Ask the Rabbi -- 10th of Tevet

[jocose]

Since folks were interested in my thread on Chanukah, I thought I would continue with the next holiday.

Anyway, January 10, 2006, coincidently, corresponds to the 10th day of the Hebrew month Tevet, and the 10th of Tevet is a day of mourning, repentance, and fasting. This is not a 24 hour fast like on Yom Kipper; no food or water (or any drink) can touch your lips from sunrise to sunset.

On the 10th of Tevet in 425 BCE (that is, Before the Common Era—ie, AD to Christians), this wicked Babylonian dude named Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem (imagine). The Jews held out for 30 months, until the walls were finally breached, and on the 9th of Av (another Hebrew month, and another holiday we shall get to in the summer), the Temple was destroyed, and the Jews were exiled to Babylonia for 70 years.

Because the 10th of Tevet is a day of mourning, it has in recent times done double duty: to remember the destruction of the Temple and to serve as a day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust. (There are so many who perished in the Holocaust who's exact dates of death are unknown, so they picked the saddest day of the Hebrew calendar).