Next week will be the 10th of Tevet, a day marking the beginning of the siege that the king of Babylon imposed on Jerusalem, during the time of the First Temple. The Temple was then destroyed and the people of Israel went into exile in Babylon. From there, they returned, seventy years later, and built the Second Temple, which stood for more than four hundred years.
And yet, we remember and commemorate every year, with fasting and lent, the bitter day on which the process that caused the destruction began.
We can learn something from this about the historical memory of the Jewish people. The general public atmosphere is one of 'here and now.' Even the cultivation of Holocaust awareness has already encountered difficulties. Some see it as oppressive and irrelevant past memories.
However, Judaism cultivates a deep consciousness of more than two thousand five hundred years, a consciousness that is passed down from generation to generation, and does not omit any detail.
Above our understanding
The 10th of Tevet is also a day of remembrance for the terrible Holocaust. It is a day of general Kaddish, for the ascension of the souls of the saints whose day of ascension in the heavenly storm we do not even know. Thus the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem is linked to the terrible Holocaust that occurred only about seventy years ago.
These difficult events are beyond human comprehension, and any attempt to understand them logically is doomed to failure, due to our inability to see the whole picture.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe gives this parable of a man who has no idea about medicine and finds himself in an operating room. He sees masked men, knives in their hands, cutting into a man's body. In the absence of a suitable background for the scene before him, the man is certain that he is witnessing a brutal murder. However, when he sees the whole picture, he will realize that these men are doctors, fighting with dedication to save a man's life.
Thus, a person's perception can be completely reversed, even though the image itself has not changed.
This example illustrates our inability to understand the Creator's thoughts and to delve into the secret of how the world is run. We have no background to the images we see, and we do not know what gigantic divine puzzle they fit into.
Therefore, we bow our heads in humility and accept the Creator's decree in the statement, "The Lord is righteous in all His ways and holy in all His works.".
There is a purpose.
The terrible Holocaust that befell our people brings to extremes the inability to understand the Creator's leadership. Therefore, it remains as a great cry, which came precisely from great faith and from the expectation of soon seeing the wonders of redemption, which will be born after these sufferings of the Messiah.
We believe with complete faith that there is a purpose to the terrible suffering. When redemption comes, it will become clear that it was precisely the hardships and suffering of exile that gave rise to the wonderful and noble goodness of the days of the Messiah.
Today, this is beyond our understanding, and yet we are certain that the light of redemption will be in it, providing such great compensation, for each individual who suffered and for the entire people of Israel, that the prophecy will be fulfilled: "I will praise you, O Lord, for you have afflicted me" - the people of Israel will thank God, blessed be He, for being angry with us and tormenting us. This is our faith, this is our comfort, and this is our great expectation.
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