Yud Zayin Be'Tammuz | The Seventeenth of Tammuz | by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Reprinted with permission from "Collected Writings of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch - Volume l", Published by Philipp Feldheim , Inc., New York - Jerusalem l985 On the seventeenth day of Tammuz (1) five sorrowful events occurred: The tablets were broken when Moses descended from the mountain; the continual sacrifice was abolished on that day; the city of Jerusalem was broken into; Apostomos the wicked burnt the Torah and, in addition, placed an idol in the Temple. The sun shines brightly, all the fields smile with the ripening crops. Israel's glance, however, is turned to the past, its past, and it is thoughts of destruction, overthrow and ruin -- that the sun-laden Tammuz brings into every true Jewish breast. Many a page of Jewish history has been written with tears; but the most tear-stained pages have been produced by the "Three Weeks," and the great tragedies of Jewish history, associated with the names of Nebuchadnezzar, Titus and Ferdinand, chose this period for their mournful consummation. This is to say in effect that all this story is only the continuation of an ancient doom, that the same hand of God is to be seen in it all, that it is the same cause always producing the same effects, and that the Exile which began with Nebuchadnezzar will never end until the last traces of the old doubts and perplexities which have brought Exile to Israel have been completely overcome in the hard school of the Exile. For this reason, as we have already stated before, it is not mourning which is the dominant note of our days of remembrance for the destruction, but "fasting," that is, searching our hearts in order to find our way back and up, recognizing the causes of our downfall and mustering our energies for completely eliminating them from our midst. This is the task for which these fast days of remembrance must strengthen us. In general it is not the glad, joyful, encouraging events which determine our duties and our life's task. Every untoward event which acts as a disturbing factor in the course of our lives, while it alters our prospects in the world, also brings new duties and presents new openings for the accomplishment of our task. This task remains in itself ever the same. It is and remains both for Israel as a whole and for each individual nothing else than the observance of the Torah, the fulfillment of the Law transmitted to us from Horeb. Only the stage on which we play our part, and with it the conditions for the performance of this task, are altered with every success or misfortune. And so long as the consequences of this event still affect us, we must ever afresh come together before God to examine ourselves and re-examine our lives in the light of the event which we commemorate in fasting. The seventeenth of Tammuz, which marks the beginning of the tragic end of our former national existence through the storming of Jerusalem, carries with it the memory of four other tragedies in Jewish history, the first of which has been designated by God himself, the master and shaper of history, as the concomitant cause of all subsequent catastrophes. The sun of the seventeenth of Tammuz, which saw the wild Romans sweep over the walls of Jerusalem, had witnessed quite a different spectacle in Israel's camp almost fifteen hundred years earlier. Forty days had passed since Israel had enthusiastically greeted the Torah given on Sinai with its inspired "Na'aseh V'Nishma" - "We shall do and understand." (2) With the first streaks of dawn, the camp was awake and full of tumult. But it was not the cry of war nor the cry of victory nor the cry of defeat. It was a shouting; but a shouting which pierced the soul, a shouting of a bacchanal chorus round a golden calf! Utterly overwhelmed, the priest stood on one side. With his gentle heart, his soft and yielding spirit, he had thought to save the people from sin by making concessions to them; but this calf was the result of his concessions! The people left the priest at the altar consecrated to its God, and danced round the golden calf! "Down, down!" Your people has again upset everything. It has quickly abandoned the path of its duty to Me, they have made a molten calf, they have dedicated themselves to it, they have sacrificed to it and proclaimed "These are thy gods, O Israel, who have led thee out of the land of Egypt!"