Rosh Chodesh Tamuz
ראש חדש תמוז

 Minyan on Friday, July 4^th at 9:00am

Please note time of minyan due to July 4^th holiday. 

Service will be led by Stuart Snow.

Rosh Chodesh Tammuz by Sybil Sheridan

The great genius of Judaism is to adopt and adapt the customs practices and traditions of other countries and other faiths; stripping them of their idolatrous overtones and giving them a uniquely Jewish message.

The fourth month of the Hebrew calendar goes by the unashamedly Babylonian name of Tammuz. Tammuz was a god in the region, the son of Ea and husband of Ishtar: a fertility god who died and was brought back to life by his wife who went down to the underworld to claim him. The drama was re-enacted each year in the dry regions of Iraq as all vegetation dies, only to be reborn in the autumn with the first rains. However, for us, Tammuz represents, not the destruction of a god, but the destruction of the Temple , as the 17^th day of that month commemorates the breach in the wall that signalled the end of the sacrificial cult.

We meet Tammuz in the Bible. Ezekiel’s vision of the Temple in Chapter eight describes three abominations: the presence of idols in the sanctuary, the women ‘weeping for Tammuz’ and the men worshipping the sun. All three demolish the ideal of the second commandment. This is why the Temple must be destroyed. The people’s sins, as seen by Ezekiel, are consonant with defiling their most sacred space.

According to tradition (Mishnah Ta’anit 4:6) it was on the 17^th of Tammuz that Moses shattered the ten commandments. He had returned from Mount Sinai to see the golden calf that Aharon had made for the children of Israel (Exodus 32). But the calf Aharon made was not necessarily an idol, even if the children of Israel may have thought it so. As Samson Raphael Hirsch (19^th century rabbi and commentator) suggests in his commentary, the calf was not a god, but rather the base upon which the throne of the invisible deity rested. God commanded that the Ark be built with keruvim (cherubs) with outstretched wings upon it – the footstool of the Almighty (Exodus 25). Just so, in Ezekiel’s visions, God appears above the chariot driven by keruvim upon a throne of sapphire (Ezekiel 10). The sin of the golden calf becomes - not the building of an idol, but the creation of a sacred object without divine sanction. The Israelites felt Moses had abandoned them. They did not necessarily wish to turn away from God, but felt the need to take matters into their own hands. In both the time of Moses and the time of Ezekiel, the idolatry is in the turning from God’s directions and thus, losing direction.

These are events we should mark carefully as we enter the three weeks – from the breach of the walls of Jerusalem on the 17^th Tammuz, to the destruction of the Temple on the 9^th Av. If the Temple is to be rebuilt, it will be in God’s time, not ours. Those who would hasten the end by reclaiming the Temple Mount in our day, are taking matters into their own hands in the same way as did our forebears and the consequences are likely to be every bit as disastrous. Like them, they are guilty of idolatry – not in building statues, but in losing faith in God.

Sybil Sheridan is half the Rabbi at Wimbledon and District Synagogue, Jewish Chaplain of Roehampton University, lectures at Leo Baeck College – Centre for Jewish Education and has written and contributed to several books.