[Avodah] Tamuz

[Eli Turkel]

> How can we call a month Tammuz when it is the name of a Baylonian Deity -
> sholudn't "sheim elohim acheirim lo sazkiru" make that assur mid'orraisso?
A similar question arises in out use of 2008 for the year

R. Meidan has a long piece on this on parshat Bo. Besides the problem of AZ
the Torah in BO seems to insist on using numerical values for the months so that
Nissan is the first month. In fact we have always done this for days of the week
using yom rishon etc. rather than the AZ names of sun day and moon day etc.
So why should be the months or years be different.

He points out that throughout early history years were dated from Selucid. Only
from the days of Rambam does the date from creation occur. He is not happy
even with this pointing out that Xtians count from Jesus and Moslems from
Mohamed so why shouldnt we pick a Jewish point and not the creation of
the world.

He then comes up with the chiddush that the Selucid calendar is
exactly 1000 years
off from the exodus. So counting from Selucid is the same as counting
from yetziat
mitzraim up to a thousand. In our present creation calendar we also
ignore thousands.

His conclusion and personal habit is to give a date using numbers for
days in a month,
the month of the year from Nissan and the number of years from yetziat Mizrayim
ignoring the thousands i.e. selucid date

He admits the practice hasn't caught on yet

-- 
Eli Turkel