Tammuz תמוז

The Mishnah lists five calamities of the seventeenth of Tammuz: the tablets broken, the daily offering ceased, the city wall breached, a Torah scroll burned and an idol set in the Temple. With this fast begin the "three weeks"—bein hametzarim, "between the straits"—leading to the ninth of Av. The month's very name is a rare Babylonian trace in the calendar: so was called the Mesopotamian deity whose mourning Ezekiel rebukes.

The month names now in use are Babylonian: "the names of the months came up with us from Babylon", says the Jerusalem Talmud. In the Torah months are counted—"the first", "the seventh"—from Nisan, the month of the Exodus.