Is Fasting Passe?

Fasting - is it too modern? Are we too weak? The following was a "prepent" posting from Amichai Lau-Lavie that I believe is a great argument for why we need to master our appetites to gain spiritual heights.
________________________________________

I’m starting a week-long raw food cleanse today, along with my friend and collaborator Shira Kline. it’s our second time doing this during the week leading from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. With lots of juices and fresh fruits and vegetables, we approach atonement with a focus on discipline and an energetic shift. 

It’s not a religious thing, but is it? 

It so happens that today is a minor Jewish fast day, the Fast of Gedalya, which is usually observed the day after Rosh Hashanah, but since this year the day after Rosh Hashanah was Shabbat, the fast was postponed a day. 

For me, the cleansing of the mind and the soul begins with the body. Many religions incorporate ritual fasting, but regardless of what God you pray to, the human body is the same. Fasting is an exercise in willpower, a way to balance brain and body. Fasting today is also great practice for Yom Kippur. 

Prepent Day 32: Focus on the spiritual, and on my relationship to faith and with God. These days remind me that God is in the body, that the temple is within, and that the ancient rites of sacrifice are a practice in learning limits and cultivating greater intimacy with the self. The spiritual work is in the simple daily acts. 

Emerson wrote, ”My days are made up of the irregular succession of a very few different tones of feeling. These are my feasts & fasts.” 

In that spirit, I dedicate today to increasing consciousness about eating and drinking. Even if you don’t fast today (many don’t), take a few minutes to think about your diet, when and how you eat, and one doable goal for this coming year that will nourish both the body and soul.

Don't Pray Today

Excellent post from TorahMusing.com on why prayer is de-emphasized on Tisha B'av.
___________________________________________

A Non-Prayer Day

July 15, 2013

We spend so much time in synagogue on Tisha B’Av yet it is not a day of prayer. As we shall see, we say the minimal amounts of prayer, less than on a regular weekday. Our time is spent mourning, remembering. Prayer is about the future; Tisha B’Av is about the past.

R. Menachem Genack (Birkas Yitzchak Al Ha-Torah, Deut. 1:45) finds a hint to this unique status in the Torah reading that always precedes Tisha B’Av. R. Genack quotes his mentor, R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who connected a number of Tisha B’Av rules with an underlying theory. Lamentations (3:8) states:

ותשבו ותבכו לפני ה’ ולא שמע ה’ בקלכם ולא האזין אליכםEven when I cry and shout, He shuts out my prayer.

The final phrase implies that on Tisha B’Av, our ability to pray is limited. Due to the overwhelming sorrow, we are unable to look to the future. We cannot even fathom what we have lost, much less look for a path out of the darkness.

The Beis Yosef (Orach Chaim 559) quotes the Rokei’ach, who cites this verse as an explanation why we do not recite the Tachanun prayers on Tisha B’Av. Of course, we cannot avoid obligatory prayers such as the Amidah but Tachanun is technically optional, even though we say it (almost) every day. On Tisha B’Av, when prayer is out of the spirit of the day, we omit this optional prayer.1

Similarly, on all other fast days we recite Selichos. Why is Tisha B’Av the one fast day on which we skip Selichos? R. Soloveitchik attributed this omission to the same reason, the absence of prayer on this day of mourning.2

Talmudic law requires the addition of an extra prayer service to a fast day. We are accustomed to thinking of Ne’ilah as unique to Yom Kippur but it is supposed to be part of any full fast day. All our other fasts only begin at sunrise and are not complete fasts. But why don’t we recite Ne’ilah on Tisha B’Av? Again, R. Soloveitchik returns to the theme of the cessation of prayer.

And similarly, we do not recite the paragraph Tiskabel in the full Kaddish. That paragraph asks God to accept our prayers. On a day when prayer is shunted, we cannot recite Tiskabel.

While R. Soloveitchik bases his analysis in the scroll of Eikhah, R. Genack sees a hint to this in the Torah. After retelling the story of the Spies and its aftermath, the Torah (Deut. 1:45) describes the Jews’ attempt to forestall their punishment through prayer. “Then you returned and wept before the Lord, but the Lord would not listen to your voice nor pay any attention to you.” The aftermath of the Spies episode, which the Gemara (Ta’anis 29a) tells us continues throughout the generations, includes dismissal of prayers.

On Tisha B’Av, we sit on the floor all morning and try to fathom the magnitude of the disasters we have encountered over the centuries. We spend all year planning for the future, charting our personal and communal paths. But if we are not grounded in our past, if we fail to carry our history with us, we have no rudder to faithfully guide us. All year we pray; today we remember.

---

Others suggest an entirely different reason for omitting Tachanun: Tisha B’Av is considered a holiday and we do not recite Tachanun on a holiday. ↩

Elsewhere, R. Soloveitchik connects Selichos to prayers. See Nefesh Ha-Rav, p. 199.  

9th (and 10th) of Av

Wishing everyone a meaningful Tisha B'Av (or the case this year, a Asheri B'av) fast and may we merit to learn the lessons of our past towards a more unified future in Jerusalem.

א  זְכֹר יְהוָה מֶה-הָיָה לָנוּ, הביט (הַבִּיטָה) וּרְאֵה אֶת-חֶרְפָּתֵנוּ.

1 Remember, Hashem, what is come upon us; behold, and see our reproach.

Praying for Food

I have written before here and here about the struggles to find meaningful tefilla while abstaining from food.  Today is another one of these days and it brings to mind the ongoing tension of the needs of body vs. the needs of the soul.

