Why Fast on Yom Kippur?

In setting forth the rules of Yom Kippur, the Torah says nothing about refraining from food or drink, only commanding: “You shall afflict yourselves.” Examining talmudic passages in which the rabbis determine that the phrase in fact refers to fasting, Julian Sinclair finds clear hints at the purposes of the practice:

[After arguing over the exact way “to afflict” is to be interpreted as meaning “to fast”], Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Assi share a series of reflections about what happens when desire and fantasy slip out of control and restraints break down: you start to view anyone else’s property as legitimately yours, says Rabbi Ami; you see all the forbidden sexual relationships as fair game, claims Rabbi Assi.

This series of observations ends with a pair of comments about the snake in the Garden of Eden who is cursed that “its bread shall be the dust.” Rabbi Ami interprets: “even if it eats all the delicacies of the world, they taste [to the snake] like dust;” Rabbi Assi says, “even if it eats all the delicacies in the world, it isn’t satisfied until it eats dust.” . . .

I suggest that the rabbis interpret the snake, emblem of untamed desire in Genesis, as an image of addiction. One who surrenders to an insatiable lust for the food, drink, or substance that he craves is fated to a jaded state of sensuous degradation where everything tastes of that one thing or where only that one thing satisfies. . . .

On Yom Kippur, the Talmud is teaching, we withdraw from engagement in the world of eating, drinking, and bodily pleasure. This offers a chance to release ourselves from the thoughts, fantasies, and desires that can so preoccupy us, and rebalance our relationship to eating.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Judaism, Religion & Holidays, Talmud, Yom Kippur

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society