Asarah B’Teives and Yerushalyim 1948

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5TJT.com

Some of us have difficulty relating to the fast of Asara b’Teives, when the siege of Yerushalayim first began.  Sure, we know that Nevuchadnetzar, the evil king of Bavel began the siege against Yerushalayim during the time of the first Beis HaMikdash. We know also that it continued for three years until the walls were finally breached on the ninth day of Tamuz.

But how do we relate?

Perhaps, when we examine a more recent siege – we can better appreciate the one during the first Beis HaMikdash.

In the end of 1947, there were 100,000 Jews living in Yerushalayim.  Arab militia forces decided to embark upon a siege to cut off and starve the residents of Yerushalayim.  They blocked access to the Holy City at two places – Latrun and Bab al Wad.   They had cut off the road from the coastal plains of Eretz Yisroel. They also cut off the road from Tel Aviv. Yerushalayim’s residents were both hungry and cold.  They desperately needed food and fuel.

In December of 1947, the Jewish Agency set up the Jerusalem Emergency Committee.  A Canadian Jew named Dov Yoseph headed the committee.  They estimated that 4500 tons of food and fuel were needed each day.  The siege grew more and more effective.  In January of 1948 only 30 trucks made it through a day.  Two months later, there were only six that got through.  People were starving.

My mother, her parents, and siblings were among them.

“We cooked and ate grass during those times,” my mother used to say.  The Jewish Agency had printed up flyers explaining which grass was edible – and how to cook it.  [ The exact recipe can be found in the book O’ Jerusalem].

A meeting of Arab military leaders met in Damascus in early April.  They announced that Yerushalayim would soon be strangled by their blockade.  There were 5300 Arabs behind the blockade.

THE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

Most of the Sheiris HaPleita that survived the death camps of the Nazis were living in various DP (Displaced Person) camps.  Some, however, tried to make it to Eretz Yisroel.  The vast majority of them did not make it there – because the British were still implementing their “White Papers” preventing Jews from entering the Holy Land.  Instead, they interned them in camps in Cyprus.

In 1948, however, many of these Holocaust survivors were let out of these camps and allowed to finally enter Eretz Yisroel.  As soon as they entered, hundreds of them volunteered to help break the siege of Yerushalayim.  They had no training, save an hour or so, in which they were given guns.

They were brave souls and most of them were killed by the Arabs who were bent on starving the 100,000 Jews of Yerushalayim.  We do not even know their names.

At the same time, Jordanian forces were shelling the besieged city.  The Jews in Yerushalayim thus faced a double enemy.  Rav Elyashiv zt”l’s daughter a”h was killed in one of those shellings.

Perhaps on this Asarah b’Teives, we can better relate to the suffering in that first siege of Yerushalayim that we underwent thousands of years earlier, by understanding this relatively recent siege.  There are still people alive that remember it.  They are few and far between, but hearing of it can help us appreciate what it is that we are commemorating today.

One last thought.  Many people grew up being told by their mother, “Finish your food, darling.  There are children starving in Africa that have no food.”  My mother, a”h used to say something else.  “Finish your food, darling.  When I was growing up in Yerushalayim in 1947-48, we had no food – we had to eat grass just to survive.”

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