The Yom Kippur Fast for Men
In a few moments, we will begin to fast.
My Brothers, there is something strangely familiar about this for us.
We know how to go without.
We know how to push through hunger, exhaustion, grief, disappointment, fear. We know how to keep working when something inside us is asking to stop. We know how to tell ourselves we are fine when we are not.
So before this fast begins, we should be clear:
Yom Kippur is not asking us to prove how tough we are.
God does not need twenty-five hours of our suffering.
Isaiah makes that brutally clear. He looks at people fasting, bowing their heads, afflicting themselves, and asks: “Is this the fast I desire?”
His answer is no.
The fast God desires loosens the bonds of wickedness, breaks the yoke, feeds the hungry, clothes the vulnerable, and refuses to hide from another human being.
If our hunger ends with ourselves, we have missed the point.
The emptiness in our stomach is supposed to teach us something about the emptiness in the world.
And perhaps something about the emptiness inside us.
There is physical poverty. There is also poverty of the soul and spirit.
Men starving for friendship who will not call a friend.
Men starving for affection who have forgotten how to ask for it.
Men desperate to hear, “I’m proud of you.”
Men desperate to say, “I’m sorry.”
Men carrying grief beneath anger, fear beneath control, loneliness beneath independence.
We can spend an entire year feeding our bodies while starving our souls.
And then Yom Kippur arrives and says:
Stop. Put the food down. Put the distractions down. Put the armor down.
Notice your hunger. And ask: What else am I hungry for?
Maybe it is forgiveness. Maybe friendship. Maybe purpose.
Maybe a better relationship with your children. Maybe God.
Maybe simply the chance to be known without having to perform strength.
By tomorrow afternoon, our bodies will remind us of a truth many men spend years resisting:
We are not self-contained. We need food. We need water. We need other people.
We need mercy. We need love. We need forgiveness.
That is not weakness. That is being human.
And Isaiah’s challenge is that once we remember our own need, we are no longer permitted to ignore the needs of others.
If you know hunger, feed someone. If you know loneliness, call someone.
If you know grief, sit beside someone who is grieving.
If you know what it is to carry too much alone, help another man put something down.
Tomorrow, when your head hurts and your mouth is dry, do not only ask:
When can I eat? Ask:
What is this hunger trying to teach me? What have I been starving in myself?
Whose hunger have I failed to notice? Where have I mistaken numbness for strength?
And where might my strength become shelter for someone else?
The goal is not to survive the fast. The goal is to be changed by it.
So may we not conquer our hunger. May we listen to it.
May something hardened in us soften. May something hidden come into the light.
And when the fast ends, may we not simply return to being the men we were before it began.
May we become men who notice hunger.
In ourselves. In each other. And in the world.
G’mar chatimah tovah.
