Since 1942, when Isaac Halevi Herzog—later the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi Israel—tried to arrange a day of prayer, fasting, and mourning for the Jews of Europe, rabbis have debated whether a new day should be created on the Jewish liturgical calendar to commemorate the Shoah. (This debate is explored in Jacob J. Schacter’s online course The Jewish Meaning of Memory). Several venerable authorities objected even to the establishment of Yom HaShoah, arguing instead that the extermination of European Jewry should be included with the destruction of the two Temples and other national tragedies mourned on the fast of Tisha b’Av.

Into this debate comes the Tenth of Tevet, the minor fast day that falls today, and primarily commemorates the beginning of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE. Shimshon HaKohen Nadel writes:

[I]n an attempt to reach a compromise between the secular government and religious community—and in hopes of appeasing some of the opposing rabbis—the Chief Rabbinate established the Tenth of Tevet as the “general day of kaddish,” a day for the recital of the mourner’s prayer for those whose date of their death is unknown. In addition to kaddish, they decided the day should be observed like a yahrzeit, [the anniversary of a close relative’s death].

By choosing the Tenth of Tevet—one of the four fasts established by our sages to mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple—the Chief Rabbinate chose to imbue the day with a religious character and to quiet the voices who opposed the creation of a new memorial day. During the first general day of kaddish in December of 1949, the remains of thousands of Jews from the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp near Munich were buried, together with desecrated Torah scrolls, in Jerusalem, and special prayers were recited for the martyrs.

Unfortunately [the day of kaddish] was never fully adopted outside of the [Israeli] Religious Zionist community.

As we mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, Israeli special forces carried out a daring boots-on-the-ground raid on September 8 targeting the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) in northwestern Syria. The site was used for producing and storing missiles which are then transferred to Hizballah in Lebanon. Jonathan Spyer notes that the raid was accompanied by extensive airstrikes in Syira,and followed a few days later by extensive attacks on Hizballah in Lebanon, one of which killed Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer, a senior officer in the terrorist group’s Radwan force, an elite infantry group. And yesterday, the IDF destroyed a weapons depot, an observation post, and other Hizballah positions. Spyer puts these attacks in context:

The direct purpose of the raid, of course, was the destruction of the facilities and materials targeted. But Israel also appeared to be delivering a message to the Syrian regime that it should not imagine itself to be immune should it choose to continue its involvement with the Iran-led axis’s current campaign against Israel.

Similarly, the killing of al-Shaer indicated that Israel is no longer limiting its response to Hizballah attacks to the border area. Rather, Hizballah operatives in Israel’s crosshairs are now considered fair game wherever they may be located in Lebanon.

The SSRC raid and the killing of al-Shaer are unlikely to have been one-off events. Rather, they represent the systematic broadening of the parameters of the conflict in the north. Hizballah commenced the current round of fighting on October 8, in support of Hamas in Gaza. It has vowed to stop firing only when a ceasefire is reached in the south—a prospect which currently seems distant.