The Tenth of Tevet: The Fast That Opens the Destruction

Tonight we take up a reflection on Asara BeTevet, the fast of the Tenth of Tevet. You know that there are four fasts in the year that revolve around the destruction of the First Temple and the exile. The one that inaugurates these four fasts is the fast of the Tenth of Tevet. Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, and that siege was followed by concrete events only two and a half years later, on the Seventeenth of Tammuz, when a breach was made in the wall of Jerusalem. The Seventeenth of Tammuz is indeed the second fast day; the third is the destruction of the Temple, the Ninth of Av — that is, the beginning of the exile. So: the Tenth of Tevet; the Seventeenth of Tammuz, when the wall of Jerusalem was breached; the destruction of the Temple, the Ninth of Av; and then the loss of national identity, with the murder, by a Jew, of the last governor who had been appointed — that is the Third of Tishri. These four fasts are mentioned, of course, by the prophet Zecharyah, in chapter 8: “Thus says Hashem of Hosts: the fast of the fourth” — the fourth month, understand Tammuz — “the fast of the fifth” — the fifth month, the Ninth of Av — “the fast of the seventh” — the Third of Tishri — “and the fast of the tenth” — the tenth month, that is, the month of Tevet — “shall become for the house of Yehudah joy and gladness and festive occasions; so love truth and peace” (Zechariah 8:19). Seek truth before peace — or rather, let truth clear the way for peace. That is the reference. Now what is curious is that the fast of the tenth month, which inaugurates the process of the Temple’s destruction, is mentioned last, when it ought to have come first, since it sounds the alarm over the people’s decline and the imminent fall of the kingdom of Judah — and paradoxically it is named only at the end. There is another peculiarity in this fast: we are fasting for an event that left no trace at the level of historical fact, for, as I said a moment ago, it was on the Seventeenth of Tammuz that the wall of Jerusalem was breached. And yet this is the only fast which, should it ever fall on Shabbat, would be observed on Shabbat, just as Yom Kippur is. Our sages, of course, arranged the calendar so that the Tenth of Tevet does not coincide with Shabbat.

This month, as it happens, the Tenth of Tevet may well fall on a Friday. Why did they insist, at all costs, that this fast be commemorated even on Shabbat? You know that there is only one public fast observed on the day of Shabbat: Yom Kippur. It is not postponed. Why? Because it is said be-etzem ha-yom ha-zeh, “on this very day.” The text specifies “on this day,” which means that moving it to the next day is impossible. The essence of that day is Yom Kippur. The same holds for ba-chodesh ha-asiri, the fast of the tenth month: “Son of man, write down for yourself the name of the day, this very day” — I am quoting Yechezkel chapter 24 (Ezekiel 24:2). G-d says to the prophet: write down this day, the name of this day and the essence of this day, on which the king of Babylon began the siege of Jerusalem — and once again the text specifies, “on this very day.”

The obvious question, then, is this: the Tenth of Tevet matters because it introduces the destruction of the Temple. But the destruction of the Temple took place on the Ninth of Av. And when the Ninth of Av falls on Shabbat, we do not fast on Shabbat; we take up the fast of the Ninth of Av on the following day, that is, on Sunday. Yet that is the destruction of the Temple! Here, for the siege of Jerusalem, we are told that if the tenth should ever fall on a Saturday, on Shabbat, one would have to fast on Shabbat, just like on Yom Kippur, as I said. But there is one other fast that is permitted on Shabbat: the fast following a nightmare, a bad dream. That dream will prevent the person from tasting the delight of Shabbat. So, since he cannot, the best way for him to rid himself of the nightmare is to fast on that day. And fasting is quite simply an awakening of awareness — that is why we fast: for an awakening. The Rambam says that it is the beginning of repentance for the sins one has committed and a fresh start in life — that is, an entirely new orientation.

