Twentieth of Sivan

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.^[1]

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.^[2][1][3][4] In 1948, Tzvi Pesach Frank proposed to use the day to commemorate the fall of the Jewish Quarter in the Battle for Jerusalem.^[5]

References

1. Mizrahi, Israel (2021-08-19). "A Day Of Tragedies – 20 Sivan". Retrieved 2023-08-03.
2. Aron, Yossi. "Sivan 20 – The almost forgotten fast day". www.australianjewishnews.com. Retrieved 2023-08-03.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. על חומותיך ירושלים