The Three Weeks of mourning

We are now amidst “Bein Hamezarim” – the Three Weeks of mourning that extend from Tammuz 17 to Tisha b’Av when particularly amongst Ashkenazi communities certain restrictions apply to otherwise normal activity. Why mourn?

The Mishnah (Ta’anit 4:6) relates five events that took place on Tammuz 17 and a further five on Av 9.

Occurring exactly 40 days after Shavuot, Tammuz 17 was the date that Moses descended from the mountain, witnessed the worship of the golden calf and smashed the tablets bearing the word of God. Thus right from when Israel became a nation, Tammuz 17 symbolised rebellion and its consequences – a sin that has reverberated throughout the generations.
Just prior to the first (Babylonian) destruction, Tammuz 17 saw the temple service cease, owing to the absence of sacrificial animals in the besieged city. This foreshadowed the radical change in focus of Jewish worship to our contemporary format. At the time of the Roman siege, it was then that the city wall was breached, presaging the final three weeks of hand-to-hand fighting inside the city (as recorded by Jeremiah the Babylonian the siege began on Tammuz 9 but we are more concerned with the second siege as its impact is more long lasting). Earlier, a Greek officer named Apostomus had carried out the ultimate insult to Jewry by publicly burning a Sefer Torah (thereby also presaging antisemitic excesses for subsequent generations), following which an idol was placed in the temple.

Regarding Tisha b’Av, the five listed events span a similar though longer period. Upon the return of the spies sent to Canaan by Moses, the people cried. A heavenly voice decreed: “On this night you wept not wishing to enter the land. There will come a time when you will weep over being forced to leave it.”
Both temples were destroyed on this date – long before the arrival on the world scene of those who now claim (prior) ownership of their so clearly evident former location. Following the Roman destruction, the Bar Kochba rebellion led to destruction of the fortress of Betar with unbelievable loss of life. Then came the total destruction of the remnant of Jerusalem. It was ploughed over; only the Western Wall remaining as a symbol of the greatness since destroyed.

However whilst not all of these events are specifically Jerusalem related, there can be no doubt that our focus at this time is on Jerusalem whose walls were breached, Temples destroyed and population exiled. And in the current era when our title to Jerusalem is so frequently queried, therein lies the answer to those who seek to deny our connection to the city.

For make no bones about it. Sure, Jerusalem has spiritual significance and perhaps over millennia of exile many emphasised its status as a spiritual home over and above the reality of a physical city. But those Jerusalem-related events that lie at the crux of our mourning at this time (and indeed, year round) are absolutely related to a physical city destroyed by physical enemies. The exclamation “leshanah haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” recited at the holiest moments of Jewish life refers to the physical Yerushalayim that we seek be “b’nuyah – rebuilt” (a process  that as is obvious to all is actually occurring). Similarly the prayer repeated thrice daily (in the amidah central to each service) that the Divine presence should return to Jerusalem that should be rebuilt refers to the physical city on its original site. In his poem Jerusalem, English poet William Blake famously wrote:

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land.

But such was never the Jewish approach – there was and never can be a substitute for the real Jerusalem – a physical city on its original site steeped in sacred history. Maybe we couldn’t actually get there from faraway places in a far-flung Diaspora, maybe even if we were in physical proximity to it – whether in Roman times or after the Jordanian occupation – we couldn’t actually enter the city – but we always knew where we belonged.
No other religion or nationality can claim such an attachment. Neither of the major monotheistic religions even existed when during the exile that followed the First Destruction, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137).

And certainly no other religion or nationality since has even entertained the thought expressed later in that wish so often repeated even at our smachot such as weddings:

If I forget you Jerusalem

May I forget my right hand

May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth

If I ever do not think of you

If I do not raise up Jerusalem above my highest joy.

Having returned to our homeland and our Jerusalem, some query the place of the mourning of the Three Weeks in contemporary life. However the sad reality is that it still very definitely has a place. As once again Jerusalem is verbally and physically besieged by those seeking to deny our connection thereto; when Jews in its city streets face stabbings and other forms of physical attack; when even our so-called friends do not recognise our capital city as part of Israel; and when even our right to build in parts of the city is denied, we need to emphasise and reemphasise that contemporary Jerusalem (in its entirety) and the city we mourn, are one and the same, part of our lives and identity, for all eternity.

Shabbat shalom,
Yossi