[Avodah] Asara b'Teves (A Minor Fast with Major Chords)

[Cantor Wolberg via Avodah]

Asarah b’Teves, commemorating the beginning of the siege of Yershalayim,
is considered by many to be a minor fast. Though it may be halachically a
minor fast, it has a major significance of which they lose sight. They believe 
that it ought to be enough to commemorate the destruction of the temple on 
Tisha b’Av which, after all, is the main reason of our mourning for Zion and 
Jerusalem. The preliminary stage has, so they assume, no significance in itself. 
What these people are overlooking is one important aspect which we find expressed 
in the Mishnah of Taanith, Ch. 3, Mishnah 6. There we read that the sages once
decreed a Day of Fast because two wolves had eaten up two children in 
Transjordania. According to one opinion, the fast was even decreed for the 
simple reason that two wolves had been only ‘sighted’ in Transjordania. The
meaning underlying the institution of this Fast was that it is much easier to 
prevent a misfortune in its opening stage. Had the Jews in 586 B.C.E. and 
70 C.E. considered their position properly, listened to the word fo their prophets
and sages and taken the siege of Yershalayim as a warning signal, the fall of
Jerusalem and the destruction of the beis hamikdash may have been avoided. 
The Fast of tenth of Teves  is therefore a reminder not to wait until it is too late,
but to follow the voice of our conscience. I submit we are living in an era of 
Sinat Chinam and when we start to stifle our inner voice even in apparently
unimportant things and we fail to follow the voice of our conscience, it leads in
the end to our moral disintegration. This is also the reason that the prophet 
Jeremiah stresses so often that God sent His prophets early, as e.g. in Ch. 7,
V.25-6: “Ever since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt 
unto this day; and though I have sent unto you all My servants, the prophets daily, 
early and often, yet they hearkened not unto Me, nor inclined their ears, but made 
their necks stiff; they did worse than their fathers.”  
May we, on this “minor” fast day, make major resolutions to take the moral path and 
eschew more of the yetzer hara than in the past. 


Apparently, the tenth of  Tevet  is  "the  Day of God" about which many prophets spoke:
the tenth  day of the tenth month. The number ten in Kabbala is  related  to  the  sefira of 
malkhut  (kingship), and therefore  the very essence of the day is appropriate  to the  theme of God's kingship.