Tzom Gedaliah: Keeping the Momentum Going

So gala it's a bit unusual. We just had two days of rashash shana. Two days where we coronated Hashem. We proclaimed Hashem as our king. We scrutinize our own actions so that we could properly face the judgment. We're preparing for yum kipper. This is the period of the year of repentance and chuva. And now all of a sudden we have this Gdalia day stuck in here which is a fast day to commemorate the assassination of Gdalia who the Raam says was the last remaining hope for the Jewish people after the destruction of the first ba mikdash. That's part of a different cycle of the year. That's part of uh the cycle of the year of the three weeks. Why are we bringing this in during this particular time? In a nutshell there's a very valuable and important lesson over here. Had Gdalia not been assassinated and we would have had even a small remnant of Jews who remained in USA between the first Ba Mikdash and the second Ba Mikdash there would have been some continuity between Bayrishna and Bayeni then those 70 years would not have been a complete cut off from the first temple the second Bikdash period would have been very significant but it wasn't the second B mikdash pald in comparison to the first we didn't have the auron we didn't have the vatum we have the fire from we didn't have the we didn't have you know why because there was a severance there was a break there was a disconnect between what caused that disconnect the assassination of Gaya we just had two days of rashashana the momentum is going but don't lose the momentum because if we break that momentum we're going to have to start again on yum kipper and it will be very hard to recreate and then build upon what we accomplish on rashashana so we fast ongala to indicate we don't want to lose the momentum so that on we're not starting again but we're building on what we accomplished on rashash the purpose of gadalia is to remind us how important not to break the momentum is and therefore the takeaway perhaps is to try to be cognizant and focus during the days after rashash shana to do whatever we can to hold on to the commitments we made and the inspiration we had whether that's in the immediate aftermath of rashash shana being careful not to run back to all of the technology that we're sometimes so immersed in or whether that's trying to write down some of the uh cabalos we made on rashashana doing something to continue the momentum so that yum kipper is not a new start but building off what we accomplished on rashash shana wishing everyone