The Fast of Asara B’Tevet (10th of Tevet) and the Current Situation by Rabbi Dr. Ahron Adler

good morning everybody um I'm going to welcome myself back from a very short Journey to the states San Diego Shabbat and Sunday morning San Francisco to give a lecture at a Jewish studies conference and in Ruth coming home while sitting in the cockpit as many of you know I have the privilege of sitting in the cockpit many times in the Jets so I got word that we had a grandson born and everything went well and we're looking forward to a breit next this coming Tuesday um tonight and tomorrow as you know is a today that makes today the ninth of Tate right so what well we're gonna see that there's something of a a big deal about the ninth of Tate before we get to that the a moment about the the fast of the 10th month now we know that um normally the world of respons literature where people asked great ranim shot questions and then there was a response and those responses were then committed to writing and ultimately to print and of course today everything is digitalized but uh this is a thousand years of rabic activity from the end of the days of the gim we have respons a literature from the days of theim certainly from the days of theim the Middle Ages we have enormous am of material from the rambam and from Rashi and Rab's grandson of responsa Nature and then of course you get into the more Modern Age the big names that come to mind are theam s and theud and Raba up until our generation of R mosha Feinstein and um rad yose these people have published enormous amount of material of shot what we don't realize is that the process doesn't begin a thousand years ago already in the days of the gar you have sparingly questions that are asked for immediate halakic responses so there's some type of um you might say a forerunner of this type of respons Tor already in the I mean it's it's here and there it's sporadic but extremely rare is to find that kind of activity in tanak very very rare now in the itself you have very few examples where mhu is inquiring byh what should I do the para of the the para of the daughters of you see thatu himself is not 100% clear what should be a response so he turns to and got is the for Moshe but other than that you don't see any type of question answer that goes on in the and neither in the and having said that in the book of in the seventh peric we actually have a sha a sha in a very classical sense people asked the prophet Zar at the beginning of the building of the second second bet mikdash after having gone through 70 years of Exile galut bavel and fasted the for fasts Comm ating the destruction of the bet mikdash the fast in the month of tamuz the fast in the month of the fast in the month of T which is and the fast on the month of T in a moment we'll see what that's all about shall we continue fasting these fast days now that the bet mikdash is being constructed and it's going to be up and running but to use the phrase lifted out of the book of shall we continue wailing crying um mourning the beta mikdash in the month of the fifth month we get in the eth chapter of Z A Beautiful answer but it's so beautiful that we're not sure what the answer is you know sometimes you can give such a perfect answer but we say what am I supposed to do is it yes or no it sounds almost I say now like the the congresswoman who asked the three great presidents of great universities this is not a simple difficult question yes or no you know and they gave these convoluted answers it depends on the context but um you can have a Shila and you want to know shall we continue fasting on Tish shabab or not so what we require is a yes or no answer the answer is Kem God has spoken the fast of the fourth month the fast of the fifth month of the fast of the seventh month the fast of the 10th month will be for Judea which was at the time will be for Judea days of festivities okay beautiful answer when is that supposed to happen immediately yes when when does this kick in that these fast days will no longer be fast days that generated enormous debate amongst the biblical commentators and theim so if I jump already to the ram in his laws of the very end of the fifth chapter he puts the realization of this prophecy in Messianic times Yia you got to sit tight until y mashia these fast days are still fast days and God willing they'll be but third beta mikdash then we will be able to eliminate the fast day component and graft it upon the dates of when previously we would have fasted we're going to observe them as festivals as y but we're not there yet unfortunately and the ra goes even so far to say that even during the days of B chaining and let's try to understand this the B mikdash is up and running and there's a CO going into the kesim ram says we have to fast that during those 400 some years in the second temple era we still fasted Tab and with regard to the other three fast they were optional but they were still on the books they were still on the books that's a question itself what's the difference between Tish and the other three but the point is they did not become what Zakaria not only does fails to tell us whether it's a yes or no answer he also fails to tell us the exact date of the particular month he says the fast of the fourth month the fast of the fifth month month the fast of the seventh month the fast of the 10th month all of the above we have difficulty with the exact date now we observed the fast of the fourth month on the 17th