So on Shabbat, a person who has had a nightmare is permitted to fast and, as it were, to discharge all the remorse he carries, so that he may take pleasure in the celebration of Shabbat. Would this, then, be the case of the Tenth of Tevet? Let us say that the Tenth of Tevet marks the opening of a decisive turning point in the history of the Jewish people. The Maharal of Prague will say that it is the source, the origin, the essence of the people’s entire disintegration and of its exile. In what way? You know that just as the festivals are attributed to the Patriarchs — Avraham to Pesach, Yitzchak to Shavuot, Yaakov to Sukkot — so the months are attributed to the twelve tribes. And the month of Tevet is the portion of Dan. Dan, the son of Bilhah, introduces into Yaakov’s family tree a justice — the very notion of justice.

Yes: Rachel says danani Elokim as she gives him his name — “G-d has judged me” (Genesis 30:6). And this Dan — what is the letter corresponding to his nature and his self? It is the letter… You also know that each month has its own letter, and the letter of the month is indeed connected, related to the events of the month, to the character of the month. The letter of the month of Tevet is ayin. And this too is known: every meaning of a letter is tied to its first appearance in Scripture, in the Torah. Take, for example, the relationship between or and tov, light and goodness: the first tet in the Torah appears in the word tov, and it is bound up with the light.

Va-yikra Elokim la-or yom, “And G-d called the light day”; va-yar Elokim ki tov, “and G-d saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:4–5). G-d saw that it was good, that the light was good. So tet carries, if you like, an auspicious sign. Not so ayin, for the first time ayin appears in the Torah is in ve-choshech al penei tehom, “and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:2) — the darkness hovering over the surface of the abyss. That al penei tehom, that darkness, belongs to the month of Tevet. Why to the month of Tevet? Because in reality there were three unhappy events in this month of Tevet, which led the sages of old to fast three consecutive days: the eighth, the ninth and the tenth. Why the eighth? Because that was when the Bible was translated into Greek — into the Greek language, not into Greek script; we developed this idea on the occasion of Chanukah. And although these events do not belong to the same era, their gathering into the same days of the month means that a diminution of light took place during this month.

It is as though the Jewish people were struck with myopia: it no longer sees things at their source, at their origin; it sees them at one remove. And our sages told us that the day the Torah was translated into Greek was like the day the golden calf was made in the midst of the people of Israel. Now the calf in the midst of the people of Israel is not idolatry in itself; it is a garment over faith, over its source, over its origin — that is what the calf is. Things are no longer grasped at the first level, in their intensity and their very essence. No — they have been clothed, just as the Torah was clothed in the Greek language. And the Greek language narrows the meaning of the words of the Torah down to a single one — for truly to understand the Torah, one must study it in its original language. As we say: atah bechartanu mi-kol ha-amim, “You have chosen us from among all the peoples.”

Ve-romamtanu mi-kol ha-leshonot: “You have raised us above all tongues.” For it is true that every language carries somewhere a spark of prophecy, but the Hebrew language is the language of creation; it is the one through which the Torah was given to the Jewish people, and it is what allows the thought of the Torah to unfold on different levels — not only in the four rivers that flow from it and branch out of it. I insisted a moment ago on the meaning of the letters: each letter is a source of several meanings, which gave our sages who study the Torah a spark of prophecy even though prophecy had died out. Now, up to the Babylonian and Persian periods there were still prophets — there were still prophets — and the last of them was Ezra, Ezra the Scribe, of whom our sages said that had the Torah not been given through Moshe, Ezra would have transmitted it to the whole people. He was truly capable of restoring that Torah, those second Tablets of the Law, because there is indeed a gulf between the first Tablets and the second Tablets.

The first Tablets — karan or panav, the skin of Moshe’s face shone — carried a transparency of Moshe’s face as he gave his Torah; but with the second Tablets of the Law, the hand of man slipped in to fashion them, and there is a certain opacity in the second Tablets. Ezra was capable of restoring that; he too could have fashioned the Tablets of the Law and attained divine prophecy, since, according to our sages, Ezra’s second name is Malachi. Malachi is the last prophet of the Second Temple period. Ezra the Scribe died on the Ninth of Tevet, and that is why our sages chose this date for a fast: because there was a rupture between the age of the prophets and what then begins — the age of the interpretation of the Oral Law, of course.

