Seventeenth of Tammuz

But ask what Hebrew month we are in.

What's the Hebrew date today? When does Rosh Chodesh fall? Whose yahrtzeit happens that marks a particular day? What happened on the seventeenth of Tammuz? Why are the weeks leading up to Tisha B'Av feel so different? What does it mean when we enter Elul and suddenly that second clock has grown faint? And I wonder whether in all of our conversations about Jewish continuity and Jewish identity, we sometimes make the problem more complicated than it has to be.

We commission studies, we measure Jewish identity, we measure affiliation, we debate endlessly how to build and strengthen that affiliation.

All of this has its place, and we've talked about all of it here, but perhaps one of the most basic, fundamental things that we can do is to simply teach our families what time it is.

There were only a few hundred Jews in New York, but this was their country too, and they wanted to march.

There was only one complication.

The parade was scheduled for July twenty-second, seventeen eighty-eight, which that year fell on the seventeenth of Tammuz, a Jewish fast day.

So they asked the organizers to change the date, and they did.