(3) And down from the cloud-capped peak of Sinai stepped the leader, with the two tables of the testimony in his hand, tables written on both sides, legible on either side, the work of God and the writing of God, inscribed on the tables. As he approaches the camp he sees the calf and the people dancing, and his anger flares up and he casts the tables from his hands and breaks them in pieces at the foot of the mountain. "Whenever I visit them I will visit this sin on them," said God. Every future catastrophe will be due in part to the sin, and will have in part to make atonement for this sin. Dare we then forget this sin, dare we allow a seventeenth day of Tammuz to pass without gathering up the fragments of the tables at the foot of the mountain and deciphering on these fragments the lesson, the warning, the message which they may have for us? Remember that these fragments were preserved alongside of the tablets of the Law in the holy ark of the covenant. Shall we then not seek to find out the source, the germ, of all our errors, the root of all our sufferings? Shall we not on the seventeenth day of Tammuz use every effort to discover what it is that has broken in pieces our tables of the Law, and what is to be our lot so long as they lie in ruins? "And He gave to Moses when He had made an end of speaking with him on Mount Sinai the two tables of the testimony." The tables were to be proof that He had spoken with him on Mount Sinai, and at the same time to show how His word was to be understood and carried out by us. "The tables were of stone, but they were written with the finger of God." This means that we must allow the earthly material to be stirred and shaped by the finger of God. We must willingly submit the earthly stuff to receive the stamp of the Divine spirit and the Divine will, and to be shaped into a bearer of the Divine word. We must not let the spirit remain merely spirit and the word merely word, but we must bring them into the range of our whole earthly life as dominant and formative forces, in order that our whole earthly material may receive its stamp and its value and its shape from the finger of God, and our earthly existence may be nothing but a monument and a document given by God and testifying to God. This is the sum and substance of the utterance sent forth from Sinai: "And the tables were written on both their sides, on the one side and on the other were they written." (Exodus 32, l5.) The word from Sinai must not grip us only superficially and one-sidedly. It must penetrate us through and through, it must set its stamp indelibly on every part of our being, and whichever way we are turned the writing of God must everywhere be visible on us clearly and legibly. See the Divine tables of testimony! On them there was no above and below, no front and back. The writing pierced right through them, and yet they could be read on both sides. This must be a model for you. Be a Jew through and through. Whichever way you are turned, be a Jew. Do not engrave the Divine writing only on one side, one part, one aspect of your being, so that you will appear a Jew and a missioner of the Divine name and the Divine will only when regarded from one side and one aspect, but when you turn your back and enter into other relationships you will appear as anything but a Jew, a missioner for anything but the name and the will of God; or at any rate you will not be so completely a Jew, you will not be so clearly stamped as a missioner of God's will. Be a Jew through and through on all sides and in all aspects. And do not esteem one side as facing more directly towards the Godhead. Do not imagine that you have received the stamp of the Divine word with more emphasis on this one side, and that you can allow the other side to be content with the after-effects of this stamp and with the mere traces of this imprint. Do not think that people as they look on one side can discern that the force of the Divine word has penetrated to the other, when you speak of what you call the main sides and the main periods and the main items and the main articles of your Judaism. In relation to God there is no reverse side and no opposite side; everything is turned to God and must be taken equally seriously, on every side the stamp of the Divine will is to be placed with the same force and care and directness. Let yourself be penetrated through and through from all sides with the Divine word! "And the tables . . . were tables of stone written with the finger of God . . . the tables were the work of God and the writing was the writing of God graven through, mastering the tables." Behold the power, the might of the Divine word! At first the material is earthly when it presents itself to be stirred by the Divine word -- stone written on by the finger of God. But when the writing penetrates it, through and through and from all sides, the writing masters the stone and the Divine the earthly. Then the earthly stuff loses its earthly nature; it is delivered by the inspiring word from the bands of subjection, and raised aloft into the circle of Divine freedom. It ceases to be dust from the dust and stone from the stone and it becomes the work of God like the writing which it bears; "graven upon the tables" (Exodus 32, l6); for the stone which is engraved by the finger of God all the laws which normally govern the dead mass of stone are suspended. Do you see the ethereal letters shining through? Ethereal waves surround the falling earthly stuff. "It is falling," says the dull eye which thinks only of the laws governing the dead stone. "It is falling, it must fall, for it has lost all earthly support." "It does not fall," says the Divine spirit . . . "You see stone, you think of dust, you can tell what will happen to lifeless stuff. But you do not see the spirit which surrounds this thing of earth, the power of the Divine mocks at your calculations. The stone floats in the midst of the Divine ether. It does not bear the writing but the Divine