Tisha B’Av begins tomorrow night, and Jews all over the world will be fasting, reading the book of Lamentations, and thinking about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem that took place almost two thousand years ago.First be nice: then kill me

But Tisha B’Av shouldn’t just be a commemoration of events that happened hundreds of years ago. Contemporary Jews have experienced plenty of major traumas, events that rocked the Jewish community, and changed the way we practice Judaism. Most recently, the raid on the AgriProcessors plant in Iowa, though certainly not as spiritually damaging as the destructions of the Temple, has had serious reverberations around the Jewish world. It has affected what we buy and serve and eat, and how we think about our treatment of our colleagues and those who work around us. It has changed our relationships with the world, both humiliating us -- as the poor behavior of our brethren is exposed to the world -- and forcing us to shape up and raise the standards we have for ourselves and those we support.

Ancient Jews brought sacrifices to the Temple: animals killed in the name of God. But the sacrifices were not enough. Prophets warned us that our behavior was as important as the sacrifices, and when we didn’t learn, the opportunity to bring sacrifices was taken away. Here we are, more than a thousand years on, and somehow we’ve fixated on kosher meat, and not on our own behavior. Maybe this experience, as difficult and upsetting as it is, will serve to remind us about what’s really important, and will reconfigure our priorities.

Want Out of the Fast of the Firstborn?: crash a wedding and chow down This year, the fast of the firstborn, Taanit Bechorot, falls on Thursday, April 17th. Should you be fasting? Here’s the lowdown:

1. What It's All About: Remember the tenth plague, death of the firstborn sons? Recollect how the Jews marked their houses with the blood of a pascal lamb, so God would know not to kill Jewish firstborn sons? Taanit Bechorot is a sunrise to sunset fast specifically for firstborn children (we’ll get to the daughter/son issue in a minute) to commemorate how they were saved from being slaughtered in the plague.
2. When to Abstain: Usually, the fast falls on the day before Passover starts, but because Passover starts on a Saturday night this year, and we’re only allowed to fast on Shabbat for Yom Kippur, Taanit Bechorot is pushed to Thursday.
3. Loopholes: The Rabbis knew that the day before Passover wasn’t a great time to be asking people to not eat (everyone deserves a pre-Passover donut fix, right?) so there are a number of suggested ways to get out of fasting. For instance, you generally can’t fast if you attend certain ceremonies that require festive meals, such as a bris, a wedding, a bar or bat mitzvah, or a siyum. Firstborns are encouraged to go to such ceremonies so they won't have to fast.
   
4. Equal Opportunity Fasting: Are firstborn women obligated to fast on Taanit Bechorot? As you might expect, there’s some controversy around this question. Some authorities say that only firstborn men should fast. If a child is too young to fast, his father fasts for him, and if the father is a first born and has to be fasting already, the mother fasts for the child. But there are many communities where women are considered to be obligated as well. This is based mostly on a Midrash that says that Bitya, Pharoah’s eldest daughter, was saved because of the merit of Moses. This implies that other Egyptian women weren’t saved, so the miracle applies to women as well.
5. Insatiable Appetite for Fasting Knowledge?: For more background on Taanit Bechorot, check out MyJewishLearning, or Daily Halacha. For more on the debate about whether women are obligated, check out a JOFA article called “Women and the Fast of the Firstborn.”

I'm feeling solemn. Not because I'm thinking about the sins I have to atone for tomorrow, but because nothing will pass beyond my lips. For someone who bases her life around meals (and requires coffee in order to function at the most basic level), I feel that my immediate future holds no pleasure. However, it is only one day. We're going to get through this! Here are some tips I've come across on easing the pain:

The Night Before:

1. Don't drink alcohol with dinner for these obvious reasons: You will be thirsty, you might get a headache, you could be hungover tomorrow, and, in worst case, you could puke, leaving you with an empty stomach.

2. Eat something filling, and not too salty or spicy. Kung Pao chicken, for instance, would not be ideal.

3. Don't overeat. Some people say that if they eat a huge dinner, they feel extra hungry the next morning. I am not of this camp. I personally like to stuff myself until I feel like I never want to eat again (or at least the next day). I plan on eating a hefty portion of pasta tonight, and maybe a slice of cheesecake for dessert...Mmmm...

