This year, my birthday came out on Shiva Asar B’Tammuz, which I don’t remember ever happening before. You would think, perhaps, that this would ruin my birthday, but you would be mistaken. We summer babies learn early that our birthdays will often be solitary or low key; friends and family scatter over the summer, and then of course, any lavish celebrations are muted by the Three Weeks. I actually like it this way. I find that birthdays are a time for self-reflection, a time to contemplate the year that passed and think about the future, a little bit like Rosh Hashana with the addition of ice cream cake.
This year there was no cake on my birthday, a day that begins three weeks of mourning for the Jewish people and is also the day that I joined the Jewish people. It is a day when being part of the klal will supersede being an individual; it is a day of contradictions, an awkward fusion of happy birthday wishes and the start of the saddest time period of the year.
The fast didn’t ruin my birthday; on the contrary, I had to make sure that my birthday didn’t ruin the fast.
