In school settings, we tend to think about summertime as dedicated to time off, time on the beach or time just to have time to do all the things you didn’t have time for in the fall, winter and spring.

For school age kids, summer is about freedom and (in ever rarer instances) boredom. For their working parents, summer is more of the same, except more so.

For the Jewish calendar, summer is a season of sadness and fasts. One of them took place yesterday!

Many years ago, I learned this mnemonic to help me remember the six fast days in the Jewish calendar. Hearing myself recite it out loud, it sounds like a recently popularized “difficult” cognitive test, but it does the trick.  Here it is.  Black, White, Woman, Man, and Jerusalem.

“Black” refers to the mourning surrounding the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem on the 9th of Av.

“White” refers to the garb we don during the services of Yom Kippur.

(Both “Black” and “White” are major fasts, as in they begin at sundown on the day before to sundown on the day itself. The remaining fasts are “minor,” as the fast runs from sunrise to sundown.)

“Woman” refers to Esther who declared a day of fasting in the run-up to her attempt to thwart Haman’s genocidal plot against Persia’s Jews. We mark the Fast of Esther on 13 Adar, the day before Purim.

“Man” refers to Gedaliah ben Ahikam, whose assassination ended the last vestiges of Jewish autonomy in the land of Israel under Babylonian occupation. We mark this fast on 3 Tishri, the day after the two day holyday of Rosh HaShanah.

The two other fast days are related to Jerusalem. The 10th of Tevet (which falls in late December/early January) marks the beginning of the Babylonian siege of the walled city of Jerusalem in 587 BCE.

Now, for the folks following at home, it would track that the next fast day in the calendar – the 17th of Tammuz (214 days after the beginning of the siege on 10 Tevet) would mark the day the Babylonians breached Jerusalem’s walls, and began a process that would result in the burning of the city, the sacking of the Temple and the exiling of a lion’s share of Judah’s Jewish population to Babylon.

Except the 17th of Tammuz commemorates a different army breaching Jerusalem’s walls – the Romans.

And it seems that, sticking with the Roman campaign, it would take the Romans three more weeks before they reached the Temple Mount and set it ablaze. 

Hence, we also observe “the Three Weeks,” a period of mourning between 17 Tammuz and 9 Av, which culminates in the major fast.

The 9th of Av marks the Temple's destruction in 586 BCE at the hands of the Babylonians and, again, in 70 CE at the hands of the Romans.

It also marks, according to tradition, the day the Children of Israel wept over the report of the spies sent by Moses to scout out the Promised Land.  Ten came back with a one-star review, which set off a wave of panic and despair.  And for this, God condemned that generation to wander and die off in the desert in a classic example of “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!” 

Beitar, the last stronghold of the Bar Kochba Revolt (132-135 CE) also fell on the 9th of Av. On the same day, Roman commander Quintus Tineius Rufus ordered the site of the Temple in Jerusalem plowed over with salt. 

The First Crusade (allegedly) began on the 9th of Av, 1096. Jews were expelled from England in 1290, France in 1306 and Spain in 1492 – all on the 9th of Av.

SS Commander Heinrich Himmler formally received approval from the Nazi Party for "The Final Solution" on the 9th of Av, 1941. A year later, to the day, the Nazis began a mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka.

During this time, some Jews refrain from cutting hair, holding public celebrations, and listening to music. And, if the sadness is not palpable enough during this time, during the final "Nine Days” of these three weeks, some even forgo meat and wine. Other heightened examples include a ban on laundering clothing (except for a baby’s) or wearing freshly laundered outer clothing.Some don’t swim or bathe for pleasure, remodel or expand a home, plant trees for shade or fragrance. Some refrain from cutting their nails during the actual week of the fast of the 9th of Av.

As summer brings its own mix of freedom and reflection, the Jewish calendar invites us to remember and honour our history through these fast days. Even in the midst of summer's warmth, we can pause to connect with our past, finding strength and resilience in our shared traditions and stories.