The year was 586 BCE. The Babylonian Empire had just delivered a crushing blow to the ancient kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem lay in ruins, Solomon’s magnificent Temple reduced to rubble, and thousands of Jews had been marched off to exile in Babylon. It seemed like the end of Jewish civilization in the land of Israel.
But all hope was not lost. Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, appointed a Jewish governor named Gedaliah ben Ahikam to oversee the remnant that remained. It wasn’t independence, but it was something—a Jewish leader for Jewish people on Jewish soil. For those who had stayed behind among the “poorest of the land,” as the Bible describes them, Gedaliah represented a precious thread of continuity with their past and perhaps a bridge to their future.
Gedaliah set up his administration in Mizpah, just north of Jerusalem. He encouraged the scattered survivors to return and rebuild. “Do not be afraid to serve the Babylonians,” he urged them. “Settle in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and it will go well with you” (Jeremiah 40:9). Under his leadership, there was a brief renaissance. People began to cultivate the land again, gathering wine and summer fruit in abundance, and those who had fled to neighboring lands returned.
But not everyone was pleased with this arrangement. Ishmael ben Netaniah, a member of the royal family, had fled to the neighboring kingdom of Ammon during the Babylonian conquest. As a descendant of King David’s line, Ishmael felt that he—not Gedaliah—should be leading the Jewish remnant. His royal pride was wounded by seeing a commoner appointed to rule over what he considered his birthright. The Ammonite king, Baalis, saw an opportunity to eliminate any Jewish presence from the region entirely and played on Ishmael’s resentment, convincing him to assassinate Gedaliah.
Friends warned Gedaliah about the plot. Johanan ben Kareah, a devoted officer, came to him and warned the governor of the danger threatening his life. When Johanan offered to kill Ishmael secretly before he could carry out his evil plans, Gedaliah indignantly rejected the proposal.
Being of a true and generous nature, he shrank from believing such treachery was possible. Perhaps he couldn’t believe that a fellow Jew would betray not just him, but the last hope of their people. Perhaps he was simply too trusting. It was a fatal mistake—literally.
As the Hebrew Bible recounts in Jeremiah:
The assassination took place on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year—a time meant for renewal and hope. Instead, it became a day of betrayal and bloodshed.
The assassination was swift and brutal. But Ishmael wasn’t finished. He also killed the Jewish officials with Gedaliah and the Babylonian soldiers stationed there. The next day, before anyone knew what had happened, eighty men came from nearby cities to bring offerings to the destroyed Temple. Ishmael met them and massacred seventy of them, throwing their bodies into a cistern.
The remaining Jewish community was horrified and terrified. They assumed that when the Babylonians discovered their appointed governor had been murdered, there would be terrible retribution. In their fear, most of the survivors fled to Egypt, despite the prophet Jeremiah’s warnings that this would lead to their destruction.
With Gedaliah’s murder and the subsequent flight of the remaining Jews, the last vestige of Jewish self-governance in the land was destroyed. What the mighty Babylonian army had begun, a fellow Jew had completed. The small remnant that could have maintained some Jewish presence and continuity in the land was now scattered. For the next seventy years, until the return from Babylonian exile, the land that had been promised to Abraham, conquered by Joshua, and ruled by David and Solomon would lie largely desolate.
This is why we fast on Tzom Gedaliah (the fast of Gedaliah) on the day after Rosh Hashanah. It’s not just mourning for one man, however righteous. And it’s not only mourning a missed opportunity—a chance to maintain some Jewish foothold in the land. It is grief over internal betrayal and division at the very moment when unity was most desperately needed. The fast reminds us of a bitter truth: sometimes our greatest enemies aren’t the foreign armies at our gates, but the divisions and hatred within our own ranks.
Every generation faces its own version of Ishmael’s choice. When personal ambition conflicts with the greater good, when wounded pride whispers that we deserve better treatment, when jealousy tempts us to tear down what others have built—these are the moments that define us.
Ishmael had a choice. He could have swallowed his royal pride and worked alongside Gedaliah to rebuild their shattered community. He could have chosen the survival and prosperity of his people over his own wounded ego. Instead, he chose destruction over construction, personal grievance over collective hope, his own ambition over his people’s desperate need for unity.
The story of Gedaliah teaches us that civilizations aren’t destroyed by external enemies alone—they crumble when people choose their own narrow interests over the common good. When we allow pride, jealousy, and personal ambition to override our responsibility to something greater than ourselves, we become agents of destruction rather than builders of hope.
The fast of Gedaliah asks us to look honestly at the crossroads we face in our own lives. When we feel slighted, overlooked, or passed over, will we choose the path of Ishmael—tearing down what others have built because we feel we should be in charge? Or will we choose to serve something larger than our own egos, even when it requires humility and sacrifice?
In a world where it’s often easier to destroy than to create, where settling personal scores can feel more satisfying than building bridges, the memory of Gedaliah calls us to choose differently. It challenges us to be people who put the welfare of others before our own wounded feelings, who choose God’s path of righteousness over the seductive whisper of revenge and self-aggrandizement.
Ultimately, everyone faces the same choice: Will I build up or tear down? Will I serve the greater good or my own ego? Will I choose the path that leads to life and hope, or the one that leads to destruction and despair? The fast reminds us that these choices have consequences not just for us, but for everyone around us—and sometimes for generations to come.
