Ta'anit 26 Special Days: of Priestly Blessings and Dancing Girls

We begin Perek III of Masechet Ta'anit with a very long Mishna.  This Mishna teaches us when Priests recite the priestly benedictions - with their hands up - four times each day on fast days.  These days include communal fast days, non-priestly watches, and Yom Kippur. On each of these days, a fourth prayer service is added to the day.

The Mishna goes on to outline the details of these special fast days.  In particular, we learn about the non-priestly watches over the communal offering where pious individuals from the entire community are chosen to be with the offering 24 hours each day. Non-priestly watch days include the recitation of sections of Bereshit according to the day of the week and the day of creation described in the Torah.

Looking at the closing prayers of Yom Kippur, we are reminded that the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur are our most joyous holidays.  On both of those days, wood is burned and women dance in the fields all dressed in white.  Their clothes are all borrowed from each other to divert attention from wealth.  They call out to the boys to choose themselves wives.  However, they also quote from Psalms (30:31-2) to remind young men that beauty is not as valuable as righteous behaviour.  How amazing that the orthodox world of today would consider this sort of behaviour immodest!

The Mishna also lists the calamities that befell the Jewish people on the 17 of Tammuz and on the 9th of Av.  I can't help but wonder whether or not the rabbis questioned the accuracy of these dates.  Surely some of these great minds recognized our need to organize and attempt to understand the timing of our downfalls.  So much of Talmud reminds me that we desperately crave knowledge - or at least a sense of mastery.

The Gemara, which only begins part-way through amud (b), discusses some of the reasons that prayers were not said in the afternoons.  Apparently, priests might drink alcohol over lunch.  Drunkenness while leading prayer is a great sin.  Thus the prayers are not said and the risk of inebriated prayer-leadership is eliminated.