GETTING A BUZZ OUT OF JUDAISM In War and Peace, Tolstoy’s monumental chronicle of the Napoleonic wars, there is a remarkable description of Moscow just before Napoleon, at the climax of his invasion of Russia, enters the city. Moscow was empty. There were still people in the city - perhaps a fiftieth part of its inhabitants still remained - but it was empty. It was empty in the sense that a dying, queenless hive is empty. In a queenless hive no life is left, though to a superficial glance it seems as much alive as other hives. The bees circle about a queenless hive in the heat of the midday sun as gaily as about other living hives; from a distance it smells of honey like the others, and the bees fly in and out just the same. But one has only to give a careful look to realise that there is no longer any life in the hive. The bees do not fly in and out in the same way, the smell and sound that meet the bee-keeper are different. A tap on the wall of the sick hive and, instead of the instant, unanimous response, the buzzing of tens of thousands of bees threateningly lifting their stings and by the swift fanning of wings producing that whirring, living hum, the bee-keeper is greeted by an incoherent buzzing from odd corners of the deserted hive. From the alighting-board, instead of the former winy fragrance of honey and venom, and the breath of warmth from the multitudes within, comes an odour of emptiness and decay mingling with the scent of honey... Gone is the low, even hum, the throb of activity, like the singing of boiling water, and in its place is the fitful, discordant uproar of disorder... All is neglected and befouled. Black robber-bees prowl swiftly and stealthily about the combs in search of plunder; while the short-bodied, dried up home-bees, looking withered and old, languidly creep about, doing nothing to hinder the robbers, having lost all desire and all sense of life.... From here and there among the cells containing dead brood and honey comes an occasional angry buzz; here and there a couple of workers, faithful to old habits, are cleaning out the brood-cells, a task beyond their strength, laboriously dragging away dead bees or drones, without knowing why they do it... So in the same way was Moscow empty when Napoleon, weary, uneasy and morose, paced up and down by the Kamer-Kollezhsky rampart... In various odd corners of Moscow a few people still remained aimlessly moving about, following their old habits, with no understanding of what they were doing... Why the fast of Tevet? We are informed that, on the tenth of Tevet, the tyrannical Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar laid siege on Jerusalem. This was the beginning of the end for Jerusalem, but no momentous events took place on that day. It happened not hundreds, but thousands of years ago. Why do we still fast to remember this event? Tolstoy paints a picture of a city in the grip of its enemy. It has no life, no sense of purpose. A pall of despair, of submission to an inevitable catastrophe, of going through the motions of day-to-day life simply because one has always done so, blankets the city and extinguishes its vitality. Such a bleak mood will have descended on Jerusalem, two and a half thousand years ago, when its inhabitants beheld the ring of glittering Babylonian armour that clamped shut around them. The recollection of that atmosphere is the purpose of the Fast of Tevet. Since that first catastrophe, the Babylonian exile, the Jewish people have never fully recovered. Even the
Second Temple era was marred by politics and corruption, and the ensuing millennia of Diaspora have witnessed a persistent religious disorientation which has ravaged our ranks time and again. All too often, like the bees in the dying hive and like Moscow at the feet of Napoleon, we have performed our duty as Jews in a listless, mechanical way. All too often, like the besieged city of Jerusalem, our Judaism has been aimless and incoherent, languid and laborious. The fast of Tevet chides us for our siege mentality, and goads us to take heart. It directs us to the living hum, the throb of activity which characterise a true Jewish home and a true Jewish community. It encourages us to put our shoulders to the wheel of Torah study and communal responsibility. It inspires us to break the threatening ring of apathy and ignorance which hems us in as a people, and to rebuild the glory of Jerusalem in our own homes, by transforming them into bastions of happiness and sanctity.