Should I Fast For Yom Kippur?

When a friend invited me to her break-fast this year, I made up my mind not to fast unless I had a good reason. Taking a random sampling of Jewish friends, I found that most observed because of their parents, because that's what you do on Yom Kippur. But we'd never done the High Holidays in my home, so the tradition was really mine to take or leave.

Fasting wasn't a tradition in my home. Neither were bat mitzvahs. And it was a small miracle in my family when a Passover Seder lasted more than 20 minutes. But this year I wanted to see if I could find an intention for fasting, or if it would remain an empty ritual.

Could I get anything spiritual out of it? If I can't find a good reason to do it, then why should I bother with any other element of Jewish ritual? Why consider myself Jewish at all?

I'm going to spend the next week looking for answers to these questions. I'll talk to rabbis, of course, but I also want to consult people who won't give me the same reasons for fasting that you hear in synagogue.

A doctor will be able to tell me about the physical aspects of the fast. An expert on eating disorders should shed light on the body issues that go along with a day of self-denial. And a normal Jewish woman, someone who has thought long and hard about the rituals of eating and fasting, will help me figure out how to make the choice for myself.

THE EXPERT: Rabbi Leonard Gordon of Philadelphia's Germantown Jewish Centre, a Conservative synagogue that also houses a Reconstructionist congregation.

THE TAKE: He explained that the point of fasting isn't self-punishment; it's to remind yourself that you have control over your body. The difficult part of the fast, Gordon went on, is focusing not on your hunger, but on your soul.

MY REACTION: I have trouble engaging in any spiritually infused language, and Rabbi Gordon's religious rationale lacked a sense of cleansing or atonement that is supposedly crucial to the holiday.

THE EXPERT: I emailed Alan Flam, another rabbi, to find out whether I could expect anything spiritual from the fast.

THE TAKE: "Yom Kippur is the only time on the Jewish calendar that we seek to renew our inner spiritual connection through pulling away from the physical, outer world...Yom Kippur is a structured encounter with death. Only by confronting issues of our mortality can we engage in the work of transformation that Yom Kippur demands. Fasting is a way of bringing us closer to a death-like state."

MY REACTION: I found his response beautiful. When you spend a whole day hyperaware of how much living you cannot participate in, you're forced to stop thinking about the usual neuroses surrounding food and sex and other indulgences-all those things that should matter less as you approach death.

THE EXPERT: Talking to a doctor would ground my decision in health and science which-no surprise here-I find a lot easier to believe than religion. Dr. Myron Yaster is the reason I fasted once in my life, though he doesn't know it. I once fasted to impress the eldest of his three. It seemed especially appropriate to get medical advice from him.

THE TAKE: Yaster assured me that a 24-hour fast is fine for anyone with a normal metabolism and that the physical effect of fasting on the body is sort of like being on a high-protein or low-carb diet where your body is tricked into using fat as a primary fuel.

MY REACTION: What I wanted to learn from Yaster was exactly how much stress our bodies undergo during this religious rite and whether any kind of documented physical transformation could be expected as a result of not eating. And although you might feel a little lightheaded or cranky by the 22nd hour, a one-day fast has almost no effect at all on your health or ability to function.

At sundown on Yom Kippur I generally head straight for the lox plate and bagel basket to stuff myself with as much fish and bread as I can grab. Yaster explained that while this is a common urge, liquid is really the first thing you should have after the fast (wine doesn’t count). I’ve never seen someone bring Gatorade to Yom Kippur dinner, but it’s an ideal way to break the fast, since it contains a severe infusion of salt, water, sugar, and glucose—the things you need to maintain a well-functioning metabolism.

I hail from a family of second- and third-helping kinds of eaters, the types who always eat dessert and apologize for bad moods by mumbling, “I was hungry.” But despite a seemingly unabashed pride in our appetites, none of us are particularly thrilled with our bodies. If this sounds strange to you, chances are you’ve never had an honest conversation with a woman about her relationship to her body and food. How could I separate a holiday that sanctions not eating in order to feel holy from the everyday pressures of not eating in order to be thin?

THE EXPERTS: Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, the director of Eating Disorders Education and Prevention at McLain Hospital in Boston and Lori Hope Lefkovitz, a women's studies professor at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

THE TAKES: Steiner-Adair paraphrased the Torah, offering the old ‘Body-is-the-temple-of-your-soul' adage and insisting that Judaism actually promotes a healthy psychological and physical connection to your body. Lefkovitz points out that the ethics of Judaism can easily slip into obsessive behaviors. Some kosher cookbooks, Lefkowitz notes, read like a prescription for an eating disorder, with their strict hygienic guidelines and separation of foods.

MY REACTION: Keeping kosher requires vigilant awareness of everything that goes in your mouth, a habit that can easily contribute to being freaked out about food in general. Anorexia clinics house a disproportionate number of Jewish girls, who grow up with the impression that to assimilate into American standards of beauty, you must be thin. Any connection with the holidays? I don't think so.

THE EXPERT: For my final day of decision-making, I didn't want to talk to an expert. I just wanted to talk to a Jewish girl like me, someone who had a flexible relationship with the faith, and who practiced on her own terms. Wendy Shanker, 34, is the author of The Fat Girl's Guide to Life. She doesn't belong to a shul, but keeps Shabbat and fasts each year, grew up believing that Yom Kippur was about suffering for sins, but as she got older, she found that a 24-hour fast doesn't really work as punishment. These days, it's not only obsessive Jewish girls saying, "I had a huge dinner last night so I'm going to skip breakfast and lunch today." If abstention is the status quo, how does the Yom Kippur fast work as atonement?

THE TAKE: To make the fast meaningful beyond punishment-lite or indulging Jewish-girl body neuroses, I did not want to do it for an abstraction like God, or transformation, or even forgiveness. Shirking dogma and religious obedience, Shanker finds the fast significant partly because it reminds her of childhood and family, and partly because it makes the day different. There is no expectation of transformation, no half-hearted nod to forgiveness; she draws meaning from the day by designating it meaningful.

MY REACTION: Unlike most mass holidays, there's nothing particularly fun about Yom Kippur. There are no gifts, you can't observe it until you're old enough to at least fake solemnity, there's even a special prayer just for the dead. Unless you have a deep-seated faith or are just going through the motions, finding meaning in the ritual can be a struggle.

This is what finally appeals to me-being in a room full of other people who are also trying to find meaning in what we have been told is a holy day.

Consulting Rabbi Gordon about the fast's biblical roots was informative, but predictable. I liked the drama inherent in Rabbi Flam's description of the fast as a "structured encounter with death," and I was drawn to the possible peace of mind that I imagined confronting mortality might bring, but I worried that I'd be too self-conscious trying to achieve this state.

Dr. Yaster insisted that so long as you have a functional metabolism, your body will be fine and Dr. Steiner-Adair's suggestion that rather than being an excuse not to eat, Yom Kippur can be used as a way to forgo body issues for a little while sounded perfect for a self-help column, but was not entirely convincing.

It was Wendy Shanker, a regular (and insightful) Jewish girl, who finally convinced me I should fast. For Shanker, a day shouldn't require deprivation to be holy, but it does require doing things outside the norm: not checking email, not putting on makeup, not having sex, and yes, not eating. It means going to synagogue and being reminded of family and thinking about what is important in the coming year.

I have decided to fast on Yom Kippur because I want to be with a community of people who are also trying to feel something. I know I won't be the only person in the congregation who is perplexed by why it's important to spend the day starving.

I'm not sure that I'll be able to "check in" or "turn inward," or even keep quiet during shul, but I will make an attempt, and if I fail, I'm not a bad Jew.