Shalom from Jerusalem.
Today (Thursday) is the minor fast day of 17 Tammuz, a date which has a special resonance in this place and time. 17 Tammuz ushers in the three-week period leading up to the Fast of Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the Exile—from Jerusalem, from G-d, and from one another.
In truth, a great many Jews don’t observe the so-called “minor fasts” that are sprinkled throughout the Hebrew calendar. These days mark ancient calamities and, frankly, Jewish history has enough other tragedies to fill the entire year. Personally, when I’m in the U.S., I don’t typically fast on this day.
But Jerusalem does twisty things to my soul. When I’m in Jerusalem in the summer, these Three Weeks pack a lot of spiritual resonance for me. That’s what I’d like to share with you here.
According to the Mishnah, five calamities befell the Jewish people on this date in antiquity—events which serve as an overture to the dark dirge of Tisha B’Av:
חֲמִשָּׁה דְבָרִים אֵרְעוּ אֶת אֲבוֹתֵינוּ בְּשִׁבְעָה עָשָׂר בְּתַמּוּז וַחֲמִשָּׁה בְּתִשְׁעָה בְאָב
,בְּשִׁבְעָה עָשָׂר בְּתַמּוּז נִשְׁתַּבְּרוּ הַלּוּחוֹת
,וּבָטַל הַתָּמִיד
,וְהֻבְקְעָה הָעִיר
,וְשָׂרַף אַפּוֹסְטֹמוֹס אֶת הַתּוֹרָה
.הֶעֱמִיד צֶלֶם בַּהֵיכָל
On the 17th Day of Tammuz:
1. The Tablets were shattered by Moses [when he saw the Israelites had made the Golden Calf];
2. The daily offering in the Temple was cancelled [by the Romans in the buildup to the Temple’s destruction];
3. Jerusalem’s walls were breached [by the Roman legions];
4. The Roman general Apostomos publicly burned a Torah scroll;
5. An idol was place in the Sanctuary.
—Mishnah, Ta’anit 4:6
Each of these events is noteworthy as the launch-pad for deeper tragedies for the Jews, several of which took place three weeks later on the 9th of Av.
But here I’d like to focus on #1: The Rabbis consider this to be the date that Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the tablets in his arms, saw the Golden Calf and the Israelites dancing around it, and smashed the stones with the Ten Commandments to pieces.
Of the five items listed in the Mishnah, this one is an anomaly. Most of the events in this list occur later in history, at the end of the Second Temple period when Rabbinic Judaism was emerging. But #1, strangely, is a throwback to the era of Moses and the Torah.
Why would the Rabbis of the Mishnah link their recent tragedies—from which they were still reeling—to Moses’s story from the distant past?
The Torah relates that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Tablets of the Law in his arms, he was stunned to see the Israelites cavorting with the idol that they had compelled Aaron to make:
וַֽיְהִ֗י כַּאֲשֶׁ֤ר קָרַב֙ אֶל־הַֽמַּחֲנֶ֔ה וַיַּ֥רְא אֶת־הָעֵ֖גֶל וּמְחֹלֹ֑ת וַיִּֽחַר־אַ֣ף מֹשֶׁ֗ה
וַיַּשְׁלֵ֤ךְ מִיָּדָו֙ אֶת־הַלֻּחֹ֔ת וַיְשַׁבֵּ֥ר אֹתָ֖ם תַּ֥חַת הָהָֽר׃
As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing,
he became enraged; and he hurled the tablets from his hands and
shattered them at the foot of the mountain. (Exodus 32:19)
This cries out for interpretation. Even though we can understand Moses’s anguish, we must ask: How could Moses smash the Tablets? These were the words of G-d, inscribed by the finger of G-d and infused with holiness! It’s hard to imagine that, even in a fit of rage, Moses would treat the Tablets with disgust. (Think of our own internal reflexes, if a Torah scroll totters in our presence, to leap and make sure it doesn’t fall to the ground.) How could Moses do such a thing?
There are many commentaries on this, but here is my favorite: Moses didn’t carry the Tablets—the Tablets carried him. After all, Moses was an eighty-year-old man at this point in the story. Are we to imagine that he lugged weighty stone tablets from the mountain peak down to the base camp all by himself?!
No, says the Midrash: the letters—the writing of G-d—made the stones light as a feather. Their inherent holiness carried Moses along with the Tablets.
When those very letters saw the people cavorting with their idol, the letters peeled off the tablets and fled back to their divine Source. They had to: Holiness and the worship of gold don’t mix.
And with the letters gone from the tablets, suddenly Moses was holding the full weight of the stones. He didn’t exactly smash the tablets; it’s more like he lunged forward due to their new-found enormous weight and he couldn’t hold them anymore. They fell to the earth and shattered. (This midrash is found in Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer Chapter 45.)
It’s a good story, but there’s a deeper lesson going on here.
This midrash maintains that when people behave obscenely, then the Shekhinah, G-d’s intimate Presence, flees. So do her accoutrements, such as the letters on the tablets. Holiness can only blossom in the fertile soil of ethical living.
And that brings us right back to Jerusalem. The Second Temple, the Talmud teaches, was destroyed because even though the people followed the letter of the law, they treated one another with senseless hatred (sinnat chinam), and because no one—not the political leaders, nor the Rabbis, nor the Jews of the community—would stand up and counteract the hate. So the spirit flew back to G-d, and the Temple imploded. Because holiness can’t abide in the idolatrous atmosphere of hate.
The Rabbis saw the idolatry of the Golden Calf as the prelude to later apostasies in history: namely, when human hatred was so ever-present that people couldn’t see the Image of G-d in their neighbor. And they treated one another accordingly, leading to tragedy and Exile.
Jerusalem 2023. The city is as sublime as ever—it’s my favorite city in the world. The history, grandeur, and spiritual power of this place touch me as much as ever. But there is a weight that is evident in Jerusalem, too. Not far from the surface—the ancient explosiveness is still there.
There are deep tensions permeating Israeli society right now. Monstrous zealots and their enablers are running the government and given unprecedented power and authority. The West Bank is seething with violence—including the violence of Jewish radicals running amok, in tit-for-tat retribution with Palestinian extremists, burning vehicles and property. The very ideals of democracy are under attack.
Fortunately, there is also a huge swath of Israeli society that is determined not to allow the Zealots to bring down all that we’ve built. And so on Saturday night—as they have for the past six months—tens of thousands of demonstrators will take to the Israeli streets again, carrying Israeli flags and singing “Hatikvah.” This is no extremist gathering; it’s a patriotic display against zealotry and assaults on Israel’s democratic institutions, a demand to return to the ethical first principles of Zionism and Judaism.
As I’ve written before, the most pro-Israel stance that we can take today is to support these pro-democracy protests around Israel and America.
Today I’ll be fasting, in remembrance of how Jerusalem was lost 2,000 years ago, and how hatred, violence, and cruelty drive the Shekhinah into Exile. And then on Saturday I’ll be with the demonstrators, to show that we’ve learned the lessons of our living past. For the sake of Jerusalem: because G-d help us all if the Shekhinah is forced to flee from this place once again.
Photo: Arch of Titus, Rome; depicting the plundering of the Jerusalem Temple by the Roman army in 70 CE (NG)