Asarah B’Teves and Chalav Nochri: How Small Beginnings Become Churban

Asarah B’Teves commemorates an event that, at the time, did not appear to be churban at all. Yerushalayim was intact. The Beit HaMikdash stood. The avodah continued as usual. No wall had been breached, no fire lit. All that occurred was that the enemy laid siege to the city.

Yet the Avudraham writes in Hilchot Ta’aniyot that if Asarah B’Teves were ever to fall on Shabbos, the fast would still be observed on Shabbos itself. This is extraordinary. Even Tisha B’Av, the day of the actual destruction, is postponed. Why is the beginning treated with greater severity than the end?

Rav Yonasan Eibeschitz explains in Ye’aros Devash that the decisive moment was not the burning of the Mikdash but the onset of the siege. Once permission was granted from Heaven for Yerushalayim to be surrounded, the outcome was already determined. The later stages were horrific, but they were no longer surprising. The direction had been set. Chazal teach: kol hatchalot kashot—beginnings are the most dangerous, because once a process is allowed to begin, it acquires momentum of its own.

Asarah B’Teves is therefore not a fast of mourning alone. It is a fast of intervention. Like a Ta’anit Chalom, it is meant to interrupt a trajectory before it reaches its conclusion. At the moment of the siege,........

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