Asara B’Tevet: The Fast of the Tenth Month and the Siege of Jerusalem

The Biblical Record

A day written down three times

Few dates in the Tanakh are recorded as carefully as this one. The book of Kings gives the event in full:

And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he, and all his host, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it; and they built forts against it round about.

Jeremiah, who lived through the siege inside the city, records the same date twice: “In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, came Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon and all his army against Jerusalem, and they besieged it” (Jeremiah 39:1; compare 52:4). The tenth month, counting from Nisan, is Tevet. The siege lasted until the city wall was breached on 9 Tammuz in Tzidkiyahu’s eleventh year (Jeremiah 39:2; 52:6), and the Temple was burned the following month (2 Kings 25:8–9; Jeremiah 52:12–13). Most historians date the beginning of the siege to the winter of 588 BCE, though some reckon 589 or 587.¹

“Write thee the name of the day”

The third witness is the most remarkable. Far away in Babylon, among the exiles by the river Chebar, the prophet Ezekiel received a word on the very same day:

Again in the ninth year, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, the word of Hashem came unto me, saying, Son of man, write thee the name of the day, even of this same day: the king of Babylon set himself against Jerusalem this same day.

No news could travel hundreds of miles in a day. Hashem told the prophet to record the date so that when word arrived the exiles would know that the God of Israel had seen and announced it. The oracle that follows compares Jerusalem to a cauldron set on the fire (24:3–14), and soon after, Ezekiel’s wife, “the desire of thine eyes”, died, and he was forbidden to mourn openly, a sign of grief too great for ordinary mourning (24:15–24). The phrase be-etzem ha-yom ha-zeh, “this same day”, becomes important in the later halacha of the fast.

Zechariah and the fasts of the exile

After the return from Babylon, men from Bethel asked the priests and prophets whether they should go on weeping in the fifth month, as they had done “these so many years” (Zechariah 7:3). Hashem’s answer first probes their motives: “When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month … did ye at all fast unto Me, even to Me?” (7:5). It then calls for justice, mercy and care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger and the poor (7:9–10), and ends with a promise:

Thus saith Hashem of hosts; The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts; therefore love the truth and peace.

The Talmud identifies the four: the fourth month is the breach of the walls in Tammuz, the fifth is Tisha B’Av, the seventh is the fast of Gedaliah, and “the fast of the tenth: this is the tenth of Tevet, the day on which the king of Babylon laid siege to Jerusalem.” Rabbi Akiva gives this reading; Rabbi Shimon offers another, linking the fast of the tenth to the day the news of the fall reached the exiles (Ezekiel 33:21), but the halacha follows the plain identification with the siege.² The same passage teaches that in times of peace these days will be days of joy, and in times of persecution, fasts.

See also our articles on Tzom Gedaliah, the 17th of Tammuz and Tisha B’Av.

Three Days of Darkness: 8, 9 and 10 Tevet

Later tradition gathered two more sorrows around the tenth of Tevet. A list of fast days appended to Megillat Ta’anit (often called Megillat Ta’anit Batra, “the later scroll”), quoted by the Tur and the Shulchan Aruch, records that on 8 Tevet “the Torah was written in Greek in the days of King Talmai, and darkness came upon the world for three days”, and that on 9 Tevet something happened, “but we do not know what it was”.³

The eighth of Tevet: the Torah in Greek

The Babylonian Talmud tells how King Talmai (Ptolemy) gathered seventy-two elders, placed each in a separate house, and told each to write the Torah of Moshe; Hashem put counsel in every heart, and all made the same small changes to prevent misunderstanding by the Greeks.⁴ The Talmud presents this as a wonder, and does not give the date. Tractate Soferim, by contrast, says that the day the Torah was written in Greek “was as hard for Israel as the day on which the calf was made, for the Torah could not be translated adequately”.⁵

The tension is instructive. Alexandrian Jews, Philo tells us, held a yearly festival on the island of Pharos to give thanks for the translation.⁶ The Septuagint brought the Scriptures to Greek-speaking Jews and later to the nations, and the Brit Hadashah (the New Testament) quotes it often. Yet the sages sensed the danger of a Torah detached from its language, its people and its living interpretation. Both views are part of our inheritance: 8 Tevet invites gratitude that the Word went out to the nations, and humility, because a translation always loses something of the Hebrew that Hashem gave.

The ninth of Tevet: the death of Ezra

The Shulchan Aruch says that the trouble of 9 Tevet is unknown. The Selichot recited on the tenth of Tevet, however, say that Ezra the scribe died on the ninth, and some early manuscripts add Nechemiah.⁷ Ezra restored the public reading of the Torah (Nehemiah 8), and the sages remember him as the one through whom the Torah was renewed in Israel. These two days were never established as separate public fasts; their memory is folded into the fast of the tenth.

