The Fast of Tammuz: Halachic and Historical Perspectives By Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

okay uh good morning everybody I hope hope you're well uh once again it's a tribute both uh to the OU and to everybody who comes that even on a fast day uh we try to continue the T it's still relatively early in the fast so we're not yet uh you know totally exhausted and the like but may it be a among other things that and uh uh we we cover the various Mitzvah and more or less in a very approximate way we we've been tracking the paraa and even today I'm going to track a little bit about Paras Pinas but I want to digress a little bit to talk about the fast day what the 17th of Tas is and what the origin of the 17th of tamos is so one has to know that the concept of a fast in the month of tamos although not the specific date already appears in nvim the last Nai or among the last n are the last prophets at the very beginning of the second temple after the 70 years of the Babylonian exile and the navi Zakaria speaks about four fast days that he identifies by the month counting from Nissan as the first month he talks about the fast of the fourth month Nissan or the fast of Tas the fast of the fifth month which is [Music] of the fast of the seventh month which is not referring to yum that's in the Torah but it's referring to the fast of Galia Andi the fast of the 10th month which happens to be Taves so the navi tells us that even though these are fast days they shall become days of and Sim so the Novi is not telling you to fast it's the other way around the Novi is presupposing that people are aware of these fast days and it's simply telling us these fast days shall be to but since thei is telling us that these are fast days so therefore these fast days are considered to be a little bit more they are considered to Beal the phrase cabala inal does not mean mysticism or zoa or anything but cabala means a received tradition from the prophets now it's interesting from the standpoint of pure divala just equals midra meaning to say there's no such thing as a do other than the mitzvos that mosenu got from God so even things that are communicated by the prophets are technically rinic fast days they are not Torah fast days and indeed the prophets could not even Institute this by prophecy this is the famous law based on LA the is not in heaven and a prophet cannot inovate based on Prophecy so if theim talk about a certain practice uh they are either recording something that's in the Torah obviously the nvi talks about chabas and kasas or thei as is enacting Tak so Hally uh these vast days are considered to be mitraan although they have a little bit more of higher status because it's raban from the but Hally cabala is actually no different than a pure midra there is another reference very indirect and oblique and not very clear to these fast days and that is the end of millas eser which also occurs in the tail end fact this is actually before in the tail end of the 70 years of the Babylonian exile when it talks about how the Jewish people accepted upon themselves the holiday of por as they accepted upon themselves divos the fast days vakam and the prayers and the maam say this is not referring to Tanis Esther because that that was a later fast that is even post talmudic but rather it's simply saying the same way they accepted the four fast days connected to thean they accepted upon themselves the holiday of porim so it doesn't tell you the four and it doesn't tell you where the four are but the say that is a reference the four fast days that are enumerated in the p in zakar now the gamar in rashash makes a very very interesting point the rashash says on one hand these are fast days on the other hand they are described as May how do you reconcile the disconnect so the gamar says there are three stages in the H status of these fast days he says when there is Shalom a term to be defined in a moment they become s and not only are there's no obligation to fast you are prohibited to fast these are holidays Tish will be a holiday says when it is a time of active persecution against the Jewish people the Jewish people are being persecuted by enemies then you are to fast but then there's an intermediate stage it's not a time of great prosperity and peace but it's not a time of active persecution so the gar says an interesting thing it depends on what each Community does ratu if a community now there's not an individual person it's not that each person decides but if a community decides they want to observe the fast Miss on it then they become obligated to observe their minu if the Community does not decide to fast they're not so we have three categories in the Z of Shalom it is a holiday in the time of persecution against Jews there is a fast when there is neither persecution nor particular Prosperity which I'll I'll describe that in a moment then it is tooy on ratu or low ratu communal Acceptance Now obviously these terms need a lot of definition and the way Rashi defines the terms is that shalom means you actually have a basa mikash and the Jewish people are not at war with their enemies so according to Rashi that is called a Zan of Shalom and at that point they become yamim toim which would indicate at least that at least for some of the second temple period there was no obligation to observe those fast days of the firstan uh so is the other way that's when there's active persecution so it's interesting if we ask ourselves how do we characterize Zaman so Zaman is clearly not Shalom because we don't have a Bas of mikdash so the question becomes these days are not yum to yet that's for sure the question becomes are they obligatory fast days or are they only based on communal acceptance so many many maam say in places where Jews are not actively