writing bears it, as the spirit bears the outer man, as the soul bears the body, as the Ark of the Covenant bears the priest, and as the Torah bears Israel." This is the testimony of the tables for Israel. Thus will Israel be "as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men." (Micah 5, 6.) At the moment when it hailed the Torah with its shout of "Na'aseh V'Nishma" - "We shall do and understand" it in effect renounced every earthly support, it vowed to devote itself unreservedly to this word of God, to let itself be directed by that word alone, and to trust the Divine strength of this word alone and for ever. Just as the stone, if left to the free play of its own weight, plunges helplessly to the ground, so Israel lacks in itself every requisite for national existence and permanence. "Homeless slave" is the label already hung over its cradle. Without land, without soil, if left to itself it falls a prey to every act of violence or treachery. But when it is encompassed by the might of the Divine word, when it is penetrated by it and borne along by it in every movement of its individual and national life, then all casting of political horoscopes comes to grief over it. Encompassed and borne along by the Divine word, it has no need to fear death and violence. "Israel did not accept the Torah only in order that the angel of death and no nation and language would not rule over them - free from the subjection of kingdoms, free from the angel of death and free from suffering".(4) It is not subject to the laws which govern the mass movements of other peoples. The historical miracle of the Divine providence is not the downfall of Israel, but its existence. When this providence hides its face -- then Israel's catastrophes are the natural results of the struggle of helplessness against violence. Only so long as the ethereal writing penetrates the stone and encompasses all sides of it are the letters upheld. "The writing flies away," and no power of man can hold up the stone; it lies irreparably broken in fragments at the foot of the mountain. This is the lesson of the fragments of the tables in the Ark of the Covenant. Do you not see that they had to be broken, that there was no place for these tables among a people which danced around a golden calf? These tables demand complete and unquestioning loyalty to the words of the Divine Law; and the Israelites had already lost such faith when they were thrown into despair by the absence of Moses. What is Moses to the Jew? His strength does not lie either in Moses or in Aaron. These are for him the heralds of the Divine word, and this word which they brought to him and planted in his midst is alone to be the support and guide of the Jew. If Israel carries out its Torah unswervingly and unshrinkingly, it has no need to pin its hopes on man or to wait for the sons of man, it can dispense with earthly power and a human guide, "the word of its God marches before it, accompanies it through the wilderness, leveling all hills, plucking out all thorns, slaying all serpents and searching out the place where it can rest in peace and safety." Confident and exclusive trust in the power of the Divine Law and unswerving adherence to it, this is the basic condition of Jewish salvation, and the lack of such trust, doubt of the Divine power of this Law and of the all-suffering support which it alone is able to provide for Israel, this is the cardinal sin which produces all the catastrophes of Israel. With the Torah in its arms, Israel can bid defiance to all the tempests of the world. But even with the Torah in its arms, Israel has ever looked round for other gods to protect it, it has cast sidelong glances at the breastplates which other peoples have fashioned out of human power and natural forces. It lacked the courage to commit itself to the upper air on the wings of the Torah. It wanted a human king who should walk before it, it wanted the calf to dance around. The word of God was not enough for it -- "they desired many gods" -- the living word of the omnipotent God shriveled up for it into a religion, a cult, representing and satisfying only one side of life, and requiring quite other levers and supports and leaders and gods to supplement it. Once again, after a lapse of centuries, it desired a human king, and the fear of this king lest he might be overthrown by the reawakening reverence for the unseen power of the Divine word brought the "calf" back again for them. The power of the Divine word was banished into its temples; and the people were afraid to confide to it their life, their homes, their cities, their land and their state. For these they sought other bases, other supports, other ties. The spirit of God vanished from the people, and the might of the Assyrian reduced to ruins the Jewish state which should have been based on the Divine word. Once again the spirit of the Divine word awoke in the people, and reasserted its power in Israel. Cyrus bowed before it and the Maccabeans led it to victory. Yet Israel for a second time forsook its standard. As though it had not been the word of God which had led them to victory, the scions of the Maccabees threw it into a corner, or degraded it to a mere footstool of their