shamas we observe the fast of the fifth month on the nth of and we observe the fast of Galia on the third of TSH day after the second day rashash and we observe the fast of the 10th month with tomorrow's datee on the date of the 10th of T that's what we do but already a decision that was made based on how we resolve hakik dilemas and controversy every single date there was some controversy so I'm not going to deal now with tamuz but I'll just tell you the question was whether it was the ninth of t or the 17th of tus I'm not going to deal with dis the question was whether the beta mikdash was destroyed on the seventh of or the 10th of and how came into the date of ninth of that we observe the destruction of the BET mikdash Galia was Galia assassinated on the third of Tish or was he assassinated on rashash on the first of T except that it's inappropriate to have a public fast day on rashash so you can't have it the next day either because it's also rashash so we push it even further to the third of Tish which means that according to this opinion is always a it's always a pushed fast day and it's never on time never but on time would have been the first according to another opinion no no no the assassination took place on the third so there's a question about the event then comes the 10th and the 10th is our discussion today so there's a that tells us something fascinating two of the Giants RAB AKA you can't get a bigger giant than RAB AKA from the and RAB Shimon a contemporary and RAB Shimon is saying there are four matters that I and RAB AKA do not see eye to ey I the issue at hand that we're going to deal with is the first of the four the other three are not relevant to this discussion and the first was what exactly did zakar have in mind when he said the fast of the 10th month the question isn't which calendar date did the event occur like in the Tom Galia issue was Galia assassinated on the first or the third with regard to the fast of the 10th month the issue is not there was an event but we're not sure if it took place on the 10th or perhaps a different date that's not the issue the issue is what occurred on the 10th and what occurred perhaps on a different date in the month of T to which event did the ordain a public fast day which means there's no argument as to the events the events took place and we know that one event in a moment we'll spell it out took place on the 10th and another event occurred on the fifth of T no argument about that the question is which event generated the public fasting so let's start with the 10th because that's what we're familiar with so so rabish Shimon says that Raba is of the opinion that Som means the 10th of the date that the Babylonians lay Siege around Yim prior to the destruction of the B now is a half a year before of except that that Siege was two and a half years before Tish in other words The Siege around Yim was two and a half years and that's the way armies did business by conquering cities they lay Siege and then food and Provisions cannot come in people start starving and and and people start killing each other out and 90% of the work is done by the time the foreign army crashes through the city City and that's why it's an easy takeover but that took place 2 and a half years after the siege around Yan so that happens on the 10th of T8 and according to R that was the event that generated the public fast day rabish Shimon argues and he says the Babylonians indeed did what they did but they never made a fast day for that event they b a fast day for something else how long did it take for the bad news to travel after Tish after the destruction of the first bet mikdash how long did it take for the Babylonian Jewish Community to catch wind of the fact that Yim was destroyed and bet mikdash was burned so just to give a little bit of an analogy if a kadosh one morning would decide to destroy the sun of our solar system how long would it take for we Mortals on planet Earth to catch wind of the fact that we no longer have Sunshine which basically means we're going to perish shortly so how long would it take the answer is eight and a half minutes because when you look at the sun obviously you shouldn't gaze at the Sun but you take a peek at the Sun and that's okay what you're seeing is the sun eight and a half minutes ago you're not seeing the Sun as you see it if you look at a person now you're seeing the person now but if you look at the sun you're looking at the light that emitted from the Sun eight and a half minutes ago it takes that long in the speed of light to travel to make it from the Sun position of the sun and solar system to make it the planet Earth so IFH would explode the sun we would catch wind of that explosion eight and a half minutes later here with regard to the news so how long did it take for the news to travel so sometimes when I face young students they don't believe me that two generations ago there was no CNN and a generation ago they didn't have WhatsApp and and they didn't have this and they have that today when I tried to explain to people that when the rambam made a correction in his manuscript it took years for people elsewhere to catch wind of the fact that the Rama made the change and for some they never caught wind of it and they kept copying the original opinion which generated mistakes later on down the load down the road because the ra didn't have um a whats up and subscription in a f in in a Facebook subscribers to say everybody who subscribes to my Parish