persecuted the of the fast days although I mentioned tissue might be different is only mitam Minh and uh except in of the community now the interesting question becomes well what does that mean what if my community or the United States let's say more or less even though things happening more or less we would not call that a place of active persecution you may differ with me but generally speaking on the other hand there are places in the world where Jews are persecuted so does that mean if Jews are being persecuted anywhere it becomes a Shad everywhere or is it literally Community by Community but I just want to explain that this is why there are many many leniencies in these fast days except for Tish which I'll get to simply because the status of the fast day today was is only based on communal acceptance it is not based on the ofala and as a result there are leniencies meaning to say at a time like the Holocaust it could very well be there was a M Caba to fast and maybe some of the leniencies for not feeling well and the like might not apply Lisa you'll find that there are kilos in which women are routinely told uh supposedly women are weaker although I I I don't I don't see that but uh but there don't not to fast I am told there are certain yesos where the students are told really not to f except for Tish I'll get to why Tish is different because it's only a minut you know you know therefore therefore you could be make for any type of weakness or or the like but the point I want to make is theic basis of the kulos is only because we treat ourselves as a category three meaning if you would be in a the or of persecution persecution against Jews the of fasting would beik so that that does raise an interesting question which I don't think anybody has addressed that I'm aware of that is right now we're in a time of War so it's interesting if we are in an active time of War would that make the tan cabala now again I have absolutely seen no one address this but but here's the nafina last year if somebody would say oh they have a headache we would kind of say okay you can eat you have a headache but that's only because it's a ratu low ratu situation so if somebody were to ask me this year they have a headache although I can guarantee you a posk is going to say the same thing as he said last year and in fact I have said the same thing I said last year but analytically I wonder if that's EMS because the halic basis for leniency is because of the ratu and the latu meaning once the fast gets upgraded to D cabala at that point the leniencies might not apply you see so I don't know I think I actually think that the logic of what I'm saying is a very very strong logic but but I I hasten to add that the D of has not changed meaning to say the same leniencies that will normally be given uh any 17th of thas will be given here as well although I think we could question it now the gamar then says TI is different TI the actual day of theik there is a to fast now here there's Aus how to learn some understand it this way that the difference between Tish and the other fast days only pertains to the neutral situation where there's not Shalom and there's not persecution Tish is still which is why the leniencies that we might apply to the other fast days we're not going to apply to Tish but when it's a time of Shalom you have the Bas of mikash then even Tisha would be a day of that's how some learn others learn which means in other words they did not observe the fast of the ninth of during the 420 years of the second temple at least until the Romans started uh Waging War on the other hand the rambam in Parish mishas actually says that they observed the fast of the ninth of a even during the 420 years of the second Bas of mik that when the gar says is a it does not only refer to the neutral ratu and latu it even refers to Shalom although I believe even the r is mod that when mashia comes and we have a third B MK we're not going to keep this fast the r is not talking about that but the rambam is talking about the bi chain and the question would be very obvious why would we fast over the destruction of this first bam mikdash when we have a basa mikash why are youel over theb bikash when you have a bikash so there are two reasons that would apply reason number one is that the second basam mikdash never fully replaced what we lost in the first bam Mikes in the first B Mikes we had naua that more or less went away at the time beginning of the second temple we had the UR Vin which was again the Coen God's breastplate which communicated Divine messages now in the second Bas of MDES we had Theos people people confuse the Kosen with the V let me just digress for a moment theen is the breastplate that the co G war that had engraved on 12 Jewels the tribes of B Israel that is not the that is called the and The Jewels are called theen when we say we didn't have the V we did have Theos Coen God did have the Kos in fact that's the famous story of a jewel was lost and they had to buy it from a non-jew who didn't want to wake up his father D Ben that happened during the second temple period by the way that story itself is very interesting the gorah uses dma benina a non-jew from ashalon to illustrate how the greatness of kav and it mentions he didn't wake up his father even though he lost a big deal with selling the jewel because the key to the jewelry case was under his father's pillow he didn't want to wake up his father and his reward was that next year he got a par aduma and he was able to sell it for the profit that he would have made okay now let me ask you this let's imagine your father is sleeping and you're offered $10 million a deal but you need to retrieve something under your father's pillow you don't wake him up you follow D benina dad wakes up and you