The names of the months in the Hebrew calendar are not Hebrew. They originated in Babylon, and when the people of Israel were exiled there, they adopted and “converted” them.
Among these names, particularly surprising is Tammuz, which was a prominent deity in Mesopotamian mythology. The Babylonians even placed an idol of the Tammuz in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
How is it then that Judaism, which more than anything else fought against idolatry, agreed to accept the name “Tammuz” for one of the months of the year?
The absorption of a seemingly foreign and negative element into Judaism means that the Torah does not see it as wholly bad but identifies a positive element within it. In the language of Kabbalah and Chasidut, in the world of impure shells (kelipot) there are sparks of holiness (nitzotzot) that can be redeemed and elevated to their source using the tools of holiness. This elevation of sparks is called tikkun, which roughly translates as rectification. Tikkun is the way to conduct an in-depth treatment of negative things: instead of simply rejecting them, their spiritual root is identified and from it a positive version of the same negative thing is cultivated.
Judaism’s choice to adopt the word “Tammuz” means that the cult of Tammuz, and by extension other elements of non-monotheistic mythology, can and should be rectified. Somewhere, somehow, there must be a true basis for human attraction to polytheistic, even idolatrous mythology, and examining the cult of Tammuz provides us with the key to discovering it.
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
What was the myth of the Tammuz?
Like all myths, it has many versions, including one brought by Maimonides in his Guide for the Perplexed.
All versions share a central motif: the Tammuz was a god, or a prophet of a god, who died, and every year at the beginning of the month of Tammuz, named after him, people would ascend to his temple and mourn him. According to Maimonides’ version, he was killed in a “strange manner” by an evil king, while other versions claim he was killed by his wife. In some versions, he is the god of the underworld, while in others, he represents nature that “dies” in summer and is “resurrected” in winter. But in all versions, he dies, and his death provokes many lamentations and eulogies.
The cult of the Tammuz is mentioned once in the book of Ezekiel: “Then he brought me to the entrance of the gate of the house of God... and there were women sitting and weeping for the Tammuz.”
What exactly did the women see that caused them to weep? Here we come to the most interesting part. The cult of the Tammuz made fascinating use of ancient pyrotechnics: it used a hollow statue with lead eyes. The statue was then heated from within until the lead melted and flowed down the idol’s cheeks, creating the impression of tears. The Tammuz is crying, his priests explained, pleading for offerings and sacrifices. The tears of the Tammuz successfully played on the emotions of the masses, especially women, and many would make pilgrimage to it, mourning and bringing gifts.
What lies at the core of this cult? It seems that Tammuz was the prototype of the tragic hero, the “leading star” of a popular archaic tragedy which preceded Greek theater by some two millennia. It is likely that the statue of Tammuz was of a young and beautiful lad (after all, the death of a young person is always more tragic than that of an old one...), and the “fan club” that would make a pilgrimage to it to reenact his death story experienced a sort of catharsis—emotional purification resulting from identifying with him and having compassion for him.
The emotional experience provided by the cult of Tammuz was achieved through an especially cheap form of manipulation, a special effect using artificial Hollywood tears. One could say that the cult of Tammuz was literally the world’s first “tear-jerker.” But are things so different in the later, more sophisticated, and seemingly higher-brow tragedies we all know? They too, in their way, concoct a plot and unfold it in a manner that floods the soul, involuntarily, with an addictive wave of sorrow. The cult of Tammuz is the cornerstone of the culture of tragedy, embodying in a crude and rudimentary form the way it artificially produces grief.
The fact that the genre of tragedy is rooted in idolatry comes as no surprise to anyone versed in biblical Hebrew: one of the central Hebrew words for idol, etzev (בֶצֶע), literally means “sadness.”
EVERY GENERATION AND ITS TAMMUZ
The cult of Tammuz has passed from the world, but its echoes continue to reverberate through the corridors of history. Following Greek tragedies, the most evident reincarnation of Tammuz is, of course, Christianity. The Christian myth bears striking similarities to the cult of Tammuz: at its center stands a tragically fallen “Messiah” who was executed in a peculiar manner, was resurrected, is often depicted as weeping, and whose followers are required to experience his suffering and death (and, in the case of the Catholic Mass, to do so physically).
