{"id":141,"date":"2006-09-27T15:58:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-27T15:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/whats-behind-fasting-anyway.html"},"modified":"2006-09-27T15:58:00","modified_gmt":"2006-09-27T15:58:00","slug":"whats-behind-fasting-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/whats-behind-fasting-anyway.html","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s Behind Fasting, Anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s fascinating to see the wide range of intense emotions that fasting has generated on Virtual Talmud, from gratitude and appreciation to distaste, even disgust.<\/p>\n<p>I think one of the reasons we may have such strong feelings on the subject is that fasting stands outside of much of our day-to-day experience of Judaism, with its emphasis on thankfulness, divine service, celebration, and giving back to the world.  Fasting draws on another facet of Judaism, one that is generally less pronounced\u2013that of penance.<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/fast-food-for-thought.html\">Rabbi Grossman reminds us<\/a>, the Torah tells us that on Yom Kippur we are to \u201cafflict our souls\u201d as a part of the way we make atonement.  We don\u2019t bathe, we don\u2019t eat, we don\u2019t drink, we abstain from sexual intimacy.  It can feel foreign, like someone practicing self-flagellation to cleanse himself or herself of sinfulness which, in a way, it is.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it\u2019s our ambivalence about fasting and other forms of penance that we recognize when we wish fasters a \u2018<em>tzom kal<\/em>\u2019\u2013an easy fast.  If the purpose is to afflict our souls, wouldn\u2019t an easy fast sort of defeat the point?  It\u2019s clear that we fast for a variety of reasons, and some find it more meaningful than others.  But I think the different philosophical bases for fasting may be part of why this practice is harder to get behind emotionally than many others in Jewish life.<\/p>\n<p>May we all have an easy\u2013and meaningful\u2013fast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s fascinating to see the wide range of intense emotions that fasting has generated on Virtual Talmud, from gratitude and appreciation to distaste, even disgust. I think one of the reasons we may have such strong feelings on the subject is that fasting stands outside of much of our day-to-day experience of Judaism, with its&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What&#039;s Behind Fasting, Anyway? - Virtual Talmud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/whats-behind-fasting-anyway.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What&#039;s Behind Fasting, Anyway? - Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s fascinating to see the wide range of intense emotions that fasting has generated on Virtual Talmud, from gratitude and appreciation to distaste, even disgust. I think one of the reasons we may have such strong feelings on the subject is that fasting stands outside of much of our day-to-day experience of Judaism, with its&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/whats-behind-fasting-anyway.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-09-27T15:58:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rabbi Joshua Waxman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What's Behind Fasting, Anyway? - Virtual Talmud","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/whats-behind-fasting-anyway.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What's Behind Fasting, Anyway? - Virtual Talmud","og_description":"It\u2019s fascinating to see the wide range of intense emotions that fasting has generated on Virtual Talmud, from gratitude and appreciation to distaste, even disgust. I think one of the reasons we may have such strong feelings on the subject is that fasting stands outside of much of our day-to-day experience of Judaism, with its&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/whats-behind-fasting-anyway.html","og_site_name":"Virtual Talmud","article_published_time":"2006-09-27T15:58:00+00:00","author":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/whats-behind-fasting-anyway.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/whats-behind-fasting-anyway.html","name":"What's Behind Fasting, Anyway? - Virtual Talmud","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-09-27T15:58:00+00:00","dateModified":"2006-09-27T15:58:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/b2c907457be70b05b78f556cde42041f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/whats-behind-fasting-anyway.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/whats-behind-fasting-anyway.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/09\/whats-behind-fasting-anyway.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What&#8217;s Behind Fasting, Anyway?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/","name":"Virtual Talmud","description":"Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, where politics and pop culture meet 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/b2c907457be70b05b78f556cde42041f","name":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6ea\/6eaad0ba16ec89046c9580c3b08d2e4cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6ea\/6eaad0ba16ec89046c9580c3b08d2e4cx96.jpg","caption":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/author\/jwaxman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}