The Day of:

1. Go to temple. It helps to be around a bunch of people who are suffering along with you.

2. Don't talk about how hungry you are. This will only draw your attention to your growling tummy. Instead, think of foods that make you want to barf, like week-old sushi or maggot-infested oatmeal.

3. Take a nap. It suppresses the appetite and makes the time fly by. You might even dream of eating, and then it's like you actually did!

4. Sniff spices. I've heard that sticking your nose into a jar of cinnamon, cloves, and/or cardamom eases hunger. (These are the spices used during the havdalah ritual at the end of shabbat.) I have no idea if this works or not, but since I happen to have these spices on hand because of the baklava I just made, I plan on trying it. Hey, why not?

If you have any more tips on easing the fast, please share!

My uncle and his boyfriend have a Yom Kippur ritual: First they go to a nice lunch in Manhattan, and then they see a Broadway show. I’ve always loved that story because it’s so Jewish: They could go see The Producers or The Boy From Oz any time, but it wouldn’t be as special on any other day. Even for Jews with no interest in religion, the Day of Atonement has a kind of power. You can find Broadway tickets here, but if you’re going to try to engage with the holiday on its own terms, you’re better off with our custom events listings. Pick your type

This afternoon, I got a phone call from a friend of mine and we ended up in a discussion about a feminist Yom Kippur service she's attending this week in a start-up minyan living-room sort of setting. I asked her what elements were going to be changed, implemented or excluded to qualify the service as feminist and she pointed out some resources I'll be sharing with all of you a bit later this week, of course. She mentioned something which I found terribly interesting, and that the women leading this service made a point to let the attending women know that it was a "body-positive, fast-optional" minyan, feeling all too often food, eating, not-eating, and being female is so very loaded.

Yom Kippur: No laughing matter.

This idea started, my friend explained, when one of the service leaders, years ago, overhead women talking about the Yom Kippur diet and felt that seeing the fast as a trick to outsmart the metabolism to be quite a shonda, if not just missing the spiritual point, so they decided on their mindful approach.

Personally, this is a subject of great interest to me, mainly because I write a great deal about the social-cultural issues surrounding women and eating and so often about media literary versus body image and the like. This article from Jewish Family offers a breakdown of physical effects of temporary fasting, with a mindfulness towards eating disorders and here a few rabbis and physician talk it over in a broad sense. Here Richard Israel offers some tips and a decent explanation (for some of our friends-of-the-Jewcy readers) about why we fast, in personal and spiritual terms, while here a rabbi and health officials at the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders urges people to consider not fasting at all.

This essay by Janie Lieberman details her struggle with eating disorders, why, with the day and its rituals too loaded for her, she did not chose to fast any longer, which ends with this paragraph:

"With Yom Kippur 'fast' approaching, we atone for our sins of the body and spirit. Forgetting all that, many will end their daylong fast by gorging at sundown. Indeed, the Jewish holidays are as rich in traditions as they are in rich food. I, however, do not fast. I did enough of that, and it was only a set up to binge. Judaism teaches us that the body is a soul's house. I respect that philosophy and don't abuse food or my body."

Fasting: Some can, some cannot. No shame, either way.

The Talmud declares that one must maintain a healthy body in order to have a healthy soul, and with such discussion in Judaism devoted to saving a single life being like saving the whole world, and with even the most observant person not only being rabbinically permitted but required to violate other halachic terms to spare someone death.

But, in my humble opinion, there is physically saving a life, and there is emotionally saving a life. Sometimes the lines blur, sometimes they do not, but both are of great sacredness and importance. This year on Yom Kippur, I wish everyone a meaningful, mindful and safe experience, however it manifests, and however we thoughtfully choose.

 

Tonight is the beginning of a major fast in commemoration of the destruction of the first and second temples (plus a bunch of other bad things). First the Jews were kicked out by the Assyrians and shipped off to Babylonia. Then, after seventy years Jews were allowed back in Israel to rebuild the Temple, only to have it destroyed again by the Romans.