aishna please change the following line in that that would have helped a lot but he didn't have that so B Isel the Jewish people in bavel did not have access to telecommunication so how long did it take for them to get the news so in the book ofel it tells us it took a half a year half a year and who brought the news one Refugee one Refugee survives the the the the onslaught of Yim and successfully flees the scene makes it to bavel and reports in on the fifth of Tate that's a half a year after the destruction of bet mikdash and the tells us the day that they heard the terrible news of the destruction they ordained a fast day for generations to come on the fifth of T and rabish Shimon who takes this opinion that the that Zar was talking about at the beginning of the second bet mikdash era was not referring to the date of the Babylonians laying Siege around yam on the 10th of T was talking about the day that this one Refugee makes his way to bavel to Babylon and reports on the destruction a half a year later later on the fifth of which was the past Sunday the fifth of now the is in accordance with r AA nobody fasted nobody had anything special the past Sunday the fifth of but the gives us these two dates but what is important not only that it's Tor that Shimon had an opinion that's okay but the logic behind that fast day bet the day of just hearing the terrible news was as bad as the terrible news itself of the burning of the BET mikdash and now I'd like to just expand this in private aut we have we have enough experience in the world of Al what happens if a immediate relative pass away we're talking about one of the seven relatives that would obligate the others to sucha and observe at least 30 days and if it's a parent 12 months of aute and so on what happens if one of those people who would be obligated for to mourn the loss of somebody is not around to get the news this has happened somebody is out of contact you know is just in a different country and um can't find them you don't know where he is and perhaps a year later two years later person shows up and finds out his father died his mother died his brother died so what do you do what do you do if the person would have been on the scene the person would have been there TOA and so on so the kazal teach of two different types of bearing news close closely upfront or very close to the date of of the new of the of the occurrence of the passing of the person or a far a distant piece of news which means distant not in place but in terms of time if a person hears the news during the Shiva then the person starts sitting shiva person hears the news during there's also reason for him to start mourning what a person has the news after a year so there's a special that you sit sh for one day you go through the motions of one day of morning I'm just bringing to this attention that there's a concept called which means you heard about it but you heard about it way way later on here thear tells us in the name of R shim the fact that the Isel in B heard about theban later on still obligated them to mourn the loss of B mikdash and therefore according to rabish Shimon on that date on that calendar date of the fth of they decided to say the day of just hearing the terrible awful news is like the day of the burning of and what's behind this line irrespective of the fact that we don't fast on the fifth of nevertheless focusing on this idea of you have an unbelievable idea of identification and solidarity what really happens a at the moment of person sitting sh family is sitting sh and then other members of the family who are not mourners and then of course the extended family and then of course the neighbors and then the work rated friends all a sudden people start coming to the house to console the mourners right what exactly takes place at so I'll divide it between the proper mode and the less proper mode the proper mode is to talk about the person who passed away that's the proper mode and that's called hesped so people think a hesped a eulogy is a speech at the funeral yes indeed we call that a hesped but the hesped is seven days the the gar says three days of wailing and seven days of hpid now if I could do the math right from first grade 3 plus 7 is 10 except that nobody sit Shiva for 10 days because then it wouldn't be called Shiva obviously shiv means seven but our re said that the three and the seven actually means three and four that there are seven days of hesp which divide into two different styles if you may one is the emotional response and those are the three days of crying and wailing and the other four days when a person is a little bit coming out of that emotional shock is able to talk a little bit more with the SE with the mind so it's almost a different type of hespe but a seven day days of hespe the idea of coming to a shiv and saying oh how are the kids what's new and making it into a type of graduation uh you know you know a renewal or or or or you know getting to a get together of some sort a social Gathering that's totally out of the question the aim are only allowed to talk about the person who passed away the nft or fine so so there's a certain identification by coming and hearing and discussing about the person who passed away because many more often than not people are coming to n they never knew the person that passed away the only reason they're coming because of some type of either family or social obligation which is nice which is proper it's the proper thing no doubt