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Thoughts to Nosh OnJuly 2005From the Desk of Rabbi SharffJuly 7th marks the beginning of the month of Tammuz in the Jewish calendar. Tammuz is one of the more forgotten months in our year probably in part because it occurs during the summer, and partly in part because it only has one ritual observance aside from Shabbat. This one ritual observance is the Fast of Tammuz, which commemorates the breaching of the walls by both the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. and by the Romans in 70 C.E. The Fast of Tammuz marks the beginning of a three-week mourning period leading up to Tisha B'Av, during which we acknowledge the numerous calamitous events that occurred in Jewish life. Tammuz also marks the beginning of summer in Eretz Yisrael, the season, which we formally began here in Tucson in February I believe. Summer is an amazing time in the Land of Israel. I can still remember my summer there at the Hebrew Union College. We rabbinic, cantorial, and education students all arrived around the end of June to begin our studies at HUC-JIR's Ulpan. The classes were broken up according to Hebrew ability, and we were all assigned very patient teachers who listened to us day after day destroy their beloved language. But more than that, it was a time where we began to come together as a class. We had Shabbat dinners at each other's apartments cramming in sixty of us at a time in a room meant for twelve. We would carry chairs through the streets of Jerusalem because there was never enough seating, and we would also balance a pan of food of some sort that we had whipped together at the last moment (my specialty was Bibby's potatoes that involved so much olive oil it would make a cardiologist giddy). Therefore because of these events, whenever I think about the month of Tammuz, I always think of it as a time of coming together as a community, which is reflected in our history as well. Sivan, the month proceeding Tammuz, is when we celebrate Shavuot, the time when all of Israel bound itself to One God. But one could argue that though our ancestors bound themselves to God, the Israelites had as of yet to bind themselves to each other as a community. It would only be through the subsequent months and years of wandering and law giving that the former slaves would come to understand what the Hebrew word Am, peoplehood really meant. And what a great lesson this is for us. During the summer many head out to cooler climates or on vacation, but there are still a lot of us here, as can be attested to by the attendance at our Chardonnay Shabbats. Our tradition reminds us that we should use and cherish this time to renew our friendships and commitments to this special and holy community much in the same way that the Israelites did in times long ago. So perhaps the heat rising more and more each day is not a not a sign that our electric bills will be going up, but that instead it really is God's way of reminding us to recommit ourselves our larger family and our community as well. Rabbi Ben Sharff |
