What are the Three Weeks or Bein HaMetzarim?
Today, the 17th of Tammuz, is a minor fast in the Jewish tradition, meaning we don’t eat or drink from dawn until shortly after dusk. It, along with our other fast days not connected to a holiday, commemorates a watershed moment in the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem and the people’s subsequent exile. The 17th of Tammuz is when the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Romans. However, it’s common in Jewish tradition to layer tragedies–to trace a thread between generations and imbue particular dates with grief not for just one catastrophe, but for many. The Mishnah in Tractate Ta’anit says that on the 17th of Tammuz, five things happened: the tablets were broken by Moses, the daily offering could no longer be sacrificed during the siege of Jerusalem, the walls of Jerusalem were breached, the Greek general Apostomos burned a Torah scroll, and an idol was placed in the temple sanctuary.
While this might feel a bit heavy-handed, tying all these tragedies to one date allows us to experience a grief that’s multi-generational; it allows us to mourn not just this discrete moment, but all the moments of rupture that led to it, and that our ancestors experienced. It reminds us that we can hold multiple griefs at once.
Fast days are moments of more acute mourning, where we refrain from eating or drinking and recite special prayers, but the 17th of Tammuz also kicks off a period of more extended mourning, referred to as the Three Weeks or Bein HaMetzarim (between the straits). During the three weeks between the 17th of Tammuz and Tisha B’Av–our day of greatest mourning, marking the destruction of both temples and other disasters–we take on various traditional mourning practices: no weddings, parties, or celebrations; no haircutting or shaving; no listening to music with instruments; and no purchasing new clothes or other recreational items. Starting on Rosh Chodesh Av, in the nine days leading up to Tisha B’Av, these limitations intensify: no pleasurable bathing; no consuming wine or meat (outside of Shabbos); no laundering, or wearing freshly laundered clothes.
The Three Weeks, and the fast days capping them off at either end, function as a model of how to materially grieve catastrophe in a way that still carries us through our lives. The fast days constitute our moments of most acute grief–when the horrors of our broken world demand our full attention, insisting that sometimes in the face of grief life as normal should grind to a halt. The Three Weeks, and the Nine Days, show us how to continue living our lives without dismissing or avoiding that sorrow. This time bein hametzarim, between the straits, is one of restriction, where we work and eat and gather, but we limit our joy, our luxuriating, our excess. This mourning manifests in both our bodies, and our communal formations.
And at the same time, while the horror of present and past catastrophes never dissipates, the Three Weeks are a delimited time. We cannot spend the whole year carrying on life as usual, but we also cannot spend all our time without joy, without celebration. In providing this tiered timeline of mourning, the Jewish calendar allows us to materially reflect different ways of incorporating grief into our lives, while insisting they must continue.
- Rabbi Lexie Botzum
