To help us all understand better, they have asked Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, a good friend of JFN, to describe it to you:

"A Talmudic teaching suggests a special type of donation prior to fast days such as Yom Kippur. It says:‘The merit of fasting is the charity [dispensed]’ (Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 6b)."

Many people find the Yom Kippur fast very difficult… some people claim that they feel so hungry during the course of the day that they find it difficult to focus on praying.

If the pangs of hunger can be so painful, then let something good emerge from them: let these pangs remind us that there are people who feel such hunger hundreds of days during the year. The sixteenth century Maharsha (Rabbi Solomon Elazar Eideles) notes that this Talmudic passage served as the basis for an old Jewish custom: prior to a fast, people would give away as charity the amount of money they would be saving on food that day.

Unfortunately, this custom is quite unknown among many modern Jews, and could be revived. Before Yom Kippur this year, figure out how much your family spends weekly on food, divide the sum by seven, then send that amount to a charity that feeds the hungry. Indeed, in the Haftorah (prophetic reading) read on Yom Kippur, Isaiah cites God as declaring: "This is the fast I desire… to share your bread with the hungry."

On Yom Kippur, we are commanded not to eat, but we can learn from the hunger we feel on this very special day. We can allow it help us do for others what we would otherwise do for ourselves.

So whether you fast on Yom Kippur or not, we hope that you will help us take something old and make it new again — help us recreate this ancient and meaningful tradition. Please send your donation to a local charity of your choice that is dedicated to feeding the hungry.

If you don’t know of a local charity, you can send your check to:

Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger 1990 South Bundy Drive Suite 260 Los Angeles,CA 90025-5232 mazonmail@mazon.org