Tamuz is one of the months in the Hebrew calendar, which has 29 days. July 8, 2012, according to the Gregorian calendar in force in Russia, corresponds to the seventeenth day of this month in the year 5772 of the Hebrew calendar. On this day, one of the Jewish fasts begins, established in memory of a whole series of sad events in the history of this people.
The most ancient of the misfortunes, which the Taanit treatise of the Jewish Talmud attributes to this date, is the loss of the tablets with the ten commandments. The Prophet Moses returned with them from Mount Sinai to the people he had taken away from Egypt, but he saw an idol cast from gold - the Golden Calf - which the Jews worshiped. The Prophet could not control himself, did not keep the stone tablets, and they broke.
Another misfortune relates to the time of the siege of Jerusalem by the army of Babylon, when sacrifices were stopped in the Temple due to the fact that it was not possible to deliver sacrificial animals to it. This happened already at the moment when the enemies were able to penetrate into the city and soon the Temple was destroyed for the first time.
Its second destruction is also related to the date of 17 tamuz - almost half a century later on that day, other troops besieging Jerusalem, this time Roman, broke through the city walls. This decided the fate of the Temple and forced the Jews to leave their lands.
In a later period, this date refers to the burning of the Torah by Apustumos, the governor of King Antiochus, which happened 16 years before the uprising against the Romans. It marked the beginning of new persecution of the Jews.
The fifth reason for fasting is called the installation of a statue of a stone idol in the Temple, although different sources differ on the exact date of this act. Some of them attribute the event to the era of the First Temple and are accused of the crime of King Menashe, others believe that the same Apustumos did it in the era of the Second Temple.
Fasting begins at dawn on 17 tamuz. As in other public fasts, readings of the Torah and specially written texts are held in synagogues. Three weeks of "half-mourning" days prepare the Jews for the next mourning period, which begins on Av 9, so these days believers do not arrange celebrations and do not listen to music, do not cut their hair or buy new clothes, and do not eat fruits from the new harvest.
