davka | דוקא | despite everything

[cross post­ed at the Jew and the Car­rot and at the Reli­gious Action Cen­ter of Reform Judaism].

The prophet Isaiah asks (58:6–7):

Is not this the fast that I have cho­sen? to loose the fet­ters of wicked­ness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal your bread to the hun­gry, and that you bring the poor that are cast out to your house? when you see the naked, that you cov­er them, and that you hide not your­self from your own flesh?

If we are to “loose the fet­ters of wicked­ness”, what might our fast­ing have to do with Darfur?

To date, of the 1,686 pub­lished posts, only a dozen arti­cles on the jCar­rot men­tion “fast­ing”. Indeed, per­haps not sur­pris­ing­ly most of the arti­cles on the jCar­rot deal with eat­ing more than not eat­ing. Nonethe­less, not-eat­ing is a very Jew­ish way of approach­ing food. There are a vari­ety of expla­na­tions that anthro­pol­o­gists and oth­ers offer for fast­ing. Per­haps the most accept­ed in clas­sic Jew­ish cir­cles is from Tal­mud Bavli Bera­chot 17a where fast­ing is com­pared to sac­ri­fice: an offer­ing up of our own blood and fat. Few of us remem­ber our par­ents telling us to fin­ish all the food on our plates because “chil­dren in Europe are starv­ing.” This is parental advice from anoth­er gen­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, chil­dren all over the world con­tin­ue to starve. Our fin­ish­ing every car­rot and pea on our plates won’t cause them not to starve, but there are ways that we can use our food to call atten­tion to their plight. So, it is a bit sad that no more than 4 arti­cles on the jCar­rot men­tion Dar­fur (one of which encour­ages sup­port­ing the Jew­ish World Watch Solar Project to pro­tect and empow­er the women of Darfur).

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