Friday, December 17, will mark the Fast of Asarah B’Tevet, the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tevet. The fast begins at dawn, and is the official day of mourning for those whose resting place or time of death is unknown. (Editor’s Note: According to Wikipedia and Chabad.org, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel has chosen to observe the Tenth of Tevet as a "general Kaddish day" and one of the days of remembrance for victims of the Holocaust.)
On the Tenth of Teves in 588 BCE, during the reign of King Zedekiah in Judah, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar began his three-year siege of the city of Jerusalem. After virtually starving out the walled city, the Babylonians were able to breach the walls, conquer Jerusalem, and destroy the Holy Temple, making off with its treasures. As the Jews were sent into Babylonian exile, the prophet Jeremiah prophesized that the exile would last seventy years. Seventy years later, after the story of Purim and during the reign of Cyrus the Great of Persia, the Jewish People was allowed to re-enter the land of Israel and rebuild the Temple. Seventy years the Jews were in exile, we are taught, but what we are not taught is the significance behind those seventy long years.
Later in Jewish history, during the period of Greek occupation of the land of Israel leading up to the story of Chanukah, whose relative proximity to this fast day is no mere coincidence, as will be explained in a moment, the Greek King Ptolemy ordered a translation of the Torah from Hebrew to Greek. He called in 72 Torah scholars to do this, in order to see if the translations would disagree with each other. Miraculously, all 72 separate translations were identical, and the work was named the Septuagint, meaning “seventy” in Koine Greek, as it was customary to round numbers to the nearest multiple of ten. Here we see a repeat of the number seventy in our history. But why, if the making of the Septuagint was a miracle, does its numerical value correspond to the years of the Babylonian exile?
We learned from the story of Chanukah that the Greeks suppressed Jewish culture and imposed their own Hellenistic culture in the land. It was this assimilation to Hellenism that prompted Ptolemy to translate the Torah to Greek, as it would remove the need to understand Hebrew in studying the Torah. The Jews, surrounded by Greeks, began themselves to speak the language, observe the customs, and adhere to the philosophies of their neighbors. Their studying Torah, the focal point of Jewish culture, in the foreign Greek language further solidified their assimilation into Hellenistic baseness. Having Chanukah and Asarah B’Tevet so close together allows us to make the leap from the corrupting Greek influence in one story and the exile of the other. In effect, by reversing the sequence of events, it is made clear that the seventy-year exile was punishment for the later “seventy” scribes who composed the Septuagint.
The number seventy also appears in the Torah portion Vayigash, which occurs close to Asarah B’Tevet. At the end of the portion, Joseph has his family, seventy in all, travel down to Egypt to escape the regional famine and be close to him, the Viceroy of all of Egypt. They settle in the land of Goshen in an attempt to separate themselves from the Egyptians, but they too are assimilated into a foreign culture, as seen later by the forging of a golden calf, an Egyptian deity, by the restless, wandering Israelites. So, once again, the number seventy correlates with the assimilation of the Jewish people into a foreign culture, which detracts from their devotion to G-d and warrants a seventy-year exile in return. In these two instances, assimilation is shown to be a decisive threat to the Jewish people, one which G-d repeatedly warns us against by showing its consequences.
And yet, the pattern repeats itself. Take a look at us Jews in America. We call ourselves American, pledge ourselves to the American flag, celebrate American holidays, eat American food, study American history, and call ourselves part of the American people. On the other hand, we should be calling ourselves Jewish, pledging ourselves to Israel, celebrating Jewish holidays, eating Jewish foot, studying our Jewish heritage and history, and calling ourselves part of the Jewish people. This, once again, is the assimilation of the Jewish people into a foreign culture. We may not find it America foreign, but neither did Jews in Greece, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Spain, or Germany think their adopted homes as foreign. And today, we have the blessing of being able to look back at those times and see how the Jewish people were corrupted. Let us apply that to ourselves, now, and admit that we are under the debasing influence of Americana, and it is just as bad, or even worse, than any other assimilation the Jewish people has faced.
All hope is not lost, however. Even if you have decided not to fast on Asarah B’Tevet, you still have a chance to meditate on how to revive the spirit if Judaism that has been overshadowed all these years, how to give new light to your inner Ner Tamid, the eternal light of the Jewish People. Maybe this time we can avoid yet another exile.
Connor Wahrman, 15, is a sophomore at Nicolet High School and lives in Fox Point.
The above article is a student opinion piece and does not represent the views of the Coalition for Jewish Learning or of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. Students with opposing viewpoints are invited to leave a comment or write a rejoinder for publication on this website (email JoAnne for more information). The Telling Our Stories website pays for student contributions.
The Coalition for Jewish Learning is the education program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
