I’m a little wifty here at hour twenty-one of fasting. It’s not bad. This is the first time I’ve fasted (for Yom Kippur at least) in thirteen years, and before that, I don’t really remember ever fasting for the whole day.
Teaching at the JCC has brought me back around to my Jewyjewness, in a good way. I love the women in my class, and something about the experience has softened me to everything about my background. Fasting is an acknowledgment of where I came from, and a nod to my lovely students, who, in all fairness, are the ones really keeping things going. It’s not exactly spending all day in temple, but it’s something.
As I taught this morning, all the major religious traditions have a time for purification, atonement, and some kind of fasting at different points in the year: Lent and Easter, Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and so on. Whether one observes on those days or not, the presence of these holidays throughout the year reminds us that the opportunity to purify and atone -even if we are just atoning for ways in which we have wronged ourselves- is available at any time. We can’t change the calendar, and we can’t go back in time, but we can start over in any moment.
Edited to add: This is post #300!
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