But the Tammuz also thrives in modern secular society. First, we have the revival of tragedy in Shakespeare’s generation, giving us a slew of modern tragic heroes from Hamlet to Romeo and Juliet. But it’s more than that: modern culture as a whole, both in scientific works and in novels and plays, tends to represent reality as fundamentally tragic and absurd. In fact, it seems that in many intellectual circles, it has long been established that for an artistic creation to be considered highbrow, it must be tragic in some way, or at least present life as ultimately broken and meaningless. This view is so entrenched that, in many circles, when someone chooses to express an optimistic emotion in their work, or God forbid provide a “happy ending,” it is immediately dismissed as a form of cop-out, a resort to “low” art.
Popular culture tends to be lighter and happier than its arthouse counterpart, but in fact, the Tammuz heritage manifests there even more strongly. Here we are referring to the personality cults that form around “teen idols,” especially after their deaths. The portraits of stars like Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and many others function as modern pop versions of the statue of Tammuz, and the tears shed today by the many who visit their graves are the same tears shed at the feet of the ancient idol (and of course, the primary audience is still young girls, whose hearts are touched most deeply by the suffering of the idol).
As of the writing of these lines, the latest idol to join this list was Michael Jackson, whose official commemoration was staged in the best tradition of the cult of Tammuz to bring his fans to tears. In Jackson’s case, the resemblance between his numerous surgeries to the artificial tears of Tammuz is truly chilling, making the “King of Pop” the prime candidate for the Tammuz of our generation (He even died in the month of Tammuz!).
If Christianity, modern art, and star worship do not concern you, note that the idolatry of Tammuz can also sneak into our own psyches in the form of victim mentality. In fact, it is the intelligent individualists, those least tempted to bow to external idols of admiration, who are also the most likely to create a tragic self-image for themselves and unconsciously begin to worship it.
When a person tells themselves that their life is miserable, sinks into self-pity, and expects endless sympathy from others—they are essentially sculpting an inner portrait in the image of Tammuz, producing their own tears, and becoming enslaved to self-worship or self-idolatry.
CHOOSE LIFE
As mentioned earlier, incorporating the name Tammuz into Judaism means that everything represented by the cult of Tammuz can be rectified. With the Torah as our guide and particularly with the teachings of Chasidut, we can take our attraction to tragic heroes and transform it into a positive force.
As a first step, we must call the culture of tragedy and depression by its name: a form of idolatry that seeks to squeeze superficial and shallow emotions from us (and often quite a bit of money). Indeed, there exists a form of profound and authentic sorrow, but it is not what the culture of depression evokes; it seeks to produce artificial emotions whose sole purpose is to addict us so that we grow addicted to them.
Just as belief in an idol involves isolating a piece of reality and deifying it, so the culture of depression isolates one mental experience and projects it repeatedly on a giant screen, creating the illusion that it is the whole truth. Realizing that this projection is nothing but an image waiting to be idolized can help us shake free from our unhealthy attachment to it and remind us that we are still free to choose. Just as we may have chosen to believe this image would provide our life with meaning and purpose in life, so we can choose at this moment to believe in a good and benevolent Creator who governs the world with providence. As Moses says to the Israelites: “I have set before you: life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life.” The choice is ours to make.
However, this first stage is not enough. The shattering of the idols of sorrow carries the danger of resorting to cheap optimism, replacing an idol with artificial tears with one that has an artificial smile. Anyone who is even a little sensitive to the dark, gaping chasm lying beneath the surface of reality and is simply and off-handedly told to “choose life”, will look upon their smiling parents and teachers, all preaching joy and positivity, and will see a lie, people who talk about life without echoing the depths of life. These people are likely to seek refuge in the embrace of various “Tammuzian” heroes, who at least sympathize with their craving for depth.
