Rosh Hodesh Rosh Hodesh Tamuz: Encountering, Forgiving, and Overcoming Our Brokenness
There are times when the sacred calendar is eerily in sync with reality. As the toll of war in Israel, Gaza, and Iran continues to unfold and existential questions hover around us, we begin this week the Jewish month of Tamuz. This month is noteworthy on our calendar because according to the Mishna, the 17th of Tamuz is an important and painful day in mythic Jewish time. Among other things, it is the day Moshe shattered the tablets when he came down from Mt. Sinai to find the Israelites dancing around the Golden calf; and it is the day when the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem in 70CE on their way to destroying the city and the Temple. Ritually, the 17th of Tamuz begins three weeks of mourning, culminating in the 9th of Av, when according to the Mishna, the first and second Temples were destroyed, and God decreed the Israelites who left Egypt would die in the wilderness because of their lack of faith.
The symbol cluster the Rabbis associate with this time period invites us to confront the reality that there are forces both within and beyond us that are uncontrollable—that disrupt or destroy the people we long to be and the world we long to inhabit. It is a time to acknowledge that we live in a broken world in which God, the sense of the sacred, is often unavailable and where calamitous, ruinous events happen which we are often powerless to stop.
These days, our annual ritualized encounter with this aspect of the world and the human condition feels almost absurd. With multiple wars in Israel alongside our own fraying country, riddled with antisemitism, dehumanizing rhetoric and policies, and political violence—we don’t need a series of mythic events from Jewish tradition to remind us we live in a broken world.
But the purpose of the ritual is not to overwhelm us and further break our spirits. The purpose is to encounter the brokenness so that we can accept it and move forward.
But the purpose of the ritual is not to overwhelm us and further break our spirits. The purpose is to encounter the brokenness so that we can accept it and move forward.
This insight is subtly evoked in the story of God decreeing that the recently freed slaves would not go into the Land of Israel, which we happened to read in this past week’s parasha. As the Torah relates, the Israelites had the chance to go directly into the Land of Israel during the second year of their freedom; but in response to the fearful reports of most of their leaders who had scouted the land, the community revolt and refuse to go, terrified they will be decimated by the powerful forces extant in the land. God’s punishment is that those who had lived through slavery in Egypt would die in the wilderness, never making it to the Promised Land.
The people are understandably distraught to learn of their sentence, a result of their own faithlessness. One can only imagine the pain and despair they must have felt—their future suddenly clear, final, and heartbreaking.
But in the very next chapter, the Torah undermines this certainty:
God spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you to settle in … (Numbers 15:1-2 – emphasis added).
They have just been told they would not enter the land. How can God then tell them about the time when they will? Faced with a confirmed and disastrous reality, the Torah seems to be teaching the people, and us, that the story is not over. The Israelites might assume this is their end but God implicitly tells them, not to give up hope because they still have children and their job is to get the children into the land. The Israelites thus must act as if that is what will happen. Such resilience requires them to accept fate—not reject it, rebel against it, or resent it. They must forgive their own brokenness and the brokenness of the world they inhabit so they can have faith in a better future.
Of course, this is no easy feat. For most of us, holding onto forgiveness and acceptance is not a permanent state. It needs to be repeated and practiced – over and over again. That is why our Rabbis of old established these upcoming three weeks of annual mourning—to help us accept and forgive this aspect of existence. This may be part of why the parasha ends with the commandment to wear tzitzit—fringes on the corners of our garments.
We will often find ourselves at the corner of our lives, the fraying edges, consumed by the trials and disappointments of life and the world. It can feel hopeless in such places. So, we are instructed to put tzitzit there. Why these tassels? In a beautiful play on words, our mystical tradition links the word tzitzit (צִיצִת) to the Song of Songs verse (2:9):
מֵצִיץ מִן־הַחֲרַכִּים
God peers through the lattice
The word for God’s peering is homiletically connected to the word tzitzit. These tassels are symbols and reminders of our capacity to see and be seen by God, even at the fringes of our lives.
There is so much happening in Israel, our country, and the world that reveals the brokenness we contain and that we inhabit in the world. With this month of Tamuz, we encounter this brokenness—we face it head on – so that we can live with and overcome it.
Rabbi Daniel Klein is Dean of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College. He was ordained by and earned a Master’s in Jewish Education (MJED) from Hebrew College in 2010.