An easy fast

This morning I listened to a story about fasting on This American Life that set out a more intense fast than I have ever considered for myself. David Rakoff did a 14 day clear liquids only (fruit juices and broth) fast but did not find spiritual enlightenment, as he secretly was hoping to do. He did lose a pound a day, though. What stood out to me was a basic, even banal, point: that fasting alone does not bring a transcendent experience, that to find spirituality or cosmic connection fasting can be a tool but a seeker must engage fully, through belief, inner search, meditation, the company of other seekers, etc. Rakoff read the New York Times every morning, did his regular routine, stayed in his own apartment, and then was surprised when the epiphanies didn't roll down upon him.

The only fasting experience I have is the 25 hour fast of Yom Kippur. It is one of the very few Jewish traditions I uphold, and even that not entirely consistently. I appreciate the use of the fast to mark out a special time for contemplation, even in the years when I do basically nothing else to mark the holiday, and like Rakoff keep my regular life of commuting and email and novels through the fast. But I recall my most intense Yom Kippur, the year I was in Israel for my cousin's wedding and staying with Uncle David the rabbi, where all of my regular patterns had been broken and I was surrounded, in what from the outside looked like one of those lonely subdivisions in the middle of farm country, by people who were not just fasting but intently praying, and the hunger and the tingle of not eating served to concentrate my mind on this usually alien concept of praying for redemption.

I never know what to say to people on Yom Kippur. Friends and colleagues typically say "May you have an easy fast" but I think if the fast is easy, if it does not prevent you from leading your regular life and habits, then it is useless. If I fight it I don't make the best use of the uncomfortable and even painful practice. By hoping the fasts of others are easy, I encourage them to not take fasting seriously. Hoping to ease the pain suggests that the fast is being imposed from outside rather than fully chosen and embraced and created from within. Which it is, and that is part of the point of modern American Judaism, and a whole other layer by which my friends and colleagues and I can connect and create community.


Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: cake
lunch: fajita salad
dinner: pizza

Yesterday's run destination: Santa Monica Public Library