The interpretation of the Oral Law, as we well know, lends itself to different meanings, sometimes opposing ones; but the genius of this interpretation is that it makes it possible to give the Written Torah a human, universal reach, recognized as animated by the holy spirit. And this Torah belongs to each person who brings it to light. That is why one who is present at a passing — let us say, at the moment a Torah scholar breathes his last — must perform keriah: he must tear his garment as a sign of mourning, because he has lost a Torah that was this man’s personal contribution to the whole community of Israel, and we have lost it. We ought to have set it down in writing — but we did not. The fact remains that the Torah she-be-al peh, the Oral Law, is the personal contribution of each one of us. And the moment when the Torah she-be-al peh, this Oral Law, took the place of prophecy may indeed be seen as akin to the positive contribution of the Greek language, which is, in sum, a garment — a garment for the essential thought of the Written Torah. And because it is a garment, we know very well what its drawbacks are. The first is that it considerably reduces the light of the text. Now, the Oral Torah also clothes the Written Law; but what characterizes life is precisely the ability to change, each time, its various appearances, its harmonies, its combinations, its contrasts — all of that.

Our sages were well aware of it. But the Tenth of Tevet, the day of Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem, is perceived as the darkness that envelops the world. Three sources of diminution. The first, the translation of the Bible into Greek, on the eighth; then the passing of Ezra the Scribe. Some suggest that the ninth was even the birth of Jesus; the Talmud breathes not a word about what happened on the ninth, about what happened on the Ninth of Tevet. And on the Tenth of Tevet, the siege. Of this siege our sages tell us that it was what lay at the origin of everything that happened — for Ezra came afterward.

The Septuagint belongs to the rise of Greece, whereas the Tenth of Tevet pertains rather to the siege of Jerusalem in the time of the First Temple — before the destruction of the First Temple. But here another question arises: this siege of Jerusalem was not the first misfortune of the Jewish people. Let us not forget that Jerusalem under siege is the kingdom of Judah, which outlived the kingdom of Israel; and the kingdom of Israel was destroyed by Sennacherib, and its inhabitants were deported. Why, then, for Ashur, Assyria, which was the architect of the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, do we observe no fast at all? And yet the text places them on the same footing. Here, I am reading to you from Yirmeyahu chapter 50, verse 17: seh fezurah Yisrael — “Israel is a scattered sheep.”

Arayot hidichu — “lions have driven it away.” Ha-rishon achalo — “the first devoured it.” Who is this first one who devoured it? “The king of Assyria.” Ve-zeh ha-acharon itzmo — “and this last one has crushed its bones”: he broke its bones (Jeremiah 50:17). And our sages said: Ashur ate the flesh of the Jewish people, but Bavel touched the people’s sap, its very life. That is why, as long as the sap was there, the people could still be reconstituted; but the one who put it in danger of annihilation was Nebuchadnezzar. That is why it is he whom we take as the reference point for the decline of the Jewish people and for the consequences of his deeds, which led to the exile of the Jewish people.

So why is this so very grave? One must bear in mind that Assyria and Egypt are the two great powers that made an attempt on the existence of the Jewish people. And as long as the Temple existed, Jerusalem was still protected. The Jewish people believed it was invincible, unbeatable. Why? Because G-d would never dare touch His own sanctuary. He would not let it happen; He would defend it by every means. A mistake. The people had begun precisely by disconnecting the world from its source of inspiration — earth from heaven; and that point of junction between heaven and earth, which the sanctuary represented, no longer existed in human consciousness — it was even fought against. As a result, G-d Himself would have no pity, neither on Jerusalem nor on His sanctuary.

There is a connection between this month of Tevet and the story of Yosef that must not be lost from view. As a rule, it is in these months that we read the events of that rift within the Jewish people, which began with Yosef and his brothers; and, paradoxically, there are two parashiot from which the Name of Hashem is absent. In the parashiot of Miketz and Vayigash we find the attribute of Elokim, but the attribute of Hashem we do not find at all. Now you know that Elokim is the lesser designation — or rather the name, the attribute — that we share with other deities. These are the earthly forces, the forces of creation, whereas Hashem is what lies beyond creation: He is the One who governs Elokim itself. Let us say that Elokim is only the second degree of Hashem. And this is what the Jewish people will ask: “Rise, make us elohim that will go before us” (Exodus 32:1). Though they had witnessed the manifestation of Hashem on Mount Sinai, they demand Elokim.

