Timeless Torah

Fun and Sun; Barbecue and Vacation. All of these are part of the usual summer images. Now think of fasting, no joyous celebrations, music banned and aestheticism. What do these pictures remind you of? If you answered “summer” you were still correct.
For three weeks every summer, from the 17th day of the Hebrew month Tammuz until after the 9th of Av, a host of Halachic restrictions, designed to curb our enjoyment of the physical world, are enjoined. These days have been marked with national tragedies from the beginning of Jewish history. The breaching of Jerusalem’s walls, the first public burning of the Torah, idols being placed in the Temple, our capital and Holy House destroyed, Crusades, the Inquisition, countless pogroms - all seemed to begin or occur during these three weeks of sadness.
The very first misfortune takes us back to the days following the Revelation at Sinai. Moses had ascended the mountain to receive the first set of Tablets and forty days later the Israelites were already worshiping a golden calf. Interestingly enough, although this major transgression occurred on the 17th of Tammuz it is not the sin which is cited as the cause for all the other calamities. Rather Moses’ reaction - the breaking of the Tablets - is considered the root of all our subsequent suffering that eventually earmarked this unhappy period. Why? The Torah states that these Tablets were engraved by G-d Himself. To quote Exodus 32:16, “The Tablets were the work of G-d and the inscription was the Divine inscription.”
This engraving was not only Divine, it was miraculous. The letters penetrated the stone and could be read from either side. In other words, a reverse mirror image did not appear on the back. The original Tablets gave man a clear understanding of what the Divine will was. Regardless of the vantage point, Hashem’s message was evident without confusion and without the possibility of distortion.
When Moses broke the Luchos (Tablets), we lost this clarity of perception. No longer would G-d’s word shine bright and clear for everyone to see and honor. Our struggle for spirituality would now be uphill. We lost the Tablets and in later generations we would grope around blindly while we lost our country, our Temple, our sons and our daughters.
All of this is re-experienced during the ‘three-weeks-less-fun-zone’ summer.