over them Nebuzaradan, Nebuchadnezzar's captain of the guard, appointed one man: Gedaliah ben Achikam (II Kings 25:22). And precisely during the Days of Awe, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, that last ember was snuffed out too. For this we still fast on the 3rd of Tishrei.

Gedaliah did not come from nowhere. His father Achikam, and before him his grandfather Shafan the royal scribe, belonged to the God-fearing officials of King Josiah's court (II Kings 22). It was Achikam who shielded the prophet Jeremiah and saved him from death (Jeremiah 26:24). From such a house Gedaliah came, which is why both the Babylonians and the prophet entrusted him with what was left of the nation.

From Mizpah in the territory of Benjamin, Gedaliah called the refugees who had fled to Moab, Ammon and Edom to come home. His message was one of quiet hope: 'do not fear to serve the Chaldeans; dwell in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and it will be well with you' (Jeremiah 40:9). And they returned, and gathered wine and summer fruit in great abundance (40:12). In the darkness after the destruction, Gedaliah lit a small candle of a new beginning.

Here the hope shatters. Yochanan ben Kareach came secretly and warned him: Baalis, king of Ammon, had sent Yishmael ben Netanyah, a man of royal blood, to kill him. Yochanan even asked permission to strike Yishmael down first, quietly, and Gedaliah refused: 'you speak falsely of Yishmael' (Jeremiah 40:13-16). He would not believe evil of a fellow Jew. In the seventh month Yishmael came with ten men, ate bread at his table, then rose and murdered him, together with the Jews and the Chaldean soldiers with him, and even eighty innocent pilgrims who had come toward the ruined Temple (Jeremiah 41).

After the murder the remnant was gripped by terror that Babylon would take revenge. Against Jeremiah's explicit prophecy, 'do not go to Egypt,' Yochanan ben Kareach and the people went down to Egypt anyway, dragging the prophet Jeremiah himself along against his will (Jeremiah 42-43). And so, by our own hand, the door was shut on Jewish life in the land after the first destruction.

Why did the Sages set a fast for the death of one man, alongside the fasts for the destruction itself? Because 'the death of the righteous is weighed like the burning of the House of our God' (Rosh Hashanah 18b). The Fast of Gedaliah, tucked inside the Ten Days of Repentance, is not only mourning for a leader but an alarm: when a Jew raises a hand against a Jew, a Temple is destroyed in miniature. And Gedaliah's own great innocence, his refusal to suspect, teaches that some trust carries a heavy price, and that caution is not a sin. To this day, each year as we fast on the 3rd of Tishrei, we remember that redemption can begin with a small candle, and that baseless hatred can blow it out.