Elokim — and not even out of belief in Elokim. […] Pharaoh says of Yosef that ru’ach Elokim bo, the spirit of Elokim is in him (Genesis 41:38) — but he is referring to a deity inherent in the forces of nature. These two parashiot, which leave out the Name of Hashem, fit into this drama: the Jewish people itself forgot to attach itself to Hashem and contented itself, too, with adopting Elokim. And there is more — when Yaakov blesses his children and reaches Dan. We said that Dan is the month of Tevet, and Dan is… the son, the first son of the handmaid; he is the attribute of justice, and Elokim too is the attribute of justice.

The first time the Name of Hashem makes its appearance again is when Yaakov, unfolding history, sees Shimshon pass by, who belongs to the attribute of Dan. He thinks: this is how a leader and judge of Israel ought to conduct himself — and then he is made to lose, both his eyes are put out: the eye once again, the ayin. And he said: li-yeshuatcha kiviti Hashem, “For Your salvation I hope, O Hashem” (Genesis 49:18). This is the first time the word Hashem reappears after its absence in two parashiot: “For Your salvation I hope, O Hashem” — I implore Your eternal salvation, beyond all the events that may take place here, in which You will not be the principal actor. […] (— Sorry? You can hear me, can’t you?)

(— Yes, yes, we can hear you very well.) So, to return to Mitzrayim and Ashur: see what the text says, placing them on an equal footing. It is in Yeshayahu, chapter 27: “And it shall come to pass on that day that a great shofar shall be sounded, and those lost in the land of Ashur shall come” — they will come, the strays of the land of Ashur — “and those cast out in the land of Mitzrayim” — those driven out into the land of Egypt — “and they shall bow down to Hashem on the holy mountain in Jerusalem” (Isaiah 27:13). Now, Mitzrayim came first, and it is the matrix of the four nations that subjugated the Jewish people:

Bavel, Madai, Yavan and Edom (Babylonia, Persia, Greece and Rome). And Ashur, too, is among its first persecutors. It says ha-ovdim be-eretz Ashur, “those lost in the land of Ashur.” What does “those lost in the land of Ashur” mean? The word ashur has several meanings in Hebrew. It can evoke osher, well-being. It can mean a step, a stride: temoch ashurai be-ma’gelotecha, “support my steps in Your paths” (Psalms 17:5). And there is another sense: ishur, to validate, to recognize. We are dealing with two persecutors. The first is Ashur. What did Ashur do? He “mixed up the whole world”: he transferred populations from one place to another, so that no one would recognize himself where he was. Man lost his national roots, and then his identity, and he became a wanderer: this is the wandering Jew, the migrant Jew, always on his way toward something, never finding a place to settle for good. He would dearly have liked to — but exile is what it is.

Well, we may find a kindly place willing to take us in, but after a while everything changes and we must pack our bags and go elsewhere. We are forever migrating. That is an evil that can be remedied. There is an evil that cannot be remedied, and it is the most fearsome: that of Egypt, not that of Assyria. Egypt does not tell you: you will be carried off elsewhere, simply taken far from your land, and you will no longer find your roots. It tells you: no — I will find you a place; I will substitute another land for your land. And you must not move: I will settle you in a ghetto, I will settle you on a land where you will be surrounded by your enemies and will no longer be able to breathe — you will be strangled. When the texts speak of the siege of Jerusalem, of the Tenth of Tevet, they say […] be-matzor u-ve-matzok: be-matzor, in confinement; be-matzok, in strangulation. Being unable to spread out, being unable to flourish, remaining confined within imposed borders — that is the gravest threat of annihilation weighing on Israel’s future.

Yes, matzor u-matzok […]. And one can illustrate this a little […]: the nape, the neck — that is where strangling happens, as you well know. Yosef met his brothers: va-yippol al tzavrei Binyamin achiv va-yevk, “he fell upon the necks of Binyamin his brother and wept” (Genesis 45:14). It says he fell upon Binyamin’s necks and wept. How many necks did Binyamin have? “Upon the necks of Binyamin” — why two necks? The minimum of a plural is two. So, “he fell upon the necks of Binyamin and wept”: the meaning is that he wept for the destruction of the First Temple and for the destruction of the Second Temple, which were to be in Binyamin’s portion. And Binyamin wept on Yosef’s neck for the fall of the Mishkan (Tabernacle) of Shiloh, the sanctuary of Shiloh.