say dad I want to tell you how much I honored you you know I gave up a $10 million deal isn't that great well I think Dad would be a little annoyed dad would say what type of idiot did I raise you know of course you wake me up I mean Hally it's absolutely clear I mean a simple example if your father would tell you to wake him up you should wake him up uh if and if you know for sure he would want to be woken up for this type of deal of course you wake him up so D Ben actually did a stupid thing so the gamar is not quoting him to show what you're supposed to do the gamar is just quoting how devoted he was to the Mitzvah it happened to be misplaced his particular application was not correct and we're not quoting it to tell you what you should do if you're faced with that situation but it shows us his heart it shows us that he was willing to give up all of that money and therefore it's a muser as to how seriously we should take keep it of again this is an important point to keep in mind that sometimes when the gamorra gives you a story there are other examples of this as well it's not necessarily telling you what you should do but it's communicating a certain attitude that you should have even though the particulars are not something you should do okay but be it as it may that shows us that the breastplate and The Jewels did exist during the bi chainy but what happened was the UR was a piece of parchment that had it was like a software package that had the names of God on it and it would be inserted in the fos of the breastplate and that would give the jewels the power to communicate prophetic messages from God so since we lost propety prophecy we lost the or so the second Bas of mkes we didn't have n for most of the period we didn't have the we didn't even have the arones with the because before theban by the hands of the Babylonians Yos a right one of the last righteous Kings concealed the aresh in tunnels under the B mikdash where we believe it's still there right Raiders of the Lost Arc notwithstanding uh the is a concept in fact um occasionally there are Expeditions uh trying to find it although it wouldn't here I would refer the Raiders of the Lost Arc it's not a good idea uh and and the like fact somebody came to the with kind of a detailed plan to find where the Ain is and the took the paper he read it he burnt it and he made the person swear that he would not uh talk about it to anybody so different thing so the point I'm making is going back to the rambam the rambam says what they fasted on the 9th of a even when there was a second bikash and you may ask what's the logic of that because even in the second basa mikdash we didn't regain what we lost in the first basa mikdash we were still mourning over it in addition to the fact that other than around 100 Years of the hasm monian Archy the whole period of the bay cheni we did not have any independence meaning unlike the first B of mikash where there was Mal Yuda Mal based of it the whole second temple period the Persians the Greeks the Romans a 100 Years of but look at that as continuation of the Greek monarchy they don't even consider it to be such a Jewish monarchy so so that's reason number one why they fasted in the second basa mikdash over the loss of the first basa mes reason number two is actually given by r salic r salic very interesting he says that it was known that the second Bas of Mikes was not going to last it was known it was going to be destroyed and it was known it would be destroyed on the nth of of the same day as the first Bas of Mikes but they didn't know when so salvic suggests every single ninth of of there was a great fear and trepidation that this might be the day of theban so he points out therefore there was a difference between the way Tish was observed during the 70 years of the Babylonian exile and today as well and the way it was observed during the second temple period during the 70 years of Corban and today Tish is AOS we are mourning something we lost R salic suggests that during the second temple period it was not a veos it was praying that the Sor of the Corban should not come meaning that the other Sho should not drop so the first explanation I gave you actually shows there was an AOS even in the second Bas of mikash the second explanation says that the fast of was not based on AOS it was based on fasting that a should not happen the SAR of theban shen which they knew was going to happen and they knew it would be on the ninth of of but they didn't know when although the I'm not sure why they didn't know when because the The Book of Daniel actually foretells that it would be 490 years after the but whatever it is that requires a certain amount of interpretation and many people did not have uh that level of knowledge or interpretation okay so the reason why we are more again so technically the reason why TI is a more fast than the other fast days is because the other fast days BisMan if there's not active persecution [Music] only certainly today the ram says even during the second mikash certainly today there's no ratu or low ratu about and that is theic categorization of why the ninth of is more is more now when we look specifically at the fast of the 17th of Tas the mishna Inus tells us five tragedies happened on the 17th of tamas and five tragedies happened on the nth of of and that is why these days are days of fasting let me first mentioned the Tish ones although we're not there yet because they're actually easier to follow uh tragedy number one of tishu it is the day that it was decreed that our forefathers would die in the desert over 40 years and not enter the land because the morim came back on the eth of a and they gave their negative report and that night which was the ninth of a the Jewish people the not the women the women