Expert: Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner - 7/2/2007

Question
Hello R. Lerner...I hope you can help me understand this..

Okay, I don't understand how the name "Tammuz" came to be name within the Jewish Calendar. I understand that the set up of the calendar was the first mitzvah, but what is the origin of this name and what is the meaning of this passage?

"Eze 8:14 Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD'S house which [was] toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz?

According to vast encyclopedic references, it states in part:

"The connection in cult practice is with Adonis' Mesopotamian counterpart, Tammuz:

"Women sat by the gate weeping for Tammuz, or they offer incense to Baal on roof-tops and plant pleasant plants. These are the very features of the “Adonis cult”: a cult confined to women which was celebrated on flat roof-tops on which sherds sown with quickly germinating green salading are placed, Adonis gardens... the climax was a loud lamentation for the dead god." —Burkert, p. 177).

Wasn't the Prophet warning the children of Israel about this idolatrous practice...did the children of Israel "pick up from the nations possibly adopting its name Tammuz???


Answer
Dear R,

Thanks for writing.

Although you're correct that the references are to pagan deities in various traditions, including the Babylonian world into which they were taken in the first exile.

However, the Jews were also willing to use the astronomical signs [ tammuz=cancer] and also the names of months to build their calendar, which was then brought back from Babylonian and absorbed into all of Jewish tradition.

It isn't the first time that pagan influences have crept into Jewish tradition.

Best wishes

Rabbi Dov