but not to talk about social activities but to talk about the person who passed away so that when the person who visits come comes away with a feeling of a sense of loss now I I I hear about the person and I understand what it means for the family that this person is no longer with the family so you identify with the loss itself that's the source of the N that's the source of the consolation where the people sitting shiva understand and feel and sense that they're not alone they're not alone everybody is with them but to really sharpen this idea rambam tells us something phen phenomenal that none of us do I'm telling you I've gone to laru I've gone to plenty of Shiva homes in my lifetime I've never ever seen this practice but the RAM says when you go for and just as the a are sitting on the ground so of course we have an allowance of sitting on a low chair which really means sitting on the ground so just as the mourners are sitting on the ground those who are coming for for consolation should also sit on the ground with the Avil I mean I see the eyes opening it's a it's a big it's a novel idea but give it a moment's thought what that means rambam is saying that the person sitting shiv is sitting shivba for the week you're going to be there for 15 20 minutes at least for 15 20 minutes sit shiver with them sit shiver with them and then you'll have to get up and leave and you'll say or whatever you say and then another group of people going to come in and park themselves on the ground sitting shiver with them for another 15 20 minutes so that the people are not sitting shiva alone they're literally sitting shiva with other people it's a remarkable idea I don't know the history of the minhag here how it happens that this idea of the rambam just never made it but um in theory it's a tremendous idea of solidarity and identification and there are a few words that we use to to to coin that kind of sensation it's called it's from we say it about God Is With Us in moments of SAR I heard once and I'm trying to scratch my head and think that I hear it from and I may have I may have heard it from a different Source but it was said about the pent rebba who was in the waso ghetto he was known as the kodesh a very very famous rebba of the early and mid 20th century he dies in the Shah not he wasn't killed he succumbs in the waso ghetto and he was a remarkable remarkable personality and he said on the in so we're familiar with chapter 20 even if I'm find myself in the valley of death or translated very simply I'm looking at death squarely in the eye L I will not fear the evil why you're holding my hand you are with me you God are with me it's consoling it's soothing to know that you are there with me so what that's that's what does the p air to this he reads it against the rules of grammar now in theic world that was fair game they didn't always know the proper dig grammar and how they put theim together but he read the following even if I was in the valley of death Lo it doesn't it should not be read I will not fear the evil why but the rebel read it as follows I will not fear Comm I feel terrible that you too you got also have to be in this mess as I am there's an unbelievable understanding of of what this is it's terrible he said it inish I feel horrible that you too you God have to be in this mess with me this idea that is together with in has expression has expression in one of the that we say on in the so when we finish going around with Al the Bea so there are a few another poem of chapter of and one of those lines says it says in V where tells M the four expressions of redemption and one of them is I will take you out and that means I will take you out it can be read God is saying I will take myself out which means when Isel is in Exile as if to say is also an exile and hence the Redemption of facto means is going to be taking himself out as well so what was he doing in the answer was is with us in and that's what says I won't fear the evil why in spite of the fact that I have you are with me but the penta said oh hard has to be in this also NE feeling bad can you imagine feeling bad for a that he's also stuck in this mud in his butts in this in this terrible horrible situation so this is idea of identification a few weeks ago when the communities of the northern part of Israel the city of Matula the city of kona the mavula and other MIM along the northern border with Lebanon the Army insisted that they the civilian population has to move and this is after the civilian population uh of the Southern front opposite the Gaza area was already relocated in hotels in the DSi area like my daughter was from kibuts sad or a lot those hotels were occupied and at the end of the day all the all the hotels became occupied and they didn't have place for everybody but they had to relocate people so in Kar Makia in the center of the country there's tremendous tremendous parking lot because it's a convention hall so they set up made a 10 City okay 10 City you can do that before it starts raining so you know in October it still wasn't raining yet and the temperatures were not ridiculously low and certainly in Tel Aviv area they're generally more mild than so they started putting up people from the north from Kona area in this tent city um in kabia so one family they were interviewed on radio about the conditions and so on so one gentleman said you know it wouldn't even be a bad idea if the Prime Minister and his wife came to one of these tents to sleep here