Living in exile is a notoriously difficult experience for Jews. (Over Shabbat I learned of a custom of removing all the knives from the table before saying birkat hamazon, because when we read the part about our exile we might be tempted to stab ourselves). On the one hand, we’re supposed to feel incomplete and forlorn without Zion, on the other hand, we’ve gotten pretty good at this whole galut thing (and, frankly, pretty bad at this whole having our own state thing). It can be hard for me to sympathize with a tradition that thinks I might want to stab myself just because I don’t live in Israel. I simply don’t connect with a sense of national/ethnic exile. This was put into profound relief this weekend as I read The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, which was great, but felt ideologically distant to me.
Noah Feldman: he was a Rhodes AND a Truman scholar, and we want to kick him out of the fold?
On the other hand, the article in the New York Times Magazine this weekend about intermarriage and the unnecessary alienation that it causes seemed very relevant and relatable. If you haven’t read the article yet (though chances are you have--it’s currently number two on the ‘Most E-Mailed’ list) I highly suggest you give it a once-over. The gist is that a graduate of the Maimonides School of Brookline, a man to whom Jewish life is obviously very important, has been effectively ignored and even erased from alumni photos because he’s married to a non-Jew. Noah Feldman, the article’s author, has struggled with his Modern Orthodox upbringing because it seems unprepared to deal with his own choices. He writes with a consistently positive tone about Judaism and Jewish life, and yet he feels as if he’s been pushed away from it, as if his there is a gulf between himself and the community he clearly loves. His article is one of the most potent descriptions of exile I’ve ever read.

Partially as a result of Feldman’s article, I spent much of my Shabbat meals discussing intermarriage with friends, and heard yet again the damn doomsday prediction about the future of the Jewish people. We can’t intermarry, because then who will have the Jewish babies? If that is really the argument, if all we really need is Jewish babies, then I guess it’s no problem for me to inter-date. I don’t want kids, so it shouldn’t matter whom I end up with, right? No. Of course not. I should date Jews because I spend all day being Jewish. I lay tefillin in the morning, and say kriat shma before I close my eyes at night, and in between I learn text, give tzedakah, read Torah and try to build an inspiring and exciting Jewish community for myself and my friends. I want to share all those things with someone I love. And frankly, if that person can’t read Hebrew, or thinks the Torah is stupid and outdated, I’d having trouble imagining myself with him in the long term anyway.

Last night I read Shmuley Boteach’s fantastic response to Feldman’s article. Boteach gave his editorial the simple title, Stop Ostracizing the Intermarried, and it contains one of the most sensible and mature responses to intermarriage that I’ve ever seen:

Of course I had wanted Noah to marry Jewish, and I took pride in the fact that I had helped to sustain his observance during his two years at Oxford. But the choice of whom he would marry was not mine to make. Before his wedding I wrote him a note that said, in essence, that we were friends and my affection for him would never change.

I told him that he was a prince of the Jewish nation, that his obligations to his people were eternal and unchanging, that whether or not his wife, or indeed his children, were Jewish, he would never change his own personal status as a Jew. I added that I knew he would do great things with his life as a scholar of world standing, and that he would always put the needs of the Jewish people first.

In this response Boteach seems to be exhibiting Ahavat Israel, the practice of loving and respecting fellow Jews. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook is famous for saying that the second temple was destroyed as a result of gratuitous hatred, and the third will be constructed as a result of ahavat Israel.

So maybe I don’t connect with national exile. It turns out the personal exile that I see and feel deeply in the Jewish community stipulates that my response be the same as the person stabbing himself with the challah knife during birkat hamazon.

Tonight, maybe you’ll sit in a dark room with other Jews, reading the book of Lamentations, and crying for the loss of Zion. I hope that in those moments of grief you’ll remember the grief of members of our own community, and you’ll join me in committing to practicing more ahavat Israel every day.

