I don’t know if you had ever been fasting,The way I know you and how you react to religions I have the feeling you had never been fasting in your life. So let me tell you how it is, not eat nor drink for a whole day, 24 hours.
First of all, the only day I fast as a Jew in the whole year is Atonement day. Because it is a holy day you have to keep it like Sabbath: No electricity, No fire, No telephone, No cars. So your main opponent is not the thirsty nor the hungry feelings, it is the boring.
The night is easy. Most of the times we used to walk around the neighborhood and find people we haven’t seen for a long time. Those days are over, and that time we found two more people, except me and my brother.
You go to sleep as late as you can, so you will wake up as late as can (the religious need to wake up to pry, but we don’t). Somehow it never really worked for me.
Until now it was a piece of cake. Now starts the time that separates the men from the children. The morning – The horrible taste in the mouth and nothing to pass it – not water, not coffee and not tea. That is the time the kids break down.
The tongue become white – that’s how Ima tests us. If you had a small sip of water it won’t be white and you cheated…
The time moves so slow and each find something to do. Most of us read, but some of us has special activities – Like Ima that says it’s the best time to arrange the medical box, because it’s the only thing that doesn’t make her hungry.
Sometimes we play card or monopoly, just to find out that someone is cheating. And when the time is late enough we start move to Nabi Samuel, the old mosque that sets above our. We look from there on Jerusalem and on the territories north to it that the fence now cuts into sections.
We start to go down on the stiff downhill road, counting starts and hope that the people will leave the synagogues on their way home so we can break our fast when we got home.
But we have our tradition of the way we break the fast: With a shoot of Cinzano. Nowadays when we grew up and realized we can drink better things we started to vary -Irish Cream, Bad Apffel and Smirnoff.
Another fasting is over, up to next year. In which we hope to be in our new house in Har Hadar…