just one night or perhaps other ministers one night just to leave their Comforts of their home and sleep here occupy a tent so they can feel what we're going through right now and it was an amazing thing that it came from such a person um the fact that people in leadership in government didn't think of it on their own that's a problem that we have with for some of our leaders a bigger problem is after this gentleman said it on the air it still didn't happen the idea of picking yourself up and you know bunking down in an uncomfortable situation so you can tell the people so I want to share with you something that told us about his grandfather so raic had as most human beings have two grandfathers usually I I'm not kidding I had three because the became my third grandfather um but a a spiritual grandfather of sorts but um the r had two grandfathers so I'll just say a word about the the less famous One R Elia Feinstein who was an uncle of Raa Feinstein you know it's all the brains are all in the family you know you can't help it you I remember the r one said an amazing idea and and they saw the people went wow like you know you sometimes you just wow you know and then the rof saw this and he said oh you think what I said was something really great you know what really would have been wow if the background that I had had I not turned out to be the way I turned out that would have been wow but what do you want for me I had these great Geniuses in the family so I inherited some of the genes that's all you know like no B like no big deal you know no big deal well of course he was a big deal so the R's maternal grandfather was raelia Fein and he was Uncle of rosha Fein which meant that the R's mother was a first cousin to rosha Fein okay so I'll leave that on the side but the more famous grandfather was rap salic the RO of brisk so brisk is the town of brlas in modern day Belarus and I can tell you that when we studied world history in my high school in Bor Park and we studied the end of World War I the Treaty of breast Lov of 1917 was one of the treaties that formalized the end of World War I no nobody told us that that breast l that the history teacher was talking about was the same place that the Reby in the morning was talking about brisk because brisk was the Yiddish name for breast latas and nobody you know made the connection and it took years till I realized that breast LS is brisk okay so you know who was born in brisk Manan was born in brisk and and I took groups there to to brisk and there's a a statue of ban right there but I also saw the yes of brisk where was the rash he was the Rob in town the Rob in town so what happened in those days in the 18th 19th century and even before for sure if there was a fire in town there was no such thing as the fire department a fire in town meant everybody stops what they're doing and runs with whatever you have pales water and you fight the fire collectively because if you don't do that it's only question of time every single home is going to be burnt so any type of fire struck in a city it was Calamity time and even if you saved partially there're going to be some people who are going to be without homes and as it was in brisk when R salic was the r and there was a fire in town and everybody did what they had to do and it turns out that half the town burnt down the town decided that the people who homeless and left many people homeless they would occupy the Sho apparently there was a large enough Sho that people could bunk down on the floor of the Sho and the lobby and even in the Sho itself and and they would have to live there until the homes would be rebuilt as it was the home of Rim Sal the r of town his house was not burned down what he did was he relocated to the Sho and he slept in the Sho until every every last homeless person was able to be relocated into some home and the r even said that this great genius got down on all fours and gave kids piggy back rides just so they should feel you know good imagine they're G to grow up and tell their grandchildren that R salek who's the most quotable of the early 20 century is and every Lithuanian sha he gave me a piggy back ride in the sh and the r said the that on the on rap's Tombstone Rim died in 1917 was B buried in wara that that's a story in itself it says ra that says a few other things too but the first two words on the is RA know he was a as a POS he was a ra as a Riva he was a ra as a commentator of the rambam he was a in so many different things but you know what the first thing we're going to say about he was a ra that's who he was and it's interesting that the had another M and that was the Berlin family who is the Berlin family the fromin Berlin who parenthetically two famous Sons one was rabi K Berlin famous Yeshiva in Brooklyn R Berlin and a street in um not far from ravia right Berlin near near katamon so that's R Berlin and the other brother who is younger than rine Berlin by 50 years by a second mother by a second mother he was mayor Berlin who he brazed his name to Baran so the famous braa Baran the great Zion leader World science leader who they named the University of Baran andan Street and so on so so and so on it was a was a half brother too rap Balin was a son of the Froman so the granddaughter of the N ofan married Rim so they were family and in war the two of them are buried together the and rim Sal got buried one next to the other in that wara Cemetery so R mayor Baran was Mish to the r they were like the r used