Why do we fast on the day the siege of Jerusalem began, when the significant event was the eventual destruction of the Mikdash?

The month of Tevet opened with the conclusion of Chanukah, and in another few days we will be observing the fast of Asara b’Tevet. 

The official reason given by the Mishna for the fast of Asara b’Tevet is the siege of Jerusalem by Nevuchadnetzar three years before the actual destruction of the Holy Mikdash. But on the face of it, the siege lost its significance once the walls were breached, and certainly after the Temple was destroyed. Why do we fast for this “opening shot” of the Destruction? 

The Ba’al Halachos Gedolos (also cited in the Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 580, based on Masechet Sofrim) describes an additional event connected with the day: “On the eighth of Tevet, the Torah was translated into Greek in the days of King Ptolemy (Talmai). It was as grave a day for the Jewish people as the day the Golden Calf was made, for the Torah could not be adequately translated. And darkness descended upon the world for three days.”

Translating the Torah into Greek seems like a neutral act, possibly even a positive one, enabling more people of the time to have greater access to Torah wisdom. What was so terrible about this action, and what darkness was created that is being compared to the making of the Golden Calf?

It appears that the darkness is connected to the specific language, which represents a full culture. In the Greek worldview, the only reality acknowledged is what is perceived with man’s senses and understood with the tools of human intellect. No “givens” can precede or circumscribe the human perspective of reality. This philosophy, moreover, has served as the foundation for the development of modern wisdom. Humanity, with its self-centered goals, base instincts and personal, subjective understanding, takes center stage, and can be extrapolated even to Torah, limiting its understanding to that of other disciplines. This was the motivation of having the Torah translated into Greek. 

But Torah is Divine wisdom, revealed to us by Hashem, and its understanding can be achieved only within that framework. It requires both striving for objectivity and character refinement, making the Torah student G-d-like and enabling the development of Torah Shebe’al Peh. This is the exact opposite of the Greek perspective.

Translating the Torah into Greek gave the false sense of the Torah’s being accessible with no need for the struggle and character refinement that is required to access Divine Wisdom. The natural result is misinterpretation of the Torah, encapsulated in the critique that it simply “could not be translated in an adequate way.” 

Deterioration is a Gradual Process

The Torah provides us with the opportunity to illuminate the hidden realities of G-d’s world.  What King Talmai commissioned was a document to hide that illumination, replacing clarity of Divine revelation with the illusions of human instinct. Illusion replacing reality is the root of idolatry, hence the “Golden Calf” analogy. The translation of Torah into Greek, emptying it of its transcendent nature, is not an act of “understanding the world” but rather the creation of an independent world.

The culmination of the three days of darkness coincided with the anniversary of the siege of Jerusalem by Nevuchadnetzar centuries earlier, the event for which the formal fast was legislated. The common denominator was the principle that things of value are vulnerable to deterioration. Deterioration, entropy, is a gradual process that is not immediately perceptible. The fast of Asara B’Tevet was instituted to mourn deterioration rather than destruction. The failure to perceive deterioration and protect against it is the first step towards destruction.

In a world built on “Torah translated into Greek,” fantasy overshadows reality, the shallow triumphs over depth, and we value surface over substance. It leads us to deterioration. We fast to remind us that we must invest hard work in reversing the deterioration we continue to witness in our connection to the most precious gift that G-d has given us – His Torah.