had a in Hashem but the men cried and sobbed and complained and Hashem said you have made this you have cried for no reason this is the day of right so that's tragedy number one the gazer that the D midb died without coming into AR Israel gazer number two is the destruction of the first B Mikes by the Babylonians gazer number three is the destruction of the second B mikdash 490 years later on the same day by the Romans uh in the year 70 gazer number four is the destruction of betar and this is already a reference to the Bara Revolt remember the temple was destroyed more or less in the year 70 again it's still in kazal it's it's not clear if it's 68 70 if you translate the dates but let's let's use 70 that's the common date that is given and around 65 now now it's interesting after the bikash even though we call that the Gus but you know I mean many Jews were killed and many Jews were taken prisoner and sold into slavery but it's not like the Babylonian exile when destroyed the Bas mikdash he literally emptied out the country uh the Romans didn't Jews continued to live in ER Israel after theban many of them migrated from yush which had become a war zone to the Galil the Sanhedrin for example relocated uh to the Galil Jewish life continued in AR Isel even after theban in spite of the devastating tragedies and loss of life I'm not minimizing that in any way but Jews continued to live in ER Israel and created kilos and not only that but the post korban years did not really have anti-religious legislation the Romans didn't care about chabas and kashus and Torah and circumcision do what you want they destroyed the basa mikdash uh in order to squash the rebellion of the zealots against Roman Authority and as we know our own were very much against that revolutionary activity and the warned that if you do this the bikes is going to be destroyed so theik was not I know this is a little different than the way it's commonly conveyed was not an anti-religious act per se it was really an attempt to crush a a political revolt and the warned that this would be the consequence of that Revolt however uh 65 years later we have a second Revolt the bar Revol Shimon Ben K uh that RAB AKA believed was mashia potentially and he called him Barba the son of a star waged war against the Romans and initially he was extremely successful he liberated some 900 Villages he minted Bara coins that you can uh you can get rabi AKA thought he was mashia maybe we'll talk for another time was AA wrong or potentially could he have been mashia it's very very interesting question there is archaological evidence that the foundations for a third basa mikdash were laid under the guidance of RAB AA on the Temple Mount so things looked very very good but then hadrien adonus kaser retaliated with overwhelming overwhelming devastating Force and uh kuster's Last Stand so to speak was in betar where barba's armies were decimated uh the rebellion was crushed and I want to point out all of the anti-religious things of the Romans R aa's flesh gets comb by Iron Combs that is the aftermath of Bara not the aftermath of the Corban and that's when hadrien uh passed laws about Brit and about Torah learning because he was so determined of course we know that he did not let the corpses of haruga be buried for three years miraculously they didn't decompose and eventually he let them get buried on the 15th above three years on a week after the fall of betar so betar was absolutely catastrophic the numbers the gamorra gives for those who died in betar are so astronomic I mean tens of millions that that even the moral says these are understood as gzma they're not meant to be taken literally but there's no question the casualties were much much greater than even the bikash and the religious persecution was much greater than theik and Jews were not allowed to live in for over 200 years it became hadrien dedicated the whole city of Jerusalem as a temple or a shrine to Jupiter and that's Alia capitalina and the remnant of that Roman city is found in the cardo in the old the old cities now cardo is a shopping mall something whatever it is that's the new aara right the cardo used to be the shrine to Jupiter now it's the shrine to consumerism so I'm not sure if we advance that much but okay that's the new aod Zara of of of our time so be it as it may we'll talk later about this in more length uh the destruction of beta was on the nth of right so we have theim bonbin Shen bet 135 65 years after theban and and the like and the final tragedy which is really connected to the aftermath of beter so it's going in chronological order the F the five tragedies are a straight Chron ological line is the city of Y was plowed over with salt to destroy its fertility this actually was a common practice in Roman Conquest uh they they did this a lot it was not even unique toam they did it in other countries as well but this too happened not the same Tish but shortly Ian I don't know if it was the next year or two year whatever it was but shortly after the fall of betar Y was plowed over now there is a bit of a mlus I actually took a position here is but it is a mlus some Say ne is plowing the city with salt destroying its fertility others say it refers to a kind of surveying thing that when the Romans took over a territory and dedicated it as a temple they would PL the boundaries to kind of demarcate this as their Square so according to this interpretation is not referring to plowing the whole city but it means plowing the boundary lines so this was a uden rine place for 200 years Jews were not allowed to live in yalem at all they were not allowed to live in this now maybe people snuck in I don't know you never know I mean I know a guy who actually visited the cotel between 48 and 67 under fake passports and everything