Indeed it states in Deuteronomy (8:3) that, in this case the miracle preformed in the wildnerness, that through it you should "know that man does not live by bread alone, but by the every word that comes from the mouth of Hashem does man live".  Additionally the Mishne from Pirkei Avot (Ethics of our Fathers) 3:21 states:

"Rabbi Elazar ben (son of) Azariah said: If there is no Torah [study] there is no proper conduct; if there is no proper conduct there is no Torah [study]. If there is no wisdom there is no fear of G-d; if there is no fear of G-d there is no wisdom. If there is no knowledge there is no understanding; if there is no understanding there is no knowledge. If there is no flour there is no Torah; if there is no Torah there is no flour."

The last aphorism equates a relationship of sustenance related to some issues ripped from today's headlines - that without a job, one's Torah learning will not be sustainable.  But in the tefilla frame of mind, one must also remember that we are not monks who frown upon food and the material world - but rather we relish and sing in the delight of Shabbat and holidays as well as in the houses of study and prayer.

So it brings me back to what I think about on a fast day - the historical shadow of the day or my craving to nosh on food....  I think about both.

Fasting for?

Previously I have explored the concept of tefilla and fasting and wanted to take a different angle today.  Yesterday was the Fast of Esther which leads many people to associate the purpose of the fast to be united at least symbolically with Esther's three day fast before she enters the King's chamber to make her plea for her people (chapter 4).  This is not the case as even wikipedia notes:

The 13th of Adar was a fast day for the warriors while going out to battle, as it is believed to have been customary to fast during the battle in order to gain divine favor.

Rather than explore why some educators avoid emphasizing discussions of power and war with modern audiences, I find it worth noting that ancient Jewish warriors seriously davened to gain favor in their wars even to the point of going out to war in a state of fast - I have a hard time just going to work without eating the whole day...

There is a serious disconnect (beyond the mind/body) between our prayers and actions highlighting how far the concept of fasting is falling out of favor, especially on 'minor' fast days.  Mainstream Jewry (and by that I really mean a majority in number) knows about the big one - Yom Kippur - and might be familair with Tisha B'Av, but the minor ones are really seen as minor in significance (and not in degree of fasting).  There are some people even ask about the relevance to fast on Tisha B'av if there is a State of Israel.  In my humble opinion, this is partly because of a change in traditional  ideology (if there ever was unified ideology), a lacking in appreciation for Jewish literacy/history, and the fact that fasting is seen as an 'outdated' practice.  As educators, I think we need to address this issue and its relevance to how we build an identity around tefilla and spiritual growth.

Do your students seem more focused or less focused in tefilla on a fast day?

Do you discuss with your students how to rise above the hunger pangs to better strive to connect?  What techniques do you use?

Have you had a voluntary fast day in your school for a special occasion?  How was the reaction by the student body? Was that tefilla unique?

Fasting, Praying, or Protesting

One of my personal critiques of my Jewish experience was that I felt I had inherited (or was educated towards) an immature impression of Judaism. This covered my conceptualization of Gd (long beard sitting on a throne) through to the purpose and need for substantive ritual in modern life. I finally was able to realize during college - after many conversations and scores of books read - that my conceptualization of Judaism was extremely adolescent and perhaps, before I judge Judaism and my people and perhaps check out, I should learn more to see if I really had experienced the whole gamut of information and perspectives.

Here is just a small anecdote about the extent of my immaturity. My family were regulars at a traditional Conservative Synagogue almost every Shabbat morning. After years of going to Junior Congregation and to the main minyan I really thought the purpose of public Torah reading was to catch the mistakes of the reader. Really! Who understood what was being read aloud and thus deduced that the point of everyone being quiet was to insure that the audience could catch a mistake (or in better terms, to make sure the mesoret was kept accurate week in and week out). Only years later, with a grasp of Hebrew and the fundamentals of community practices, did I learn the greater nuances and appreciation. [More on this theme later but not miss my message: the goal of an educator is to give students the ability and skills to mature into their own Jewish identities and to function and Menschlikim Adults.]

So too with fasting - I remember many a Yom Kippur listening to friends frustrated with the fasting ritual and choosing to opt out under the logic of, "I only think about food, and never about repenting!" Today is the minor fast of the 17th of Tammuz and rather then argue about whether young people should be taught how to focus on the meaningfulness of giving up food for a day (not even 24 hours), I overheard a few conversation speaking about the effect the fast is supposed to have not just on the individual, but on the communal level. Some argued for protesting government policies or injustices happening in other parts of the world and even raising awareness to issues within individual Jewish communities. Communal introspection is important and is sometimes lost in the greater talk about what is happening during the prayers of the day. As daveners, there is a lot of opportunity for personal hesbon nefesh (personal introspection) - but one of the special aspects of the 3 Weeks is that this is a time of soul-searching of the collective and I fear we have lost an element of this self-community-critique. If students are only thinking of their belly on Tisha B'Av then the teachers have not prepared them or challenged them for a communal sense of mourning and suffering and no wonder they are bored during kinot or mincha.

As for the goal of this blog, communities need to take step back and evaluate in which course their tefilot are heading and what could arouse more kavanah (concentration), rachamim (mercy), or kedusha (kedusha/holiness). The Chagim of Rosh Hashanah thru Yom Kippur are likened as the 'playoffs of praying' and need a lot of preparation so that participants are in the atmosphere and have all the tools to play. This metaphor is appropriate because the fundamentals of a championship caliber team are set in training camp, the pre-season, and the everyday playing of the game. How can a minyan recalibrate and make the need adjustments to reach their goals?