Yom Kippur fasting always made me feel like such a grown up. It seemed to carry with it various privileges: a day off school while non-Jewish friends sat through double geography, permission to be grouchy while my little sisters were just urged to leave me be, a sense of mature knowledge and superiority while those in the lead-ups to their b-mitzvahs were shepherded off to the kids’ service. At the age of 13, you are straining against the narrow walls of childhood and searching for moments of self-possession, for control and independence. So few things give you those feelings; in so many ways, you are living the life you have always lived. To be an adult in the eyes of Judaism, and to do what an adult does, was utterly exhilarating.
Over just a few years, the time around the holiday became a period with very clear routines. My family’s Erev Yom Kippur dinner was, to my memory, always spaghetti bolognaise. Having bowl after bowl was simply pragmatic. Given I pretty much only attend synagogue on High Holidays, being there in the evening always felt to be a distinct feature of the Yom Kippur service trilogy. I would sit, uncomfortably full and uncomfortably aware of how quickly I would be feeling quite the opposite. Getting home meant getting to bed, and committing to sleeping through as many of the next 25 hours as I could.
Waking up in the morning with what felt like a whole day to go was bearable, if you could break the whole day into less-whole chunks. In all honesty, a service on an empty stomach didn’t feel significantly worse than a service at all. Boredom eclipsed hunger. It was the last few hours that really dragged — without the familiarity of lunch to transition morning into afternoon, the middle of the day felt endless. It was waiting for more waiting.
The drive to Ne’ilah was laced with anticipation. Food sat at the back of the school hall that doubled as our synagogue, and we all pretended not to spend the whole service thinking about it. Eventually, after speeding through prayers as though we could make the sun set sooner, the congregation reached a kind of fever pitch. We piled our paper plates high with other people’s favorite foods, blinded by a frenzied urgency that left us with dinners made up of various things we didn’t really like. The first bite was invariably disappointing, but it didn’t matter. In the communal exhaustion, there was euphoria. Ritual was so unifying. Suffering was so unifying. To do this once a year, together, was so unifying.
The moment of realizing that this ritual was no longer a rarity for me was a sobering one. In the lead up to my anorexia diagnosis, I swung wildly between denial and fleeting lucidity. But even the lucidity felt a bit out of touch — the descent into an eating disorder had involved such consistent, surreptitious goal-post moving that my grasp on normalcy felt far from strong. Yom Kippur, however, existed in complete objectivity. At one point, not eating for 25 hours was something I did — publicly, complainingly, loudly — once a year. At another, it wasn’t.
Looking back, I think there was always something dangerous about the way I approached Yom Kippur. While I could have talked your ear off about how the point of the day is atonement, and the point of not eating is to remove distractions, but there’s no point if all it does is make you conscious of how hungry you are and therefore pretty unable to atone, I never would have forsaken my own fasting. I derived too much satisfaction from it, and too much pride. It was hard, and I was doing it, and that made me virtuous.
Fasting cannot be a part of my recovery. This is something that I am in the process of making peace with. Parts of me feel guilty, and parts of me feel sad, and parts of me feel protective. Realistically, I don’t think I’ll ever be in a place where extended periods without food – particularly when that is being coded as something that makes you good – could be the right thing for me. There is nothing holy about harming myself. In rebuilding my brain and body, I am all too aware of how gruelling the uphill climb is, and how slippery the slope down is. For me, the risk just isn’t worth it.
For a long time, Yom Kippur was synonymous with fasting for me, as it is for many Jewish people. But I am coming to the understanding that it doesn’t have to be, and that while I am not allowed to Yom Kippur (as a verb!) in the ways I have historically, I can redefine what Yom Kippuring means to me. It remains a day that I want to mark, and rituals remain important to me.
Over the last couple of years, I have established a new tradition. My family gets back from the service, and we have a massive meal. To me, this feels like a bit of a “fuck you” to anorexia. Leviticus says that Yom Kippur is about self-denial. I say I am no longer interested in that. I say that to confine myself, and to limit my sustenance like that, is no moral or noble thing. For me, the meaning of Yom Kippur does not reside in achieving closeness to or forgiveness from God. It resides in culture, and the recognition of the passage of time, and an acknowledgement that my choices about how to engage with Judaism are mine alone, and that whatever I choose, I am doing it right. It’s an appreciation of Yom Kippur not just as what it means to me as a Jewish person, but as what it means to me as exactly who I am.
I get to define my important days, and with this one, what was once about restriction is now about plenty.