else and you know he was quite literally putting his life in the line so people sneak in and people do all sorts of things in fact another person told me this person loves Adventure sometimes he just seeks out Adventure that um you know he came with the baseball cat somehow he got into an Arab country when Israeli passports were not recognized at all and he's like having a a Coca-Cola or a coffee with an Arab and the Arab is just talking about you know when I see a he's like peeling a uh peeling an apple or something with a knife and he says you know when I see a Jew all I want to do is like take my knife and you know cut off his whatever uh says what do you think about that and and the guy had this real feeling that this Arab knew you know some you know so there are people who love to play dangerously live dangerously uh so who knows what happened but for 200 years no yiden came toam the only thing the Romans allowed was to rub salt in our wounds literally every nth of people Jews were able to come and they could walk around the perimeter of the city and to this day there is an old old Min of Y that some people follow even today that you walk around the walls of yam on the n9th of a and that is an icient custom that dates from after the fall of betar that was the one connection Jews were allowed to have I mean obviously the Romans were mocking us but the Jews were allowed to have in yusim so whether it's on ground level or on top of the wall whatever this is actually an old old minog uh that dates dates back and the like these are certain mug that are not always recorded you know the other familiar Min you know that Jews do not walk under the Arch of Titus in Rome the Arch of Titus is the triumphal Arch that commemorates quite literally the destruction of the B mikdash uh Judea Captiva right Judea has been captive and uh it shows the Jews and chains the manora it's interesting that the picture of titus's manora is a Kasha the rambam interesting question how reliable do you look at the Arch of Titus know the rambam has a that the manur like kabad if you look at the kabad minus like it comes out like in diagonal lines it's not rounded and that is actually a diagram of the rambam himself the rambam for whatever his Rya was the rambam maintained that the manura was not rounded it was a straight diagonal coming out of the Central Central shaft uh the question is that the rambam's Sha directly contradicts the Arch of Titus that indeed gives you the picture that we're familiar with with of the rounded manora so the question is okay who says the Arch of Titus has n on it and on the other hand it's not clear to me why they would lie I I mean it's not a question of I mean why would they make up so I'll leave that uh for again for another time but these are the five tragedies of the ninth of so now let's go backwards a little bit and let's look at the five tragedies of the 17th of Thomas which are actually a bit more obscure the first tragedy is relatively clear that was the day that Moshe Renu broke the L when he saw Theo coming down from and the Garian Tinus you know makes theone that from the sixth of Sion when he went up and he came down on the 40th Day so the makes a that that was the 17th of were smashed of course one could ask even this which is the dating is not not a question but still given the fact that we got the second Ander why would it be that we're still in a over the but the answer is that kazal tell us that the sin of the golden calf continues to be a source of persecution for us in every that every single Onish clel gets there's a little bit of payment for the I should remark too interestingly enough that 17th of tamas happens to be the Y site of myov Weinberg R Noah weinberg's older brother and indeed as was remarked when he was nter that's also when a great great God great dies it's like the L of the Torah are are are smashed so that's the first tragedy okay now the second and third tragedies are a little less clear one is H the city was breached or the city was broken into and the third is butel the daily offering that is brought in the morning and in the afternoon was discontinued so I want to look at these two together and raise the question are these interrelated events or are these two separate things now H here what is that referring to first temple or second temple so the garus as the following in the book of Y it actually tells us that the Babylonians began their Siege around jerus neter under his General Nar was not in ero but his General did it on the tenth of tavas that's why the tenth of tavas is the beginning of the siege against Jam that Siege lasted for more than three years but in tamos the Babylonian Army managed to break through the city wall so hu the Babylonians broke through the city wall culminating in the destruction of the temple three weeks later but here's the problem in the book ofo the date that is given for nadar's Army breaking through the walls is the ninth of Thomas not the 17th of Thomas so how can we say the 17th of thas is huah huah is the ninth of Thomas so there's a m the B and thei how to resolve this contradiction the Babylonian talmud says there is a different between the first Bas of mikdash and the second B on mikdash in the first Bas on mikdash the Babylonians broke through the wall on the ninth of Thomas in the second basa mikdash vespasian's Army he was he was not Emperor yet broke through the wall on the 17th of Thomas so in reality we ought to fast both on the ninth of Tas and on the 17th of Tas but the didn't want to give us too fast so close to each other although I don't know why Galia is is close to Yer but be it as it may they didn't want to make two fast days for Huf and therefore they went with the second mikash because that is the tragedy we are most connected to