I have to admit that I’m pretty surprised that none of the contributors at Jew and the Carrot has mentioned anything about shiva asar b’Tammuz, or the 17^th of Tammuz, a fast day that fell this year on July 9^th. I don’t mean to wag my finger – I’m not keeping the fast days either – nor compete with Rabbi Mark Hurvitz’s elegant post regarding fasting as a mode of consciousness-raising about Darfur. But I do think it’s worth contemplating what it means, as a Jew, to refrain from food. Frankly, the topic of fasting should be a part of our collective conversation, in the aftermath of the AgriProcessors and Rubashkins fiasco, of what it means to be kosher.

The whole point of kashrut, as I recall — aside from driving ourselves and our loved ones mad — is that it teaches us to be thoughtful. In other words, to think before putting just anything in our mouths. To my mind, other aspects of Judaism, like wearing a kippah or tzitzit, or living in a home with mezuzot, do much the same; they encourage us, if only by virtue of reminding us that God is watching, to think twice before committing a negative act by word or deed.

Fasting, you could argue, is similar. It reminds us of the bounty we have, which we so often take for granted, and promotes mindful eating once the fast is over. But we’re smart people. And I have to say that I think there must be a better way.

You could ask why bother fixing what ain’t broke. But the reasons are many. For one, there is the surfeit of disordered eating among adolescent women, with Jews being no exception. My high school was pretty badly afflicted, and I always wondered whether it were a  coincidence that the first outposts of Tasti-D-Lite were located just blocks away. (Girls used to go there for “lunch.” They broke even on rent, supplies, and wages from the trips there from the girls in my class alone. ) Second, given that it is one of the only mitzvot universally observed (that is, on Yom Kippur), the concept of fasting has lost much of its meaning, because for some, it is the only mode of observance, or identification with Judaism, still practiced. Third, there is so much hunger in the world — in Darfur, of course, and the rest of the developing world, but in our own communities, too — that it seems a chillul Hashem to perpetuate.

What if, instead of fasting on a single day, we devoted the period of the Nine Days or the Aseret Yemei Teshuva to donating half of our normal food intake to the hungry (literally, by clearing out our pantries, or symbolically, through charitable donations)? Or if we devoted those same periods to ensuring that we said the brachas before eating, or the Birkat Ha’Mazon, if we did not do so normally, and with even more kavanah if those prayers were part of our practice? I don’t know; I’m no halachic expert. But I think that the concept of fasting has become so perverted, within our own culture and as a result of Western mores, that it’s time that we did better.