A Sacred Sacrifice

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

A Sacred Sacrifice
By LUCETTE LAGNADO
September 29, 2006; Page W13

Some of my Jewish friends will approach Yom Kippur next week a bit as if they were running in a marathon. Once a year, they gear up for the big race: an all-day service at synagogue along with a fast that calls for no food or water for more than 24 hours. Even among the most secular of Jews, fasting on the Day of Atonement is one religious tradition that has somehow managed to survive. It is as if this fast were a bridge linking old-world religion with New Age devotion to health and fitness: Even those who lack religious fervor will approach the prospect of not eating or drinking once a year as a kind of extreme work-out -- a treadmill of the soul.

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Judaism is not an ascetic religion. On the contrary, "it celebrates the senses," remarks Rabbi Gerald Skolnik of the Forest Hills Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue in Queens, N.Y. Fasting as an act of self-denial, he notes, is "a relative rarity" in the Jewish calendar. Those fasts that are mandated -- and Yom Kippur is the most important -- are "a legitimate Jewish expression of atonement." During the days leading up to Yom Kippur, a person is supposed to reach out to friends or to family members that they may have offended the previous year and ask for forgiveness. But the fast itself concerns a person's relationship with God. "Denying basic human needs helps a person to do a true accounting of their soul," explains Rabbi Rafael Konikov of Chabad of Southampton Jewish Center in Long Island, N.Y.

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I had a perfect role model: My Egyptian-born mother, who approached fasting with a passion and abandon that I haven't seen before or since. Even when there wasn't an official fast on the horizon, she would sometimes make one up. That was not uncommon among Jews of the Middle East, where faith was tinged with a sense of mysticism. Some great rabbis the world over and even ordinary folks, fasted on certain weekdays, believing it led to a greater state of holiness. One Jewish tradition has it that you can change the outcome of a bad dream by fasting. The illness of a loved one is another occasion: When I became grievously sick at 16, my mother fasted regularly, as if God would listen more closely anytime she made a plea on an empty stomach. My mother taught me to regard every fast, even the ones that were not biblically mandated, as sacred. The Fast of Tammuz. The Fast of Lamentations. The Fast of Esther. The Fast of Tevet. Even the relatively minor Fast of Gedalia, which comes one day after the celebration of the Jewish new year.

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Of course every fast must end at some point, and the ending is part of the ritual and its meaning. Rabbi Marc Schneier of New York notes that "Yom Kippur has become a social fast," attractive to people almost as much for the lavish food served at its conclusion as for the actual atonement. But the joyful party atmosphere is firmly grounded in faith, he says: "It is a celebration of God's inscribing us in the Book of Life."

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Ms. Lagnado, a Journal reporter, is the author of "The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit," a memoir to be published in 2007 by Ecco/HarperCollins.

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