The Jewish Month
It is ineed a strange coincidence that in the very week when the American people will noisily celebrate the "Glorious Fourth" as the birthday of their national independence, Jews all over the world will commemorate the beginning of the end of their political life, by spending the seventeenth day of Tammuz (July 6) in fasting and prayer. On that day, tradition tells us, Nebuchadnezzar succeeded in battering down the walls of Jerusalem, and on the same day, five centuries later, Titus perpetrated the same deed. The three weeks between the seventeenth of Tammuz and the ninth of Ab are a period of sadness, during which no marriages are performed and no festivities indulged in.
To us, Zionists, Tammuz is a season of additional sadness, because it was in this month, five years ago, that our great leader, Dr. Theodor Herzl, was called away from our midst, ere his work was completed.
Rashi (1040-1105), the most popular commentator of the Bible and of the Talmud, died in Tammuz, 4865.
Suggestive Questions.—Do other nations, too, celebrate their defeats and national calamities as well as their victories, or is this a typically Jewish trait? What part did Jews play in the American Revolution? What makes greater demands upon the American Jew, the joy of the Fourth of July, or the sadness of Shi- b'ah 'Ossor be-Tammuz? Is the purpose of the fast day merely to commemorate the sad event, or does it also stimulate
hope for the future? Was Herzl's Zionism merely a protest against the Dreyfus case? How would Herzl have regarded the recent political changes in. Turkey? What would, in all probability, have been his attitude toward the proposed union of the I. C. A. and the I. T. O. in colonizing Mesopotamia? Did Dr. Herzl's untimely death hinder the movement, or did it throw the Zionists upon their own resources?
Did Rashi exert any lasting influence on Jewish study? How did the French school compare with the Spanish? Who were the Tosafists?
Subjects for Essays.—Jewish Fast Days, Their Meaning and Purpose.
"The Jewish State": A Digest and Criticism.
Topics for Debate.—1. Resolved that the Zionist affiliation of the Jew does not interfere with his loyalty to the country of his birth or adoption.
2. Resolved that Jews in America are in greater need of Zionism than the Jews in Russia.
References.—The Jewish Encyclopedia, under Tammuz; Herzl, the Jewish State; Wolf, Simon, The Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen; Schwab, I. Can Jews be Patriots; Liber, M., Rashi.