The First Fast

Last week, with the Jewish high holidays around the corner, Ella asked me about Yom Kippur. I explained to my curious 12-year-old what the most solemn day in the Jewish religion was really about. And fasting was the day's "signature event."

The Day of Atonement, I explained, took place 10 days after the new year and signified the day when Jews are forgiven for all of their sins over the previous 365 days, and thus get inscribed into God's "good" book for another year.

(For my gentile friends: Think of Santa's "nice" list, but instead you have to suffer through dehydration and hunger headaches while spending most of your day stuck in synagogue. And the reward is not presents but leftover brisket from Rosh Hashanah. So, just like Christmas but...totally not.)

Despite my distaste for observing arcane and outdated religious customs just because someone else told me to, my parents will be proud to know that 12 years of private Jewish education were not wasted. Translation: I understand the reasoning behind many of the traditions celebrated by what I like to call, "Christmas-Easter Jews." As such, I can make sense of them, and choose to follow the ones that actually mean something to me. This one, unlike the milk and meat thing, or the lack of bacon thing, or the let's-equate-electricity-with-work-on-the-Sabbath-thing (really, guys?), for some reason, I actually get.

No offense to Catholicism (especially with refreshingly "lefty" Pope Francis hanging out on the East Coast this week), but Yom Kippur is about much more than hopping into a confession booth, admitting a sin to some guy you can't see, being told to recite some phrases and voilà...forgiven!

No, Yom Kippur is meant to be the culmination of many days of reflection and prayer, including a concerted effort to right wrongs. (Not that I did all that this year.) Depriving oneself of food, drink and other creature comforts (archaic, but kind of cool, in a minimalist/environmentalist sort of way) is more than just a formality; it's a metaphor for improvement, in that it requires introspection to help us not only figure out why we did certain things, but to cleanse our palate of them before they can be officially erased. There's an element of rebirth in there, like an exorcism without the spinning heads.

It seems that the religious scholars of days past felt like in order to really gain a fresh start and demonstrate one's willingness to atone for misdeeds, one must not only suffer a bit, but also rid the body of whatever remnants of the past year's bad juju still remain. For us medical folks, Yom Kippur's basic premise might be likened to a colonoscopy for the soul: you can't really examine one's innards until the old stuff is gone. Bring on the bowel prep, baby.

I had made it very clear to Ella that fasting or not was to be entirely her choice, with the only requirement that she knew WHY she was doing it. If she chose to try, I offered to even do it with her. (I am obsessed with food, so this is a BIG deal for me, FYI.)

She did, and I did. Ella even texted me at lunch, asking if she could have a chocolate milk. I texted back that she could have whatever she wanted. Around 3:30 she texted again saying she had decided to forego the drink. I was impressed. She had clearly thought about it.

I was very proud of my middle schooler, not because she withstood the temptation of eating and drinking for an entire day at school. For that, I don't really care either way. As I said, I'm not into the Jewish thing much anymore. What I am into, is trying to teach my kids to think for themselves. No atonement necessary for that one.