Today is the 10th of Tevet and its observed as a day of fasting, mourning and repentance. We refrain from food and drink from daybreak to nightfall. Today was the day when the armies of the Babylonian emperor, Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem in the year 425 BCE.
The Jewish people had been warned about this calamity and the impending destruction of the Holy Temple and Jerusalem in advance by their prophets, but they didn’t want to believe them.
G- d repeatedly sent the Prophet Jeremiah to admonish His nation, but they foolishly had him imprisoned. So 30 months later on the 9th of Tammuz the city walls were breached and on the 9th of Av of that same year, the Holy Temple was destroyed and the Jewish people were exiled.
Today is a day in which we should be rectifying our past mistakes. We can never heal ourselves if we don’t know where the problem is. Once we can pin point to the ailment that is when we can start healing. The Jewish people have been in exile for too long, it’s time that we all do what we have to do as individuals and as a whole to rectify our past mistakes. Take one more mitzvah in your lives, we never know who is going to tip the scales. That we are still here and very much alive after so much persecution and suffering means that we still have a job to fulfill and something to accomplish. As in this weeks Parasha “Vayechi” we are alive! Jews celebrate life, even after a person departs from this world we still celebrate his/her life. Jews don’t glorify death. That is the key to our survival, that we don’t give up, we are resilient and when we fall, we get up again and rebuild always knowing that there is G-d giving us the strength to continue. Maybe we can’t see it and in many cases we can’t understand what’s going on, but we believe that everything is for our good and it comes from a place of love.Belief is higher than anything else and is what keeps us going.
May we see times of peace and tranquility very soon with the coming of Meshiach!
