Hunger on Yom Kippur

What kind of Jew am I?

I lie on the bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling fan. It was time to contemplate. First: hunger. The word itself had taken on a new form. Hunger, hunger, hunger, hunger, hunger. When you say a word so many times that it loses all meaning, that’s where I was. Sometimes, when I’m sick with a nasty cold or flu, there will be a moment when I’ll feel so confronted by my own mortality that I’m almost consumed by it; The hunger thing was like that in a way. I brushed up against the true meaning of hunger, and it scared the shit out of me.

It was around 2:00 pm on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, and I had been fasting for about 19 hours. My guts were a jumble. I thought about a sweating pint glass of ice water like I was Lawrence of Arabia. I flipped to a video of Kol Nidre on YouTube to further punctuate the suffering. When it comes to songs that perfectly telegraph sorrow and regret, Kol Nidre is right up there with Nirvana’s All Apologies.

 This was the first (and spoiler: last) time I’d ever attempted to fast for Yom Kippur. I felt obligated. I was keenly aware of the fact that I had been enjoying every other Jewish holiday and then just sort of ignoring what was arguably the most important one. No, this year, I was going to fast and atone and receive whatever messages the universe wanted to share with me for my trouble.

The message I understood was this: torture yourself for one full day, and we’ll call it even for all the shitty things you did this year. 

At no time in the Jewish year do I feel like more of a fraud than on Yom Kippur. I don’t go to shul. I don’t fast. In fact, the only thing I have in common with observant Jews on Yom Kippur is that I feel vaguely uneasy and overwhelmingly guilty for 25 straight hours. (By contrast, around Purim I feel Peak Jew: I pinch the edges of my hamantaschen with undeserved satisfaction as I remind everyone within earshot that it’s a mitzvah to drink alcohol on this particular holiday.)

From about middle school on, I knew I was Jewish.* That sounds like the way some people might say they knew they were gay or into pandas, but for me, when we started reading Night and studying the holocaust as 6th graders (In retrospect, as the parent of a 6th grader: Wow. Strong choices, Roanoke City Schools.), I felt a stirring in my neshama that was only quieted when I was, over 20 years later, finally given a mikveh and a Hebrew name (Batya Ariella, so pretty, right?!). 

But on Yom Kippur, I will always be, as Walter Sobcheck would say, out of my element. I feel confronted by the idea that mine is just a Choose-Your-Own Judaism, pieced together from PJ Library, pop culture, and a little JewBu (Jewish Buddhism) for good measure. That kind of patchwork ethos might be alright for born-again Christians, but Jews have real rules, and on Yom Kippur, I realize how completely I am breaking them. 

There are no pathways to atonement mapped out in me, hard-wired through a lifetime of practice. There are no Bubbes I can call and ask to show me how, and I don’t know, honestly, if I would want to learn the way. Relying as it does on creating discomfort in those who observe it, Yom Kippur is at complete odds with what is firmly the guiding principle of my life—comfort. When I feel discomfort (not inconvenience, not displeasure, but true discomfort), I turn course, and Yom Kippur is built on feeling just that.

blissfully unaware of yom kippur

That day, I took the kids for ice cream (I had to run an errand that took me to the ice cream shop, lest you think I’m a complete masochist.) and sat in the Northside ice cream parlor as the sweet scent of sprinkles assaulted my nose. On the way home, there was a torrential rain storm. On my best day, I don’t know how to get home from Northside without GPS, but on a day like this one, I was lost before I ever even left the house. Winding back through narrow one-way streets, I noticed a twitching mass in the middle of the road up ahead—a cat, or what was left of it, freshly hit, still sizzling and now flipping its body, a hideous accordion, a wet, angry embodiment of of the word thrashing. It found no peace as my Toyota Sienna crept past it, respectfully, at a funereal pace, its three passengers transfixed. 

I made it home, altered but intact. By the time it was sundown, I was too weak to even consider eating, let alone relish it the way I thought I would. Food sounded repulsive. I started with little sips of water. How do Jews go from this void of nothingness to bagels, I wondered. Centuries of practice, was the smartass answer that presented itself to me. But as I nibbled on a slice of cucumber that was supposed to be a garnish but ended up being the whole meal, I realized I would never have enough practice in my lifetime, and I probably wouldn’t want it if I had.

xox,

SG

*My father was Jewish. He went to shul and Hebrew school weekly as a kid. But by the time I was born, he’d set it all down except for a Star of David on a gold chain that I occasionally caught a glimpse of under his shirt. My mom was Christian, and she took me to a handful of churches and even had me baptized at least twice (for good measure??). Thus began a lifetime of feeling like I wasn’t Jewish enough, a quality that I learned as an adult is practically universal.