majesty. They took firm hold of the sword and wielded it to make themselves kings. For the second time they made the fate of the Jewish people depend on a human kingship, for the second time they dissociated the state affairs of Israel from the spirit of the Torah and dethroned the Torah. The home and family life was still permeated with the spirit of the Torah, but it vanished from the conduct of the state. Then the wild Romans swept over the walls. On the seventeenth day of Tammuz the tablets were broken, on the seventeenth day of Tammuz the city of Jerusalem was broken into. On the day on which the tables of the law were broken, on that same day the Jewish state fell in ruins; and also the continual sacrifice was abolished on that day and also Apostomos the wicked burnt the Torah and also placed an idol in the Temple. Divine service also came to an end and the Torah was burnt, and the heathen image was set up in the Temple of the Most Holy. For when Israel estranges itself from the Torah in its practical life, and when "they desired many gods", when it has one God in its Temple and another for its political purposes, when it builds its Temple to the God of the Torah but outside the Temple pays homage to the power of man or to a golden calf, then God Himself extinguishes the fire on His altar and Himself makes the service of His altar an object of mockery to strangers. Then He allows a pig to be delivered to Israel when it buys a sacrifice for His altar, then He allows the Torah itself to be thrown into the fire, then He gives up His own place in the Temple to an image. And why? Because Israel has already degraded Him to a dead and impotent idol before which incense is burnt. On the seventeenth day of Tammuz the city of Jerusalem was broken into, on the seventeenth of Tammuz the Jewish state fell into ruins, and on this day the Torah began its triumphal progress through all lands and kingdoms! Look what Israel has been since then! With the very ground cut from beneath its feet, without power, without earthly support, forsaken by all the world, with only God and its Torah to look to, it goes on studying and showing the power of the Divine word, it shows how man can be borne aloft on the pinions of the Divine Law, it shows the sustaining power of the Divine spirit. Under the inspiration of the Law it displays itself as the unassailable witness for the majesty of God and for the vocation of man. From time to time in the course of the centuries God allowed His people ever and anon to touch the earth again. He put it to the test to see whether it had become ripe for the external Torah-state on earth, whether the miracle of its existence through centuries of Exile had at length taught it to despise utterly the gods of the earth, whether at last the experience of these wonders had eradicated from it the obstinacy which was ingrained in it as in all men and which prevented it from acknowledging completely the power of the Divine word -- whether it had at length learnt to devote itself unreservedly and exclusively to the Torah, and whether it could preserve this devotion, which had never become alien to it in the Exile, also in freedom and in abundance and in independence and power. But Israel had up to now always given signs that it has not yet reached this point. True, it has shown that it no longer fears the journey through the desert, and that, while having no footing on the earth, it can commit itself with cheerful confidence to the celestial wings of its Divine Law. But it has also shown that it still has reason to fear the ground, that as soon as it touches the soil and thinks that it has firm ground under its feet it runs the danger of abandoning the Divine Law and revering as gods, alongside of the Torah of its God, the political independence, the social freedom and the civil rights which this soil provides. It runs the danger of devoting its life to them and finding room for the Torah only in its synagogues, committing afresh all the old sins which brought on it the destruction of its state and temple. And again and again God has straightway allowed this soil to vanish from under its feet. And He has again in such cases committed it to the celestial wings of His Torah. And He will sustain it and teach it until it has finally reached its full and lasting maturity, and until all the old errors shall have been abandoned and all the old mistakes atoned for, and the word will be fulfilled by which after the restoration of the tables of the testimony the eternal covenant of God was concluded with Israel -- "...let my L-rd, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thy inheritance" (Exodus 34, 9) -- that God will walk with us in the midst of our wrongdoing and though we are a hard people to train up, yet He will grant forgiveness to our sins and backsliding, until we at length fall into His arms wholly and unreservedly, as His own everlasting inheritance. FOOTNOTES: (1) Tammuz is the name of the tenth Jewish (lunar) month. This year, the seventeenth of Tammuz falls out of July 22, 1997. (2) Exodus 24, 7. (3) Exodus 32, 4. (4) See Abodah Zarah 5 and Midrash Tanchuma on Ex. 32, l 5. The article is courtesy of Heritage House and Innernet Magazine