On fasting
Today is Tisha B’av, and, like Jews all over the world, I am fasting. This year’s fast is a hard one — it began last night at 8:32pm, and will end tonight at 9:19pm. We fast by abstaining from food, naturally, but also from drinking. No morning coffee, no sip of water when your mouth gets dry, no orange juice as a pick-me-up in the afternoon, nothing.
Right now, the caffeine withdrawal is the hardest. But, all in all, I am fasting alright. I’m lightheaded. I’m woozy. I’m cold. My limbs are kind of tingly. I’d be much happier asleep. But, I feel everything about my body right now, and I feel all the ways in which my daily intake satiates me and sustains me. Even my morning coffee.
What is hard, though, and what drove me to wrote this blog post today, is the difficulty of feeling the commemoration of Tisha B’av. Yes, I feel my body, and I feel the lack of food and water. But do I feel grief at these symbols of Jewish identity? I must admit, I don’t. Of course, there is the natural interpretation: when the Temple is restored, and we are no longer in diaspora, we will no longer be sitting at our desks on a work day, feeling woozy and weak, trying to focus on our daily tasks. Fair game. But, and without getting to philosophical here, what if this side of it is outside of my own personal beliefs?
Not to dwell on that. The point is: I am fasting, along with Jews the world over, but I do not feel myself mourning the loss of the Temple, and the other calamities that our community’s founding myths tell us befell the Jews on this day. So the question becomes, in a sense, why am I fasting?
It strikes me as problematic, almost, that in my head is a little chorus of ”you can do it!” as if I am only fasting to prove to myself that I can. It strikes me as problematic that every physical discomfort I bear today feels like a little triumph. It strikes me as problematic that I am doing it because other Jews are doing it too. But, at the same time, I wonder if this is a little bit of what this day is about: a purposeful act of engaging in a deprivation of sustenance, along with other members of my community, because I can. Because even if I don’t acutely feel the loss of the Temple, I am feeling a loss of something. You know what I mean?
All the while, my stomach is asking me, what’s for dinner?