The sanctuary of Shiloh, which had in its vicinity the Pesel Michah (the idol of Michah) of Dan. Dan is the one who… […] — the most neglected of the tribes of Israel; and I said at the beginning of the lecture why it bore that label. Yes, but it so happens that even when Yerov’am son of Nevat set up a substitute for the Temple in Dan, it was the attribute of Dan that served him as a support; Dan was a party to this policy of Yerov’am son of Nevat. Now, when the Holy One, blessed be He, entrusted the construction of the Temple — the first sanctuary — whom did He take? He took Betzalel of the tribe of Yehudah and Oholiav son of Achisamach of the tribe of Dan. He wished to associate these two — these two extremities, if you like: Yehudah, who carries the letters of the Name of Hashem together with the dalet, doesn’t he? — and Dan, of danani Elokim, who carries the attribute of G-d as Judge: danani Elokim, “G-d has judged me.” And He wished to associate them in building the sanctuary. But it turned out that Dan was not consistent with itself throughout history, for all that it had a certain strength. Dan is the only tribe that made a leap from the coast where it was settled, next to the tribe of Binyamin, all the way to the north; and there — Yarden, as if yored Dan, “descending from Dan” — it settled by the Jordan. From then on Dan would stand at the edge, on the border in the north of Israel, between the territory of Israel and that of the other nations. Yehudah and Dan share the same attribute, gur aryeh, the lion cub: gur aryeh Yehudah, “Yehudah is a lion cub” (Genesis 49:9), and Dan gur aryeh, “Dan is a lion cub” (Deuteronomy 33:22), he too. They are two tribes, two strong tribes; but whereas Yehudah would remain the unconditional defender of Yerushalayim and of the Temple, Dan would content itself with standing at the other edge, on the border between the people of Israel and the other peoples.

So, according to our sages, where does the gravity of this siege of Jerusalem, begun on that day, lie? It lies in the fact that it brought us back to another state, prior even to our creation as a people — to Egypt. And that is the last curse pronounced in the series of curses: “Hashem will bring you back to Egypt in ships” (Deuteronomy 28:68) — by ships, by boats, to Egypt. To Egypt: that means you will have to start your whole history over again — start your whole history over from the moment you shut yourself up in one place and do not move, you choke, you shrink. That is a return to the condition of Mitzrayim; that is the absolute evil. Not that of Ashur — that of Ashur does not count — but the one that threatens to crush us is this one; and that is why…

It is a blessing, a blessing given to Dan, though one might have understood it as the cry of a prayer, a cry of despair: “For Your salvation I hope, O Hashem.” No — it is a blessing, meaning that here we must truly associate — this is what the Rambam says about awakening […] — Hashem with the way we see and shape our history, so as not to sink into a confinement that could prove fatal to our history and bring us back to the state we were in even before we left Egypt. That is how Bavel — Nebuchadnezzar, who prolongs the story of Babel — in fact prolongs the attempt of the Tower of Babel, where they sought to build ir u-migdal, a city and a tower. Now the city is the city of Yerushalayim, and the migdal, the tower, is the Beit ha-Mikdash, the Temple. And G-d said: havah nerdah ve-navlah sham sefatam, “Come, let Us go down and confound their language there” (Genesis 11:7) — He mixed up all the languages.

Whereas they had possessed the language — they had mastered the language of creation — now they lost it. They have derivative languages, and among these derivative languages is the Greek language. That is a diminution of light. All these diminutions of light accumulated — through the translation of the Torah into Greek, through the death of Ezra, the last scribe, the last prophet, and through the siege of Jerusalem, that is, the confinement of the Jewish people — are what made the Tenth of Tevet an essential and important fast, so that if it ever were to fall, to coincide, with Shabbat, it would be kept on Shabbat. There we are. If you have any questions, please go ahead.