Why Was Jerusalem Destroyed? (Dorfler Memorial Lecture)

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

The three weeks known as Bein HaMeitzarim , twenty-one days between 17th of Tamuz and 9th of Av, are marked by abstaining from wedding ceremonies, dance-music, and for the more observant: no eating of meat or drinking wine, except on Shabbat. We read in Mishna, Ta'anit 4.6: 'Five things befell our ancestors on the 17th of Tamuz, and five on the 9th of Av'. The two lists of five things are somewhat symmetric: the first event in each list connects these two dates with mishaps during the first years of wandering in the Sinai desert, following the Exodus. The second and third items in each of these two lists connect the two dates with commemorating the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Which of the two Temples: the first or the second? As for Tish 'ah beAv this mishnah is clear: 'The Temple was destroyed the first time and the second time on this date', i.e. both Temples were destroyed on the same date in different centuries. There is a contradiction between the two Biblical reports, in Jeremiah 52:12 and in II Kings 25:8, concerning the First Temple. The first report says that the Temple was set on fire on the tenth day of the fifth month (which is Av) and the other reports that it took place on the seventh day of the same month. The rabbis harmonise these sources by explaining that on the seventh and eighth the enemy desecrated the Temple, on the ninth set it on fire, and it kept burning throughout the tenth day. According to both sources, Jeremiah and II Kings, the Babylonian army breached the walls of Jerusalem on the 9th of Tamuz, not on the 17th. On these grounds the rabbis in the Babylonian Talmud conclude that the 17th of Tamuz refers only to the second Temple1 but the Yerushalmi Talmud insists that Jeremiah simply made a mistake in his diary, and that the 1 7th of Tamuz was the beginning of the end of both Temples.2