Trutharchivist

So, well, I said 40 days and 40 days have passed! Thus, I'm obligated to make another entry in my Jewish Holidays posts - this time, though, it's the first fast day in our list. One note, though: in the chronology of the events that led to creating those fast days - the siege on Jerusalem and its destruction by invading forces twice - this is actually the second fast day, the one about breaching the walls. I'll get to it in a minute.

So, why forty days from Shavuot? You probably didn't ask yourselves. Well, I don't care, I'm going to answer it anyway! You see, right after the Mt. Sinai Event, Moshe went up to the mountain and stayed there for forty days and forty nights, learning the Torah from G-d. And during the last day... Well... Down in the camp, the Israelites made the Golden Calf. And since tradition says Shavuot was the day of the Mt. Sinai Event, it also says that tomorrow - Yud-Zain b'Tamuz, the 17th of the month of Tamuz - was the day the Calf was made. So, in a way, the other events for which we mourn during this day are said to stem from this event. I'm not sure whether I need to elaborate on what the Golden Calf was? Basically, forty days after being told not to worship false idols, the Israelites forced Aharon to take their gold and make an idol of it! Then the next day Moshe was told to get down from the mountain because his people have sinned, he prayed for G-d to forgive them, then he went down, and seeing the Israelites worship the Calf he threw the Tablets of the Covenant on the ground, destroying them. He then destroyed the Golden Calf and was basically very angry at the people of Israel - though he still kept praying for G-d not to abandon them. That's the extremely shortened version. So now, let's fast forward to why this day was made a fast day.

They year is somewhere around 70 to the yet-to-be-created Christian calendar, about 3830 to the Jewish count. Jerusalem has been under siege by the Romans for some time now, and lately some idiots inside burned the provisions. There is infighting in the city, hunger, and the state isn't good. Then the Romans, led by Titus (who would later become a Caesar) successfully breach the walls. It... Didn't make things any better. It took the Romans three weeks to completely conquer the city and burn down the Second Temple.

But wait a minute, I hear you ask, why did the Romans come over in the first place? Well, the latest Roman governors in Provincia Judea were greedy, and the Jews in the area didn't like their rule for a couple of reasons. So, some of them decided to rebel: they murdered the Roman governor and prepared for the battle with the Romans, who inevitably sent their forces to quiet down the rebellion.

Most of what known to historians about this period comes from a Jew named Flavius Josephus, who belonged to one sect of the rebels but later joined the Romans. Oh, yeah, the rebels had multiple sects, each one with a different idea about what they're trying to accomplish. To add to that, there were many sects in Jerusalem who resisted the rebellion in the first place - it was one of the more militant groups that burned the food, though. Anyway, Josephus lived and wrote in Rome, so his writings did go through some censorship, probably.

Anyway, maybe I'll go over the siege of Jerusalem in more detail for Tisha b'Av in three weeks - the fast day for the burning of the Temple. For now - more random points:

During the days of the First Temple, the Babillonians breached the walls about a week earlier - at the ninth of Tamuz (according to the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible). We don't fast that day now, though, either because the Second Destruction was more recent and generally worse, or because we assume the people back then made a mistake counting and breaching the walls happened at the 17th back then, too. 

There are two more events said to have happened at this day: one, the Tamid (lit. Always) sacrifice, two lambs sacrificed each day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon-evening (before sunset), was stopped - either during the very same siege of Jerusalem, or during another siege, when two brothers of the Hasmonean dynasty fought one another. The other is when someone named Aposthmos burned the Torah - he probably was a Seleucid or a Roman.

So, this is a fast day. What does it mean? It means we don't eat or drink from sunrise to sunset - though there are two fast days that starts at sunset like other Jewish holidays, those also have different rules to them. There are also changes to the daily prayers, including a reading of the Torah at both the morning and afternoon prayers, reading from the Prophets (specifically, in this case, Isaiah) during the afternoon prayer and a few additions to the morning prayers called Selikhot, lit. Apologies.

During a fast day, we are supposed to reflect and repent what sins we might have committed, be they against G-d or each other. There is an idea in Judaism, that if the Temple wasn't yet rebuilt and salvation didn't come yet, it means we are just as sinful as our ancestors from the time of the Temple's destruction. The Sages say that the Second Temple was destroyed due to Jews hating each other and fighting among ourselves (which is probably also true practically, and not only in the religious sense). So, a few generations ago a Jewish Rabbi named Rav Kook said that (inaccurate translation, but as much as I can manage): "if we were destroyed, and the world destroyed with as, for unreasonable hatred - we shall rebuild, and the world with us, by unreasonable love." Honestly, I have no idea how to translate it any better.

Anyway, may the Temple be rebuilt swiftly, during our days, amen. Thank you for reading, and have a good day! To the Jews among you, fast well!

(Waiting for an inevitable message from a Jew who doesn't fast.)