because that is the relatively more recent one so according to the B therefore hco by the bias reow was the ninth of Tas H by the bay was the 17th of Tas so we fast on the 17th of Thomas even though we think about both tragedies interestingly enough I have to say there is no day for the second mikdash that corresponds to asares and I don't know why asares is the beginning of the Babylonian Siege of the city and we have a fast day for that what is the day of the beginning of the Roman Siege of yush I I happen not to know I could probably find it in Josephus or something but the one thing I do know is there is no fast day commemorating the beginning of the Roman Siege and that Siege was awful there was massive famine I mean we have kenos the book of yo that Siege was a devastating Siege and it also lasted several years like the Babylonian Siege so I leave with as a question why is there no AAR analog for the beginning of the siege against jerus by the bayen but be it as it may the B understands Huish is the ninth of Thomas H Bish is uh 17 that's the B the says all other oh yes I just want to go back I want I want to point out that that means actually the amount of time between and in the bias was a whole month the nth of Tas to the nth of of in the bayen it was three weeks between the 17th of thas and the ninth so according to the B the uh time between H and was a month not 21 days thei gives another answer to the contradiction the actually says how you this is hard to understand but in the Deep grief over theban even the prophets became discombobulated and they just got their dates wrong meaning in both the first temple and the second temple H was the 17th of Tas why is it recorded the ninth of thas because in the aftermath of the Corban people were so confused that they kind of said oh nth of nth of now people ask me well what are you talking about is a of God he's writing down his prophecies from God so he writes down a wrong date I mean it's coming from Hashem Hashem didn't get mixed up the answer is I think Hashem wanted us to understand how devastatingly mixed up people were so he specifically didn't get when he's dictating too he kind of shuts off the prophecy valve when it comes to the dates yo puts in the date that he remembered which was the wrong date now that actually means therefore that even the first Bas mikdash was a period of three weeks between H and mikash 3 weeks he thought it was a month but it was 3 weeks so this is a and you just to be aware of um yeah so we then come to the next one the Corban toid was discontinued the simplest explanation and this is the one that I think most people assume but it may not be the correct explanation is that this simply means from the time y was broken into even though the temple was not destroyed for another 3 weeks the corbon toid could no longer be brought conditions were so difficult I mean the enemy is in the city Etc which means in other words is for a 3-week period meaning the corbid stopped three weeks before theban and that was a concept quence of in other words you connect it once the Babylonians well that's another question is is is that referring to the B some say it's only the B Shen but once the Romans at least entered the city the corbon toid could no longer be brought a shortage of animals now now that doesn't mean by the way even that's a question that there was total cessation when it says that does not have to mean that the T was totally discontinued but it means it's to to was discontinued meaning to say there were days they couldn't bring it meaning in the 21 days maybe they brought it whatever 10 days 15 days meaning if you don't bring it every day that's called butel the of theban was nullified so according to this which I think is the normal interpretation that most people assume but is referring to the last three weeks between and so they go together but tell in fact however Rashi in a bit of a you know uncommon place in the Book of Daniel Rashi and safer Daniel actually learns very very differently and Rashi seems to understand Bella referring to the B cheni not thean and in the Prophecies of Daniel actually the technically not prophecies because he was not commanded to communicate them but in the visions of Danel there is a vision about the destruction of the second bikash Danel already experienced the and it mentions that the oppressor which is Rome Yash shall stop the animal offerings and the meal offerings sh for half a week for half a week he shall stop Rashi explains in the Book of Daniel that shabua does not mean seven days but shua means seven years and therefore sha well would be three and a half years but Rashi then says and doesn't mean an exact half either and Rashi records a tradition that during the Roman Siege which lasted several years the tamid was discontinued three years before the Corban not three weeks before theban three years before theban and even though years is less than half of seven but you know it's it's approaching that and therefore you divide something in half even if they're not equal now here too Rashi certainly does not mean that for the last three years of the Corbin Bas last three years of the bamas they didn't bring the car carbonos they brought carbonos all the way to the end but it means they could no longer depend on it on a daily basis the tamid became not tamid after that point uh indeed Josephus records that even after the Romans entered the city coronos were still being brought and he describes kohanim bringing corbus when arrows are going over their head in fact he even describes rival Jewish fa factions were fighting each other with arrows going back and forth and the Gohan dodging in fact he quotes Titus now again Josephus is not always a reliable witness because Titus was his protector and the like