The Talmud study cycle recently finished an entire chapter on when it is appropriate to call for a public fast, including questions about when community leaders, like the king or high priest, should publicly fast.

(It was riveting to me as a Californian, because a lot of it hinges on determining when and how much to freak out if it hasn’t rained yet, and how much rain has to fall before you should stop freaking out.)

The rabbis’ surprising judgment was that the king should hardly ever fast publicly, because it would be too disturbing for his subjects to witness — “The king is fasting! We have sinned so badly we are all going to be smitten!” — and it does seem as if Samuel Sewall’s fast and apology agitated his neighbors quite a bit.

I don’t know enough about Puritan theology to know if they had a similar concept of how to ward off otherwise inevitable communal doom brought on by collective guilt. But his apology does sound to me like a warding-off ritual, like a recognition that the community has fucked up so badly that the heavenly judge is going to start smiting on a mass level if someone doesn’t publicly atone for their wrongness.

I also wonder if confessing that he was unable “to withstand the mysterious delusions of the power of darkness” had a different vibe in an era where Satan was widely believed to be real and when, in fact, all those hanged women were believed to be guilty of giving in to Satan’s temptations. Instead of evading responsibility, Sewall might have been seen as confessing to one of the most serious crimes his community recognized.