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I don’t mean to sound heretical, but if given my druthers, I would rather Jews observe the seven days of Sukkot than the 25 hours of Yom Kippur. (Of course, I would prefer they do both, but this is one of those hypothetical conundrums.) It is more than an issue of the seven-to-one-day ratio. Yom…

It’s 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…

Rabbi Grossman seems to fast on Yom Kippur for reasons ranging from something to do with snapping at her son to not being in the Holocaust. This is all very nice. I, too, don’t like snapping at children. And boy, am I happy I am not in an Auschwitz gas chamber this September. But what,…

For Rabbi Stern, fasting on Yom Kippur is sociological and familial. He does it because the people around him are doing it. That may be enough of a reason for him, but it is certainly not for me. I fast because the Torah tells us to afflict ourselves on Yom Kippur and as far back…
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