The Twentieth of Sivan (Hebrew: תענית כ׳ בסיוון) is a historic Jewish fast day, first instituted by Rabbeinu Tam in 1171. It originally commemorated that year's massacre at Blois in France, the first blood libel in continental Europe.
The day was later also marked to commemorate the Cossack riots of 1648–49 in Poland-Lithuania, instituted by the Council of Four Lands in 1650. After World War II, suggestions were made to observe it as a Holocaust memorial day, but this was not widely adopted. In 1948, Tzvi Pesach Frank proposed to use the day to commemorate the fall of the Jewish Quarter in the Battle for Jerusalem.
Some communities still recite the Selichot service for the occasion. They are recited today by Belz Hasidim, Skver Hasidim and Papa Hasidim.
References
- ^ Mizrahi, Israel (2021-08-19). "A Day Of Tragedies – 20 Sivan". Retrieved 2023-08-03.
- Aron, Yossi. "Sivan 20 – The almost forgotten fast day". www.australianjewishnews.com. Retrieved 2023-08-03.
- Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim (2011-07-01). Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory. University of Washington Press. pp. 48–52. ISBN 978-0-295-80383-8.
- Teller, Adam (2020-04-14). Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century. Princeton University Press. pp. 54–61. ISBN 978-0-691-19986-3.
- על חומותיך ירושלים
- The selichot service can be found here in the Kol Bo machzor. For another version of the Selichot, see Kuntres Posen.