The Halacha of the Fast

A public fast from dawn to nightfall

Asara B’Tevet is a ta’anit tzibbur, a public fast. Eating and drinking are forbidden from dawn (alot ha-shachar) until nightfall; unlike Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av, washing, anointing, leather shoes and marital relations are not forbidden, and work is permitted. Pregnant and nursing women and those who are ill are exempt or treated leniently, according to their rabbi’s guidance; children below bar or bat mitzvah age do not fast.⁸ The Rambam lists it among the fasts that “all Israel” keeps “because of the troubles that happened on them, to awaken hearts and open the ways of repentance”.⁹

Can it fall on Shabbat? Why it can fall on a Friday

Under the fixed Hebrew calendar, 10 Tevet never falls on Shabbat. It can, however, fall on a Friday, the only public fast that can. Other minor fasts are moved to avoid Friday or Shabbat (Ta’anit Esther is moved earlier, the 17th of Tammuz, Tisha B’Av and Tzom Gedaliah are postponed), but Asara B’Tevet on a Friday is kept on Friday and completed until nightfall, even though Shabbat has begun.¹⁰

The fourteenth-century Spanish commentator Rabbi David Abudarham went further. He wrote that if the tenth of Tevet could fall on Shabbat, it would be kept on Shabbat, because Ezekiel was told to record “this same day” (Ezekiel 24:2), as the Torah says of Yom Kippur. The Beit Yosef (Rabbi Yosef Karo) quotes Abudarham and remarks that he does not know the source of the claim; other authorities, among them the Rambam, imply that this fast, like the others, would be postponed.¹¹ The question is theoretical, but Abudarham’s point has shaped how the day is felt: the beginning of a disaster is when it can still be turned back.

Prayers and readings

• Selichot, prayers of forgiveness, are said in the morning, including the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy (Exodus 34:6–7) and piyyutim written for the day.
• Aneinu (“Answer us”) is added to the Amidah; Ashkenazim say Avinu Malkeinu.
• Torah reading at Shacharit and Mincha: Exodus 32:11–14 and 34:1–10, Moshe’s plea after the golden calf and the revelation of the Thirteen Attributes.
• Haftarah at Mincha in Ashkenazi practice: Isaiah 55:6–56:8, “Seek ye Hashem while He may be found”, ending with the promise that Hashem’s house will be “called an house of prayer for all people”.

See the readings for fast days.

Yom HaKaddish HaKlali: The General Day of Kaddish

After the Shoah, hundreds of thousands of Jewish families had no yahrzeit: no one knew the day on which their parents, children or whole communities had been murdered. In December 1948, Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, led by Chief Rabbis Yitzchak HaLevi Herzog and Ben-Zion Meir Chai Uziel, designated the tenth of Tevet as Yom HaKaddish HaKlali, “the general Kaddish day”, on which mourners say Kaddish, study, light memorial candles and give charity for relatives whose date of death is unknown.¹²

A fast already woven into the cycle of Jewish grief could hold the memory of a catastrophe too vast for any single date. The Knesset later established Yom HaShoah on 27 Nisan, and that has become the national day of remembrance; many religious communities continue to say Kaddish on the tenth of Tevet as well. Both days deserve to be kept.

Messianic Witness: Yeshua’s Lament over Jerusalem

Yeshua and his disciples lived in the generation that preceded Jerusalem’s second destruction, and the Gospels show him grieving over the city in words that echo the prophets of the first:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of Hashem.

The lament is not a rejection of Jerusalem; it is the grief of one who loves her. Its last line looks beyond judgment, quoting Psalm 118:26, the psalm of Hallel: there will come a day when the city welcomes the one Hashem has sent. As he approached the city on another occasion, Yeshua wept and foretold that “thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side” (Luke 19:43), the language of siege. On the Mount of Olives he warned:

And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.

He added that Jerusalem would “be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (21:24), words that imply an end to that trampling. The Babylonian siege and the Roman siege stand in one line: both were foretold, both were met with tears, and neither was the last word.

Yeshua did not abolish fasting. He taught his disciples to fast before the Father in secret, not “as the hypocrites” (Matthew 6:16–18), and said that when the bridegroom was taken away “then shall they fast” (9:15). Disciples who keep Asara B’Tevet join Israel’s mourning for Jerusalem with the hope of the one who wept over her.

The Prophetic Horizon: Siege Before Restoration

The prophets describe a final siege of Jerusalem before her deliverance. Zechariah, the same prophet who promised that the fast of the tenth would become a feast, sees the nations gathered against the city:

Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. — Zechariah 12:2

For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken … Then shall Hashem go forth, and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle.

In that hour Hashem will “pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look unto Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him” (12:10). The Talmud applies this mourning to Mashiach ben Yosef, who is slain (Sukkah 52a).¹³ Disciples of Yeshua see in it the day when Israel recognizes the rejected and pierced Messiah, whom Hashem raised and will send again as Mashiach ben David. Then “his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of olives” (14:4), and the nations that survive will “go up from year to year to worship the King, Hashem of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles” (14:16).

We do not set dates or read headlines into these chapters. The pattern is what matters: siege comes before restoration, and the God who recorded the day the siege began also records the day of deliverance. The Rambam concludes his laws of fasts with Zechariah’s promise: in the days of Mashiach all these fasts will be abolished, and will become days of festival and rejoicing.¹⁴ The tenth of Tevet will then be remembered not as the day the ring closed around Jerusalem, but as a day of “joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts”.

Keeping Asara B’Tevet

1. Fast from dawn to nightfall, if your health allows; those exempt can mark the day with simpler food and extra prayer.
2. Pray: Selichot in the morning if you can join a minyan, Aneinu in the Amidah, and Psalm 79 (“O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance”) or Psalm 137.
3. Read 2 Kings 25:1–12, Ezekiel 24:1–14, Zechariah 7–8 and Luke 19:41–44.
4. Say Kaddish or light a candle for victims of the Shoah whose day of death is unknown, and support Holocaust remembrance and education.
5. Do justice and love mercy, as Zechariah 7:9–10 commands, for that is the fast Hashem has chosen (Isaiah 58:6–7).

See our calendar for the date.