Important Days in Judaism: 10 Teves

Today is the 10th day of the Hebrew month Teves. 10 Teves is a fast day.

The days leading up to 10 Teves, the 8th and 9th, are also fast days, but they are not public fast days. They have been declared as "Fasts of the Righteous" - individuals can accept those days as fast days, but they are not publicly mandated. 10 Teves is a public fast day and has incorporated the concepts of the 8th and 9th days for the majority of people who do not fast on those days.

8 Teves is the day when the Septuagint was completed. While that Wiki page gives a lot of info on the Septuagint, according to our tradition Ptolemy the king of Greece ordered 72 sages of the Jewish people to translate the bible into Greek. He was clearly not looking for a translation of the bible, because if he was he would have let these sages sit together and work on a proper translation. Instead, what he did was put each sage in his own room and made him translate the whole thing. He then would compare the 72 different translations and look for inconsistencies with which to attack Judaism. The bible had never before been translated out of the original biblical Hebrew, and in Jewish tradition, this day was considered comparable to the day of the worshiping of the Golden Calf.

9 Teves is the day of the deaths of Ezra and Nehemia. They were the two who brought the Jews out of the galus of Bavel and returned them to Eretz Yisrael. They began the rebuilding of the Second Temple. Few Jews came back with them to Israel. Most Jews were comfortable in the Diaspora living lives of wealth and comfort. Most of the Jews who joined them on the journey to the Land of Israel were the poor and destitute.

10 Teves is the day of the beginning of the siege around Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylonia besieged Jerusalem on 10 Teves. The siege subsequently lasted 3 years and led to the destruction of the first Beis Hamikdash and the exile of the nation.

10 Teves has also been incorporated as the day commemorating the memories of those whose day of death is not known. Because of this, last night the gravesites of Yehoshua Bin Nun and Calev ben Yefunah were opened to the Jewish public. I was not able to go this time (though I have gone in the past), but hundreds of people went. Calev's date of death is not known and that is why the site was opened last night. The site of these graves is located in Kafr Hares, an Arab village in the Shomron.

Fast days are meant for repentance and contemplation.

May we see the rebuilding of the Temple in the near future, preceded by world peace, specifically (but not limited to) in the Middle East, the return of our captured soldiers, and harmony among Jews.