Seventeenth of Tammuz in Post Six Day War Religious Zionism

The Talmud Bavli  (RH 18) considers the 3 minor fasts that relate to the events around the destruction of the Temples  to be optional, with the exception being a  period of severe persecution.

Tosfot rules that these fast days are now obligatory, due to fact that the Jewish people as a whole had accepted them upon themselves, formalizing a reality that Halachic communities were already observing. These fasts have been accepted in all Halachic communities until the present.

After the Six Day War, Hatnuah LiYahadut Shel Torah  (maybe Elli Fischer or one of my translator friends can take a shot at translating that one)  felt that times had changed and the Fast of the Seventeenth of Tammuz was no longer binding.  The movement was founded in 1966 by Religious Zionist intellectuals who felt that the Halacha had to be brought in sync with the reality of the existence of  a Jewish State.  Hence the Seventeenth of Tammuz, coming less than seven weeks after the Six Day War, presented them with a unique opportunity.

As the fast was theoretically optional, they felt that as (they then believed) the Divine Presence was being restored in Jerusalem, the Halacha no longer mandated a fast. (These ideas were written up in Mehalchim, the group’s short- lived journal,  in 1969)

The group organized a minyan annually on the Seventeenth of Tammuz, twice in private homes (1967, 69) and once at the Kotel (1968) for a regular weekday non-fast davening.   In 1968, a Thursday, the group publicly read the  Torah reading from the weekly parsha.  In 1969 there was some discussion about whether Tachanun should be omitted, which would be going a step further indicating that the day is now of a semi-festive nature.  At the end they agreed to follow the position of their host, R Prof. Aurebach, and recited Tachanun.

After 1969 this whole business seemed to have petered out.  Even with all of the excitement after the Six Day War,  only one small group was willing to allow for any such change, and even they only existed for a short time.  Neither Religious Zionist nor any Chabad faction is willing to deviate from the Shulchan Aruch on these matters. The irony is that the only “group” that do not fast as a matter of course are the Briskers, the anti-Zionist branch of the Soloveitchik family.