To Fast or Not to Fast—That is the Question

Before my Bar Mitzvah, I would walk to shul with my twin brother, Elliott on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. After the service, Elliott and I would walk to our grandmother’s apartment and she would serve us leftover chicken soup from the night before. I would resist, wanting to adhere to the ritual of fasting for the holy day, but she was well aware of my tendency for headaches and knew I would not do well without the benefit of food and water. She advised,

“You’ve got plenty of time for fasting after your bar mitzvah. Eat! I don’t want you to get sick.” Beside the soup, she would plop down on the table two cold glasses of water. “Drink, you don’t want to get a headache.” Sadly, Grandma passed before my Bar Mitzvah and I always think about her this time of year. 

The Yom Kippur fast lasts 25 hours providing a vehicle for reflection and repentance. The idea for this holy day began during the time of the Jews’ 40 years wandering in the desert. When Moses scaled Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah, he returned to the scene of his people worshipping a golden calf, so he returned to the mountain to ask G-d’s forgiveness. On that day, the day G-d forgave Moses for his people’s sins, became the day we know as Yom Kippur. 

In Leviticus 23:26-32 it says, “…the tenth day of this seventh month shall be the Day of Atonement…You shall afflict your souls…And you shall do no work.” It goes on to state that if an individual doesn’t fast, he will be “cut off from his people.” And if a person works on Yom Kippur, G-d will destroy him. Over the centuries, Yom Kippur has become a day for self-denial.

In a spiritual sense, it is enlightening to fast. It keeps you focused on prayer and atonement and not worrying about mundane activities like preparing meals. There are physical benefits to fasting, too. Blood levels of insulin drop facilitating fat burning and cellular repair, inducing the body to remove waste materials. It promotes good digestion with regular elimination cleaning out the digestive tract and aiding other biological processes. It even forces change at the molecular level related to longevity and protection against disease. But I have yet to find any health benefits of not drinking water for a day. 

Orthodox Judaism forbids all eating and drinking on Yom Kippur, including water. However, it does not condone endangering your life in order to fast. Judaism prioritizes life above all else, so if you have a health concern, eating and drinking water on Yom Kippur are completely permissible. 

I have tried going without water for the Day of Atonement, but cannot do it without being afflicted with tortuous migraine headaches, so I always drink just enough water to avoid the debilitating pain that would send me directly to bed. G-d gave us Free Will and no one knows your body better than you. So if you need to eat or drink to avoid illness or discomfort while others are fasting, do so–without guilt–there is no acceptable reason to make yourself ill while going through the process of self-reflection.

“The Light of G-d is the human soul.” (Proverbs 20:27) It is our responsibility to keep that flame burning by living a moral life. Yom Kippur is that day to look within, to inspect your deeds and see if you have lived a moral life in the previous year. We then examine and explore to find less-than-perfect behaviors, make amends and then make the needed adjustments to keep that light burning as brightly as possible—with or without sustenance. 

Michael Thal is the author of The Abduction of Joshua Bloom and the soon to be released novel, The Lip Reader.