Truth be told, “choosing life” is more complex than it seems. The Talmud makes an incredible distinction between two levels of Divine revelation—God’s “exterior chambers” versus His “interior chambers.” To His surroundings, as it were, God displays “strength and joy,” that is, joyful optimism; but in His private, interior domain, it is said that, “My soul shall weep in secret”—God weeps over the prolonged exile of the Jewish people and the fact that He is not revealed in the world. This elaboration found in the Talmud reveals that the interplay between Divine sorrow and Divine joy is complex. God is not simply one or the other. Instead, He harbors both, with the sense of sorrow situated in a more internal and secretive dimension than the feeling of joy.
Turning from the Talmud—the rabbinic compendium of the Torah’s revealed dimension—to the Zohar—the repository for the Torah’s concealed dimension—we find that it instructs us to each maintain in our heart a similar combination of joy and weeping. In other words, the carrying of opposites the Talmud describes with regard to God, that of exterior joy and interior sorrow, should serve as a model for us in choosing life: the joy we impose on ourselves is meant to serve only as an external framework, a basic mindset of optimism. Within it, however, there should be room for the full spectrum of emotions, including and especially feelings of sorrow and sadness. In fact, the exterior framework of joy can elevate the interior sorrow, raising it from a self-centered feeling of pity (or self-pity) to an altruistic emotion of compassion—the desire to care and do good for others. Thus, the feelings of sadness and sorrow become the emotional engine that breathes life into the revealed joy and drives it to act practically in a balanced way.
The idea that the feeling of sorrow is at root higher than the feeling of joy is illustrated by a beautiful gematria, or numerical relationship. The two highest levels of the soul are called from below to above: chayah (the living one) and yechidah (the singular one). Numerically, the value of chayah (הָּיַח), the lower of the two levels, has the same gematria as “joy” (הָוְדֶח), while yechidah (הָידִחְי), the higher level, has the same gematria as “weeping” (הָּיִכְּב). These are the two words the Zohar uses to describe the feelings that must reside side by side in our heart and they are also the ones used in the Talmud to describe God’s inner and outer chambers.
Thus, we have found that weeping does indeed play a role in the rectified psyche, but it cannot stand alone without the joy to balance it.
FROM WORSHIPPING SUPERSTARS TO FAITH IN TZADDIKIM
Since the Tammuz embodies not only tragedy but also the general tendency to worship idols, the process we have outlined here would not be complete without a few words on the rectification of the culture of idolizing “superstars.”
The idea that we can rectify the tendency to idolize stars means, simply, that the essential desire for a role model is not negative but must be properly channeled. Instead of idolizing pop stars and movie stars who are self-absorbed and shrouded in a tragic aura, we should seek exemplary figures who embody the rectified relationship between joy and sorrow just described. We must select role models who have clearly chosen a positive and joyful way of life, yet also feel the world’s sorrow—the sorrow of the entire Jewish people, and by extension, the sorrow of all humankind—and use it as the fuel that motivates them to go out and improve the world.
These figures have a name. They are called tzaddikim (the pious and righteous individuals who dedicate their lives to Divine service). True tzaddikim are worthy of admiration and, furthermore, emulation. The admiration of true tzaddikim who enlighten our eyes and strengthen our choice of good and life channels our natural tendency to admire those greater than us into a positive thrust.
It is written that “God has made this the counterpart of that” (הָׂשָה עֶת זַּמֻעְה לֶת זֶאיםִהֹ-לֱאָה). For every external and idolatrous “King of Pop,” there is a tzaddik—an individual far removed from the inflated pomp of self-glorification. These individuals truly embody royal qualities with dedication and humility. Once we wipe away the artificial tears of the culture of depression, we may be fortunate enough to notice them.
Notes:
- Bereishit Rabbah 48:9.
- Ezekiel 8:14.
- In the original Akkadian and Sumerian, the Tammuz was called Dumuzu.
- 3:29.
- Ezekiel loc. cit.
- Our series of classes on Rectifying the Ego revolve around this topic. See our dedicated learning platform of Torah-based psychology, www.thenefesh.org for more.
- Deuteronomy 30:19.
- Chagigah 5b.
- 1 Chronicles 16:27.
- Jeremiah 13:17.
- Zohar 3:75a.
- Ecclesiastes 7:14.