to refer to him as my uncle and ran told the r that they were that he he himself asked to great great Rabon what is the essence of the ravenet you know so I was the Rabin at 38 years so it's a nice thing to hear the um he asked the author of The whose name was what exactly is the job of a RV and he asked the rim salic the R's grandfather what exactly is the job of a r so the author of The said to respond questions or to that is the job of the r everything else is on the side and rim said to be involved in in Acts of and everything else is on the side that's who he was he was an is why because he was a m he was strict about e if somebody is in anguish if somebody's in pain you have an obligation to be be to identify with it and express solidarity and empathy and so on extremely extremely extremely important and and that's why today we're going through difficult times every morning I dread to hear the six o'clock or seven o'clock news because every morning we the Army sensor allowed that we can name two boys three boys one boy every morning somebody else somebody else somebody else and you start listening to the names and where they're from and just this morning one of the three boys who fell yesterday in the northern part of Gaza was from Kash so immediately my wife said do you know him it was a name who I don't know I don't know when they moved into Kash Kash became a very big town so it was a name that didn't mean anything to me but that doesn't make a bit of a difference every single one is painful very very very painful and on the other hand we're actually looking at giborim Heroes Heroes I mean I have a next door neighbor next door neighbor he's an American Boy with the married to an Israeli and um wife is in the ninth month and he's deep into aen deep into a came home last night for a 24-hour fur we just spoke to him this morning it's it's just absolutely the the Courage the courage of these boys the fact that they understand that they have to put all their family issues on the side that is almost an impossibility because we're not talking about something intellectual we're talking about something emotional and the and and and in Conformity with the ramb that when you're engaged inah a war that is totally a Mitzvah experience you have to do it with full concentration of the war effort and not consider the consequences for your family and they are ready to do that they're ready to do that let's remember from the days of Bara the last time that am Israel had an organized Army until the emergence of the state of Israel we did not have the opportunity to lift our hands in defending ourselves let alone fight back so I may have mentioned this in the previous weeks after all the pums that we suffered through in the Middle Ages and even in the modern days the only thing left for us to do was to say kades and to say Yar that's it we couldn't fight back here the situation is radically different so it's true we're burying our some of our soldiers I don't know how consoling it is to say that in the yipa war that lasted a month and a half we lost slightly over 3,000 soldiers in a month and a half we're now into our third month there and unfortunately unfortunately we lost a little bit more than 120 boys in the ground action we un unfortunately lost more on the onslaught of October 7th and it adds up to about 400 plus but the The Six Day War we lost almost 800 soldiers so considering sta statistics if we can just separate ourselves emotionally from the fact that every Soldier is a life and every Soldier is a family no doubt about it if just dry statistics the situation is is is something that it it could have been a lot worse and I can tell you that in The Six Day War the Chaplan SE the rabut prepared for 10,000 Graves and we Buri it about 780 that's 7.8% of what they planned or thought God forbid could have happened in such a war it's hard to be thankful through our for that which didn't happen that we don't even know but our cabalist called that sweetening the Judgment that doesn't mean there'll be no judgment whatever the judgment is and we accept it we accept it butos sometimes sweetens it for us and says somebody who would be killed was only wounded somebody who's wounded harsh harshly and difficult is has light wounds somebody who could have had light wounds didn't get wounded at all there all kinds of calculations am Isel is davening hard for for everyone we continue to do so I'm happy to say that is in touch and I'm not just saying in touch with ER Isel in terms of the news they didn't need me or anybody else to tell them what's happening they're connected to every single news station that they want to hear and they they know and I'm not talking about CNN and Fox News talking about the Israeli stations they know what's going on they know what's going on but they're connected in besset they're saying to them all the time they have done so much in terms of support in so many different areas it's uh heartwarming to see this kind of unity for cl Isel God willing when this conflict is over am Israel should continue this level of from talks about the fusion and healing of the divisions of Amel of the northern and southern kingdoms of the tree of Yehuda and the tree of Ephraim which symbolize the northern kingdom of Y and the two trees becoming one tree must remain I'm talking about we should hear good news and the arrival in our family should symbolize great s for and extended s for not only our family but for all of CLA Israel COV below