Tomorrow is the 17th day of Tammuz, which is considered a minor fast day. There are only two major fast days, Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av, during which we’re forbidden from eating, drinking, having sex, wearing leather shoes, bathing, and wearing perfume. Major fasts last 25 hours, from sunset one evening through nightfall of the following day. In contrast, we have four minor fast days, during which we’re restricted from eating, drinking, having sex, and wearing perfume. Leather shoes and bathing are fine, and the fast only lasts from sunrise to sunset. Tomorrow, that means that in New York we’ll be fasting from 4:16 a.m. until 9:08 p.m. Not so minor, really. Seventeen hours without food and drink? I’m not particularly excited.
Babies Don't Fast: lucky bastards
For tips on how to have an easy fast, I turn to my Muslim friends, who are experts at fasting because of Ramadan. One of my friends directed me to the Islam101 website, which is a lot like the extremely helpful Jew FAQ. Islam101 has a page with a bunch of fasting pointers, mostly relating to what you should and shouldn’t eat in preparation for a fast. It’s all worth a read, but the gist is that whole grains and carbs like pasts and whole grain bread are good preparatory foods, and obviously drink plenty in the hours leading up to the fast so you don’t end up too dehydrated.

For more information about why we fast on the 17th day of Tammuz, check out the OU’s website that details various halalchic and traditional reasons for the fast day. To find out when the fast starts and ends in your city, go to MyZmanim.com.

Depending on whom you ask, the Master Cleanse is either a highway to rejuvenation and mental clarity or a cayenne-pepper-saturated crash diet. For a minimum of ten days, cleansers consume nothing but a spicy lemon drink followed by a special saltwater chaser. Aside from its all-too-obvious laxative powers, this regime supposedly clears the body of toxins, making adherents feel energetic, lucid, and even euphoric. The cleanse has been around since 1941, but it recently moved from the new-age realm to the gossip weeklies when Beyonce used it to lose 22 pounds for her role as The Skinny One in Dreamgirls. Jewcy’s own Master Cleanser, Jay Michaelson, isn’t trying to out-diva Diana Ross; he simply wants to see what will happen when he gives up solid food for a week. Will he find a ...

Like Queen Esther: This girl is obviously rilly religiousToday is the Fast of Esther (or Ta-anit Esther, for the transliteration-happy among you).

“Go and gather all the Jews who are found in Shushan and fast over me, and do not eat and do not drink three days, night and day; and I and my maidens will also fast thus,” Esther is said to have told Mordechai. And, since the story ended well, the fast remains.

So, blackberry/raspberry bran morning muffin aside, I’m feeling nice and hungry and contemplative. (Can’t I meditate on my hunger between meals? I mean, technically I’m fasting at this very moment! And boy, am I thinking some redemptive thoughts.)

Unhappy correlation between modern American Jewish women and starvation aside, there are many, many purported benefits of fasting (redemption of your people is just icing on the cake you can't eat). If it’s good enough for Esther et al, Robin Quivers, and Beyonce, there’s got to be something to it.

Come on! We'll do it together! It'll be, like, a bonding thing!

With Hanukkah over for another year, we can get back to random Faithhacker rantings about non-holiday topics.  At least until later this week, when we’ll all be celebrating the Tenth of Tevet, of course…

What? 

What’s that, you say?  You mean you’ve never heard of the Tenth of Tevet?

Me neither, until now.

But it would seem that while the rest of the world is getting rested up for a night of New Years Eve-ing, observant Jews will be fasting on December 31 (beginning at sundown December 30).  Because we were oppressed (no surprise there). 

Specifically, this holiday commemorates Babylonia’s siege of Jerusalem in 589 BCE, and (as a result) the first destruction of the Temple.  But I find myself reading about the siege, and the ensuing famine… and thinking about... other things.  About Iraq. 

'The essential significance of the fast of the Teth of Tevet, as well as that of the other fast days, is not primarily the grief and mourning which they evoke. Their aim is rather to awaken the hearts towards repentance; to recall to us, both the evil deeds of our fathers, and our own evil deeds, which caused anguish to befall both them and us and thereby to cause us to return towards the good. As it is said (Vayikra 26): 'And they shall confess their transgressions and the transgressions of their fathers.' (Rambam: Hilchot Ta'anit Chapter 5).

Now, I don’t know if I’m going to fast on December 31 (I doubt it, as I’m knocked up right now) but considering the state of our world... this is worth thinking about… our own "deeds" and our own complicity.  We all cause suffering, and we all suffer.