Excerpt from For Times Such as These: A Radical’s Guide to the Jewish Year
by Rabbi Ariana Katz and Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg
from “THE SEVENTEENTH OF TAMMUZ AND THE THREE WEEKS”
The seventeenth of Tammuz invites us to reflect on our relationships to spiritual and cultural practices that connect us to the sacred, and what constitute threats to those practices. The Tannaitic rabbis put idol worship in the same mishnaic breath as Roman colonization, both heinous to their understanding of Judaism. We are in the ideological lineage of Rabbinic Judaism, where the Golden Calf and idol worship are both seen as total violations of Jewish law. Yet we who claim Torah as inherited tradition are all just as much the descendants of the people who made the Golden Calf as we are of the rabbis who condemn it. We can wonder about the desires that motivated our calf-building ancestors. What animated and sustained practices that were deemed idol worship by the authorities? The story of the Golden Calf can be understood as patriarchal rabbinic authority demeaning worship that they could not control. In this reading, we honor our ancestors’ complex theologies and desire for multiple forms of worship.
At the same time, idol worship can be understood as parallel to materialism today, focusing on the gold of the calf instead of the immaterial but deeply real Divine the people have encountered. We can understand the [rabbis’] rejection of idol worship as parallel to our rejection of the violence of cultural appropriation — reducing a complex, detailed, layered being or civilization into a symbol divorced from its real power. It is then possible to comprehend the rabbis’ understanding that spiritual practice can collude with empire, and use the seventeenth of Tammuz to mourn the desecration of the Jewish people’s holiest places and practices from inside and outside the tradition.
Wherever we place ourselves in the tradition, the seventeenth of Tammuz is about the overwhelming impact of our cultural and spiritual traditions being harmed. It is a powerful gateway into the Three Weeks, which culminates with the Ninth of Av, marking the complete destruction of the Temple. Some of us have never had access to cultural practices that feel spiritually supportive, and some of us are just beginning the journey of discovering what a relationship with our spiritual selves and the holiness of the world feels like. Some of us have no interest in exploring anything in the realm of spiritual practice. Across a range of relationships to tradition, we can ask: when we allow ourselves to mourn the ruination of our modalities of accessing the holy, how much deeper can we feel the heartbreak of the wreckage of our sacred sites? — p.252-3
from MARKING THE SEVENTEENTH OF TAMMUZ
Marking the seventeenth of Tammuz and coming into the Three Weeks in community could become a time for looking back on the last year and years to see what loss has been experienced in the community. What sacred communal spaces, like bookstores, community centers, encampments, bars, parks, and monuments, have been shut down by the state and the forces of gentrification and capitalism? What organizations have collapsed or closed in the past year? What collective events have come to an end? What ritual or acknowledgement does the community need to collectively grieve these losses? Some of these things may have ended abruptly, too soon, and unjustly; others may have closed after a long run and in good time. Often, endings hold both and all. The seventeenth of Tammuz is an invitation to make space for all these losses. — p.253
…As leftist communities find more ways to take public action on the ninth of Av, the seventeenth of Tammuz, and the Three Weeks, they can become spiritual and political days and weeks of preparation. They can be times to reflect, gather with each other, plan, and build.
Tammuz is a spacious month, with very little on the Jewish calendar. This collective breath is particularly notable for where it falls squarely between two intense holiday arcs: sandwiched between the packed Exodus journey of Nisan, Iyar, and Sivan and the slow and steady ramp-up to the High Holidays that will begin in earnest in Av. With intention, Tammuz can be a month to notice this hinge of the year, and to make space for more subtle changes, within us and around us. In Tammuz, we are encouraged to notice our gardens growing, all around us all the time. — p.254
For Times Such as These: A Radical’s Guide to the Jewish Year. Rabbi Ariana Katz and Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg. Wayne State University Press, 2024, p.252-254
For more on this book, see Something to Talk About: Split Binding Version
See also related Sefaria Source Sheet, Pinchas: Built-in Distancing
Lots more about Pinchas and about the Three Weeks, from over the years, on this website.
"A Song Every Day" 