#dumuzid

Dumuzid was the Sumerian shepherd-god whose love with Inanna brought the new lambs and sprouting greens of spring. But he was honored in the ancient near east not in the spring, but after the summer sun began scorching and drying the plants in the fields. Then, the Sumerians said, Dumuzid had died and been taken to the Underworld, and needed the people to mourn to bring him back again. The cult of Dumuzid spread, and he was called Tammuz by the Arameans and Adon (the bridegroom) by the Canaanites, becoming Adonis in the Hellenistic world when the Greeks adopted some of the gods of the East that Alexander's armies brought home with them.

He was also possibly the original hearthrob, a bit of a boytoy trophy husband who was far less important than his wife but made up for it by being pretty and pliable. Because he was beautiful and good in bed, it was primarily women who mourned him each year, planting small container gardens of quick sprouting lettuce aand herbs at the start of his death-month and placing them where the sun's beams would scorch them dry, and then weeping over the brittle remains.

While exilic Judaism rebuilt itself around a rejection of syncretism and a deepened commitment to the unique and singular nature of the God of Abraham and his offspring, the weeping and wailing of Dumuzid's month remained, but recast now as weeping for the Babylonian conquest of the kingdom of Judah and destruction of the Israelite sanctuary-- the beit hamikdash-- in Jerusalem. The weeping over a beautiful foreign shepherd-king was transformed into communal grief over exile from the city of Dovid HaMelekh, our own prettyboy shepherd, and the withdrawal of HaShem's shekinah with the loss of the mishkan early the next month on Tisha b'Av.

The baking heat of Tammuz also pervades the parshiyot for this month, which occur ba-midbar, in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula and Jordan, though the spirit is much less that of contrite mourning and more the bitter arguing of people who are too overheated and irritated by forty years of camping to be polite anymore. They argue with each other and with Moshe, fight with kingdoms that seek to block their passage, are struck with plagues, nearly die of thirst after Miryam's death, and complain incessantly. Somehow, enough of them survive to tell the story that we have it available as a cautionary tale for oir own worsening climate crisis.

Tammuz 5786 at a Glance:

1 Tammuz-- traditional birthday/yahrzeit of Yosef ben Israel v'Rachel

5 Tammuz- Shabbat Korach, Yechezkiel's vision of the destruction of Jerusalem

10 Tammuz: traditional date of the Babylonian army's breach of the walls of Jerusalem and beginning of the pillaging of the city. Observed as a fast day until the second temple was built.

12 Tammuz- Shabbat Chukat-Balak

17 Tammuz: traditional date that the Roman army breached the walls of Jerusalem during the Great Revolt. The Talmud's math of 40 days from Shavuot makes this also the date Moshe returned to the camp to see the people worshipping the idolatrous Golden Calf. Now observed as the start of a three week mourning period ending with Tisha b'Av.

19 Tammuz: Shabbat Pinchas

26 Tammuz: Shabbat Mevarchim Av, Matot-Masei