Day 228: Day of Atonement

SoBe Journal:

Breakfast

1 small slice pound cake,
1 dixie cup orange juice

tuna salad
egg salad
6 potatoes (fried in schmaltz)
1 dab of whitefish
cheddar cheese

2 rugaleach
1 small slice of chocolate bobka

Today was sort of different from every other fast that I've done on Yom Kippur. Today, I noticed that not eating was not the problem. I was not hungry. I did not want for food. I was a bit light-headed from not eating; possibly from not having any caffeine. But I was not hungry. My usual 3pm headache came and went; I did not medicate for it. It was an because I thought I wasn't going to get a chance to go to temple (Schul) as I try to do every year for a few hours. At the last minute though, I decided that Ruby and I would join Mag & Em in the trip in the rain to NYC and we arrived in time for family services there. My brother-in-law and I decided to stay at the temple, so we were there until the service ended (7pm).

If you're not Jewish, and you've never stayed until the bitter end of a Yom Kippur service, then you haven't fully experienced the pain of standing for 30 minutes when you haven't eaten for 25 hours; for being surrounded by people with 'yom kippur breath'; by feeling that you might keel over because the prayer book you're holding weighs the same as a building. You really go to do a different place. It's amazing how the Rabbi, etc. at the pulpit can keep going. It's like watching a grueling sports event. They just come up with the goods.