Asara B’Tevet: Remembrance of a Siege
Today Jews still fast on Asara B’Tevet, the tenth day of the tenth month of the Jewish calendar. On that day, Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon began his siege of Jerusalem, a painfully protracted battle that ended with destruction, deaths, and a long exile for the Jewish people.
In Judaism there is a cycle of fast days that are related to the fateful Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, a siege which would ultimately result in the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the exile of the Jewish people into Babylon. On Asara B’Tevet, the siege began; thus the Jewish people fast to commemorate the start of one of the great tragedies of their history.
The other related fasts to the Babylonian siege are the Seventeenth of Tammuz, when the Babylonian armies broke through the walls of Jerusalem and began leveling the city; and Tisha B’Av, the most somber fast in Judaism, when Solomon’s Temple was destroyed and the Jews sent into exile.
Thus it is customary for religious Jews to abstain from eating and drinking on Asara B’Tevet, in order to commemorate the tragedy that is still regarded as being highly relevant to this day.
End to the First Temple Era
According to the Orthodox Jewish worldview, the destruction of the First Temple by Nebuchadnezzar was the beginning of the end for the Jewish people. While the Second Temple may have exceeded the First Temple in physical magnificence, it is regarded by some as having been less intrinsically holy than the First Temple. Many of the holy vessels had been looted by Nebuchadnezzar, and the miracles of the First Temple were for the most part absent in the Second.
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