The fast of the 10th of Tevet commemorates an event that occurred more than two thousand four hundred years ago, during the late days of the First Temple. On this day, the siege of Jerusalem by the king of Babylon began, as described in the Book of Jeremiah: "In the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and encamped against it, and built a siege rampart against it all around.".
The siege that began on the 10th of Tevet ended with the destruction of the First Temple and the exodus of the people of Israel into Babylonian exile. Seventy years later, the people returned to the Land of Israel and built the Second Temple. It stood for more than four hundred years, until it was destroyed by the Romans, and the people of Israel were exiled from their land for a long exile of about two thousand years. But the 10th of Tevet is the bitter day on which the process that led to the first destruction began, and which we remember and commemorate every year, by fasting and reciting Selichot.
Past and present intertwined
Want more news, videos and stories? Join the Haredim 10 WhatsApp channel >>
It is not easy to cultivate such a long historical consciousness in our time, when even the memory of the Holocaust encounters difficulties. Some already see Holocaust consciousness as a burdensome and irrelevant matter. Detaching from the past also brings statements as if there is nothing to learn from history.
However, in the Jewish people, the past and the present are intertwined. The memory of the past gives perspective to the events of the present. Therefore, the Jewish people remember the events that occurred thousands of years ago, pass them on from generation to generation, and do not omit any detail.
The 10th of Tevet is also designated today as the Day of General Kaddish, a day of remembrance for the saints of the Holocaust whose date of death for the sake of the sanctification of God is unknown. This day should also serve as a focus for education and reflection on passing on our people's past to the younger generation.
It has been about eighty years since the Holocaust. The number of survivors of the inferno is dwindling. The third and fourth generations have no longer absorbed the Holocaust consciousness in their homes as part of the natural way of life.
This generation, if special measures are not taken to instill this awareness in it, will not know about it. In its eyes, it will be part of a dim and distant history.
Cultivating the legacy of heroism
The believing public has a special interest in cultivating the legacy of Jewish heroism, not as a distortion of the concept of heroism in the past. Heroism is not necessarily the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising or the exploits of the partisans, although they too wrote a shining chapter in Jewish heroism. Heroism no less than these is the ability of a believing Jew to maintain a human image in the depths of hell; to save his meager wages in order to fulfill a mitzvah; to risk his life to put on tefillin, pray and study Torah; to sing "I believe in the coming of the Messiah" even at the gates of the crematoriums.
In the years since the Holocaust, countless such stories have accumulated, each one of which leaves you speechless, thrilled and astonished. You see ordinary Jews, not exactly rabbis or righteous, suddenly demonstrating such miraculous spiritual strength. Jews who, even when they reached the depths of humiliation and slavery, had a strong faith that made them feel stronger than their murderers and enslavers.
Thus, the terrible Holocaust becomes a source of faith and fortitude, alongside the cry to God, the Almighty, that He will put an end to our troubles and quickly send us our righteous Messiah in our day.
