A minor fast day.

“What’s that?”, you ask? We Jews have two major fast days. The first one you’ve all heard about- Yom Kipur, the Day of Atonement. This is one decreed by the Supreme Being, where we request divine forgiveness for the things that we didn’t quite perform well over the past year. The commandment is to fast from dusk on one day to 40 minutes after day’s end the next day. (Yes, that means at least 25 hours without food or water.)

The other major fast day is the 9th of Av. This day of fasting was decreed by the rabbis. It commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples. (Yes, they both fell on the same day.).  That’s not all- it’s also the day that Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand demanded that all Jews leave Spain or convert to Catholicism, and the day that Hitler began killing the Jews- among many other “wonderful” events.

The 10th of Tevet (עשרה בטבת) is a minor fast day. That means we only fast from dawn until dusk. This year that means from 5:56 AM until 5:18 PM. But, the reason we fast?

Way back when (588 BCE, 3202 in the Hebrew Calendar), when King Zedekiah was in charge of Israel, Nevuchadnetzar (the Babylonian king) invaded and started the siege of Jerusalem. Today, the 10th of Tevet. It took him 18 months to break through the walls of Jerusalem (which is yet another fast day; the 17th of Tamuz, (תמוז יז.) It was 3 weeks later, on the 9th of Av that Nevuchadnetzer was able to destroy the First Temple and begin the Babylonian exile period.

(By the way, the Septuagint, the translation of the TaNaCH [the Jewish bible] into Greek was accomplished about this date, 300 years later, by 72 Jewish scholars in different rooms. All had written the same translation!)

One of the special things that our religious observance involves is the reading from one of the books of the prophets (called Nevi’im, the Na in TaNaCH [Tora, Nevi’im, and C’tuvim). This normally only happens on Shabat and Holidays. We read today from the book of Isaiah (from 55:56 to 56:8), which mentions יד ושם (Yad V’Shem)- a Name and a Monument. Which is exactly the name of the Holocaust Museum in Israel.

May your fast be light.

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