#tammuz

[rynquestionmark]

Sorry Tammuz Adonis…

(Idea credit to my lovely oomfie on Twitter)

[sapocipo]

Inanna eating her husband up

[extollingtheeveryday]

This cloud stopped me dead in my tracks Monday.

[todaysjewishholiday]

Chodesh Tammuz Tov!

A little bit late because my digestive system gave up on me about a month ago and this blog has just been running down its queue since then.

Tammuz-- the solstice month, when the fresh growth of the omer months turns to sweltering heat. Tammuz has the mixed honor of being the only month of the Hebrew calendar named for a polytheistic deity.

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

29 Tammuz: Yahrzeit of Rashi, Torah and Talmudic exegete par excellence and sage of Troyes

[hebrewbyinbal]

The Hebrew month of Tamuz starts today. The month of seeing. Of vision. Of the eyes. Of how we look at what is right in front of us.

Two people can stand in the exact same life, look at the exact same thing, and one sees a wall while the other sees a door. Same place. Same facts. Completely different sight.

That is the quiet invitation of Tamuz. It is not asking you to change what is in front of you. It is asking how you are choosing to see it.

So this month, notice where your eyes go. You might be looking at something you have looked at for years, and finally be ready to see it differently. 💙

[doodleomi]

dumuzid

[nogetron]

Heres my redraw of Dumuzid!

[davidluongart]

Aphrodite and Adonis in their older Mesopotamian forms; Inanna-Ishtar, the warlike goddess of beauty, fertility, and love and Dumuzi, her husband and the shepherd king of ageless Uruk.🦁🐏

Here are the poem snippet that I used as the main inspo, written by Enhueduanna, high priestess of the moon god Nanna/Sin and daughter of King Sargon & Queen Tashlultum of Akkad. As she became a devotee of Inanna and composed various exaltation hymns to the goddess, she also composed 42 hymns addressed to many temples and sanctuaries across the land of Sumer and Akkad, the so-called Temple Hymns; which makes her become the earliest known named author in world history.

The ziggurat temple background was based on the Eanna temple (”House” of Inanna) in Uruk, which was built during the 3rd dynasty of Ur (21st cent BC) and had been mentioned throughout in the Epic of Gilgamesh; while their clothing was from later recent Assyrian & Babylonian era. All of the offerings were based on the depictions on the Warka vase from the National Museum of Iraq - an agricultural festival that seemed to be connected with the rituals involved with the goddess.