uh but Josephus says he quotes Titus as saying you know I don't really have to destroy this city if I just wait long enough the Jews will do it themselves now granted uh josephus's accounting of anything is not 100% reliable uh but this actually has the Ring of truth because remember kazal did say that the second bik was destroyed because of so Josephus portraying the Waring factions in the city makes perfect perfect sense kind of like the Democratic party now yeah I got the storyside theall yeah so now I'm going to mention another thing okay so so far I gave you two different explanations about one is the discon continuation of the carbon tamid at least on a daily basis once this city was breached which would just mean the last 3 weeks the other is rashi's interpretation that which which seems to be the only the bayen ban we don't have any teaching like that that as a result of the Roman Siege even before they broke into the city three years before theban meaning the 17th of thas three years and three weeks three years and three weeks before the the tamid could no longer be relied upon that's Rashi in safer Dan and then there's a third story of that is way way way way before more than a hundred years before theban and this is the waning years of the hasmonean dynasty a Jewish Dynasty a Jewish m in which two brothers were vying for control hin and Aris tuas and Hines is in control of yam aristas this is mish a civil war aristas is trying to gain control and he put Jerusalem Under Siege again this is not the Romans this is a Jewish fighter and there was still a deal that every day uh they would lower some coins in a basket and the other side would still provide animals sheep that they could take up and bring as a Corbin meaning even though we're fighting each other but we want there to be carbonos in the Bas of mikash that itself is interesting and one time in an act of derision they put a pig in the basket and it mentions how the pig clawed the walls and emitted a a squeak that could be held say it could be heard for 400 paros meaning was such a Biz such a shame so according to that let me just explain something according to that b was actually a one-time event it doesn't mean like you always say oh the Corbin T was no longer brought this is hundred years before the Corbin but it means on that day the tmid was not brought and this was such a shameful degr in way of about of of of blaspheming God that it's memorialized in infamy so he say interesting point but does not mean any type of permanent discontinuation it's a commemoration of that event now let me just point out that there's a lot here that kazal are concealing with this because basically what aristas did was he enlisted in his civil war against orinus the help of a Roman general who was nearby whose name was pompe and he invited the Roman troops to help him out in what he thought would be a friendly Mission you know mercenary type of thing pay them and then they'll get out Pompei actually used this as a basis to add Palestine to the Roman Empire so the conquest so to speak of Rome of AR Israel occurred through the invitation of Aris tuas this was around the year BCE so again just to remember this there the Romans got a foothold in ER Israel 63 BC CE through Pompei and what then happened was the Corbin was the year 70 Common Era so you're talking about 63 years plus 70 years whatever that is what does that add up to 133 so the Roman domination of er well actually the Romans dominated us afterwards but from the Corban from the Roman entry to the Corban is 133 years okay so that is the idea of so we have three explanation of one is it's referring to the last three weeks the other is the last three years and the third is it's a one-time event that's going back to hinis and aristas which Not only was tremendously degrading but it also gave the Romans an entree into ER Israel culminating 30 years later in theban basik right so those are three of the of the five I'll mention the other two just very quickly and I actually probably continue with this we're in the three weeks after all and that is uh the fourth one is also very ambiguous apus aamus burnt the Torah first of all who is aamus don't know who he is some say it refers to Pompei and various ways and the second problem is even if you identify aamus burning a Torah is of course uh a tragedy always but this is not the only time the Torah was burnt in the book of Mal which records manasha burned to sa for Torah so toras have been burnt before what is so unique about ausus burning the Torah that we make a fast day because aamus burnt the Torah so some say the following s t he actually burnt the Torah written by Moshe Renu that was kept in The KES meaning it's not just burn as tragic as every burning of the Torah scroll would be this is the Torah that was burnt so that was the special thing and the F fifth thing was and again we're going to talk more about this an idol at some point in the Roman times there was an idol that was put up in the BET mikdash and tradition has it that was the 17th of Thomas be I'm going to leave four and five for a later time I'll discuss it next week at more length because number one let's try to identify aamus and let's try to identify when an idol was put in the temple because the most famous incident was Caligula who was nuts wanted to put an idol of himself in the temple and Josephus records there was a mass Riot and the Jews didn't let him do it so as far as the history goes there was an attempt to put but it was not successful and yet the mishna indicates thatum was put in the so we'll have to try to discuss what that history is so for whatever the reason the shivas or B events are a bit more shrouded in mystery than the Tish events so again I'll try to go over this more next week have a good