Shiva Asar b'Tammuz in the Year of Our Redemption 5786

17 Tammuz 5786

The Fast of Shiva Asar b'Tammuz

[Excerpted from Parashat Balak and the 17th of Tammuz by Daniel Pinner]

...“Five things happened to our fathers on the 17th of Tammuz… The Tablets of Stone were smashed; the Tamid [the twice-daily Burnt-Offering of two sheep, one in the morning and one at dusk] was stopped; the city-walls [of Jerusalem] were breached; Apostomos burnt the Torah; and set up an idol in the Holy Temple” (Ta’anit 4:6).

This is the reason that the 17th of Tammuz has been ordained as a fast-day for the generations. 

...The first of these disasters, the smashing of the Tablets of Stone, happened when Moshe came down from Mount Sinai and saw the Jews worshipping the golden calf.

The second, the cessation of the Tamid sacrifice, happened both during the First Temple and the Second.

According to the Rambam (Laws of Fasts 5:2) and the Mishnah Berura (549:1), the Mishnah speaks of the Tamid having ceased in the First Temple, under the reign of Tzidkiyahu (Zedekiah), the last king of Judea, who was besieged by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar. “All the priests’ officers and the nation betrayed greatly, like all the abominations of the other nations, and they defiled the House of Hashem” (2 Chronicles 36:14). The Divine punishment was the invasion of Judea by the Babylonian army – and the rest is history.

According to Rabbi Ovadia of Bartenura, the Mishnah speaks of the Second Temple period, when there were no sheep to sacrifice when Jerusalem was besieged.

The Talmud describes the situation vividly: “When the Hasmonean kings fought against each other, Horkenos was outside [of Jerusalem besieging it], and Aristobolos was [besieged] within. Every day, [those inside the city] would send money out [and those outside would send sheep in; and those inside Jerusalem] would sacrifice [those sheep] for them as their Tamid offerings. There was a certain old man [inside Jerusalem] who knew Greek philosophy. He mocked them…telling those [who were outside]: As long as they occupy themselves with the Temple Service, they will never fall into your hands. The next day, when they sent their money out, they sent in a pig" (Sotah 49b, Baba Kama 82b, Menahot 64b).

Horkenos and Aristobolos were brothers, sons of King Alexander Yanai. Both claimed the throne, and led Israel into civil war. Horkenos, commanding the forces outside of Jerusalem, made a pact with the Romans, and a contingent of Roman soldiers collaborated with him in besieging Jerusalem. With the help of the Roman army, Horkenos eventually defeated his brother Aristobolos; Horkenos became king, the monarchy became incorrigibly corrupt and Roman control over Israel increased until the ultimate destruction of the Holy Temple.

The third disaster, the breaching of Jerusalem’s walls, occurred when Rome invaded in the Second Temple era, the result of a Jewish civil war.

(As Jeremiah 39:2 records, the Babylonian army breached the walls of Jerusalem on the 9th of Tammuz, which was commemorated as a day of mourning at the time. After the Romans breached the walls on the 17th, the two commemorations were combined.)

The fourth disaster, Apostomos’ burning of the Torah, occurred during the Greek-Hellenist occupation of Israel. The Tiferet Yisrael explains that Apostomos, the Greek ruler, burned the Sefer Torah which Ezra the Scribe had written, and which was kept in the Holy Temple. This Sefer Torah was the most accurate and reliable one in existence, and all others were copied from it – which is why its destruction was so catastrophic.

And the fifth disaster was the erection of an idol in the Temple. The Talmud (Yerushalmi Ta’anit 4:5) quotes two opinions. According to one, it was Apostomos who erected it upon conquering Jerusalem in the Hasmonean period (Second Temple); according to the other, the reference is to King Menashe, in the final century of the First Temple (2 Kings 21, 2 Chronicles 33).

The last four of these disasters reflect the sin of and punishment for the golden calf very clearly: they were violations of the Holy Temple and its sanctity. It is central to Judaism that our sins are always punished measure for measure, and these disasters were indeed appropriate punishments for the original sin of 17th Tammuz – the original perversion of worship of Hashem. For the fathers’ distortion of the Temple sacrifice, the sons were punished – on the same day, centuries and millennia later – by having the Temple sacrifice brutally ripped from them.

After forgiving the sin of the golden calf, God told Moshe: “Now go and lead the nation to where I have told you; behold – My angel will go before you. And on the day that I will remember, I will remember the sin for them” (Exodus 32:34). Rashi, based on a long narrative in Sanhedrin 102a, comments: “Currently I hearken to you, not to destroy them all together. But forever, forever, whenever I will remember their sins to them, I will exact from them part of the punishment for this sin, together with their other sins. And every punishment that ever comes upon Israel includes some of the punishment for the sin of the calf”.

The three-week period of mourning which the 17th of Tammuz ushers in concludes with the 9th of Av – the day which commemorates, among other disasters, the destruction of both Holy Temples and the fall of Beitar (Ta’anit 4:6).

The defeat of Israel by the Roman Empire began on 17th Tammuz when, after a four-year siege, four Roman legions (the Fifth, Twelfth, and Fifteenth to the west, and the Tenth on the Mount of Olives to the east), commanded by Titus (who nine years later would become Emperor of Rome) and his lieutenant, the renegade Jew Tiberius Julius Alexander, breached the First (innermost) Wall and captured the Antonia Fortress.

The defeat culminated with the destruction of the Holy Temple three weeks later, on the 9th of Av 3830 (70 C.E.).

But even then the Jews were not defeated, and continued fighting for their freedom for generations.

The final defeat only came on 9th of Av 3895 (135 C.E.). Bar Kochba’s forces retreated from Jerusalem to Beitar, a town in the foothills of Judea, 11 km (7 miles) south-west of Jerusalem, which became their final stand against the might and fury of Rome. 

😢

May Hashem consider our punishment fulfilled
and bring us swiftly to the Geulah Shleimah!!!