No huge divrei Torah to write....just that I absolutely love this Parsha and am looking forward to discussing it on Shabbos and hearing it in Shul.
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2) Asara B'tevet mourns the seige of the bais hamikdash and that ended up in destruction in Tisha B'av. Similarly (acc. to R' Lapian), Asara B'tevet will also be the deciding day (yom hadin) to whether we will still fast this upcoming T'sha B'av or will be celebrating the coming of Mashiach. His lesson - don't underestimate the greatness of the upcoming fast.

THE FAST OF THE TENTH OF TEVET


TROUBLED DAYS


The day on which the 72 Elders concluded their Greek translation of the Torah - the 8th of Teves - was a sorrowful day for Israel. The sages described the event in M'gillas Ta'anis as follows:

"On the 8th of Teves the Torah was rendered into Greek during the days of King Ptolemy and darkness descended upon the world for three days."

The day was a turning point in the history of religion and Judaism much like the day the golden calf was fashioned. For until this first translation of the written Torah was made, one who desired to study the essence of Torah was obliged to become familiar with the language of the document and learned it from teachers who never separated the text from its Oral Torah - the essence of its understanding and application. Now that the text of the Written Torah was available and could be read without a feel of the original language or its oral tradition of interpretation, the sages saw in this situation ominous consequences.

Sensing that Ptolemy's desires were less than noble, the Elders were forced to change the literal meaning of certain passages, altering the text with insertions and deletions so that no aspirations may be cast on the contents of the Torah.

In a greater sense, however, the Torah - held to be a way of life for its followers - was now a literary document available to those who did not nor cared not to come under the living influence and dynamism of its tenets.

On this day, the siege of Jerusalem began during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, prior to the destruction of the First Temple. The citizens of Jerusalem knew hunger as never before...

This sad day was proclaimed a fast by the rabbis to commemorate the Destruction of the Temple and the consequent dispersion. The sages pointed out that the day should be devoted to contemplation of the events leading up to the siege.

In our day: The 10th Tevet has been established in Israel by the Chief Rabbinate as the day of mourning for all those who perished in the Holocaust and whose day of departure from this world (yahrzeit) is unknown. The day is marked by special educational programs in the schools.

(Virtual Jerusalem, Holidays)

Jeremiah 52:4-6

And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month [Dec/Jan], in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built forts, against it round about. So the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king Zedekiah [about 18 months].



The month of Tevet is the darkest time of the year. Its days are the shortest of the year and its nights the longest. The tribe associated with Tevet is the tribe of Dan. When the Children of Israel traveled and camped in the desert, they encircled the Holy Ark. The tribe of Dan was the most northerly encampment. The North is a dark cold place. The long nights of Tevet are even longer in the North. The Hebrew word for North -- tzafon -- is spelled the same as tzafun -- which means hidden. The Talmud tells us that one of the names of the yetzer hara -- the negative drive -- is tzafuni (Succa 52).

Beginning on the eighth of Tevet, three days of spiritual darkness descended on the world. The first darkness was the translation into Greek of the Torah. King Ptolemy took 70 great Torah Sages and confined them in separate cubicles and instructed them to translate the Torah. Hence its name -- the Septuagint. With the translation of the Torah into Greek, the "lion which had been roaming free was put into a cage." The radiance of the Torah which shines through the sentences, the words and the letters of the Holy tongue, was shuttered into a closed room, its light constricted and obfuscated. For however accurate a translation may be, the Torah's fathomless depths, its mystical secrets, become truncated and lost when it speaks in another tongue.

The second day of darkness was the passing from this world of Ezra the Sofer on the ninth of Tevet. Ezra was among the last of the prophets. It was he who gave the Torah the letters that we recognize today -- Ashurit script. By employing Ashurit, Ezra made the Torah accessible to all the people. The Torah's light was able to shine out to the least scholarly of the Jewish People. It was also Ezra who instituted the public reading of the Torah on Mondays, Thursdays and at mincha on Shabbat. Ezra brought Torah to the people. When his light went out on the ninth of Tevet, the world became darker, and the Torah -- more constrained and confined.

On the tenth of Tevet, the armies of the Babylonian emperor, Nevuchadnetzar, led by his general Nevuzaradan began the siege on Jerusalem, resulting in the destruction of the first Holy Temple and the exile of the Jewish people to Babylon.

If you think about it, on the tenth of Tevet itself, ostensibly, nothing really tragic happened. No wall was breached. No one died. Not a shot was fired. Only the siege was begun.

No huge divrei Torah to write....just that I absolutely love this Parsha and am looking forward to discussing it on Shabbos and hearing it in Shul.
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