Yesterday was Yom Kippur. The Jewish day of ‘atonement’. Judgment Day, in Terminator speak. The day when all good jews, and numerous pretty bad ones, don’t eat for 25 hours. Our ‘days’ are different. Better. Longer. More jewish. Hungrier.

And the standard understanding of both the day and the fast is that you starve (like we in the West cannot afford a few lost calories in the course of an average McDonalds/Michelin-starred week?) for a day as a ‘punishment for those sins committed in the preceding year. Sort of a ‘short sharp pain’ leaving the page blank to act like a total scumbag next year, and still hold your season ticket for heaven when its all done and dusted. Yet that’s completely wrong. That’s a particularly Christian type interpretation. No disrespect to Christians. They’ll know when I’m disrespecting them.

But their world is one of ‘forgive me, Father, for I have sinned’, and three Hail Marys later (not in the American Football sense, unless the sinner happens to be a quarterback) abolution is granted, you’re back on track for that heavenly highway. Even if you stole a car, raped a dog and murdered your mother. The Chrisitian God is very fogiving. You sin, you confess, you’re forgiven.

Our God is well hard. And ‘atoning’ is more subtle.

Yom Kippur is not the ‘most important day of the jewish year’, despite the fact that its the only day when most of us are actually prepared to take the day off work. The sabbath is ‘protected’ by its own personal commandment. Observe the seventh day to keep it holy. And although that was officially removed by secular society after a petition to the Pope by Ikea, The Sabbath day is well holy. But Yom Kippur is different. The idea is not to ‘suffer’ a day’s starvation to repent, to be punished for sins. No. Its about taking yourself onto such a spiritual plane that you’re almost detatched from your own body, which thus needs not to eat, drink, wash or involve in animalistic acts, however much you want to. You enter such a spiritual place that you simply don’t require feeding. And whilst there, you think how you’re going to improve as a person for the next year. And it can be subtle. We, as a religion, never deal in the concept of ‘perfection’, in a truly ‘Barcelona in their day’ or Brazil 1970 kind of way. We know that ‘man is flawed’, woman too, though she can use Botox. And so sinning is allowed. Thank God. Because we’re humans and we fuck up. Some of us much much more than others. You know who you are.

So you pray on Yom Kippur. And you reach a plane akin to that of angels, almost heavenly, and from there, you find your better person. Or, for me and the Legend, you find out what is exactly wrong with Spurs back four, until the rabbi tells you to stop talking whilst others are busy on a self-improvement mission.

So today, having fasted, having cleansed, having discussed at great length the failings of our football team; I feel better. Lighter. Holier. And a bit sick from the traditional ‘break-fast’ or speed-eating competition that marks that day’s end.

Happy sabbath day for those of that persuasion.

A xxxx