A case in point in this year. Ramadan begins today and lasts through the 29th, and while the days won’t be as long as they will be, say, next year, or the year after that, we are definitely talking about going well over 12 hours without sustenance—for 30 straight days!

In an ecumenical spirit, here is some Yom Kippur fasting advice that our Muslim friends may find helpful (caffeine suppositories optional).

Related: Fast Food [Tablet Magazine]

• In addition to the usual Shabbat restrictions on work, there is “no eating, drinking, washing, perfuming, sex, or fancy shoes.”

• On Friday night, Psalms 92 (the Shabbat Psalm) and 93 are added to the Yom Kippur service.

• During all of the standing prayers (the Amidot), there are Shabbat-specific additions.

• “Avenu Malkenu,” which you would normally sing throughout Yom Kippur, is not sung until the final service, Neilah, “since by then Shabbat is pretty much over.”

Adds Rabbi Nevins, “Obviously we’ll miss the joy of Shabbat, but most people feel the purifying power of this day as its own reward. Also, since most of our festivals are falling out adjacent to Shabbat this year, yielding three-day holidays (which can feel like too much of a good thing), it is nice to have one festival overlap with Shabbat.”

I don’t know about the too-much-of-a-good-thing part, but it does feel appropriate to have Yom Kippur on Shabbat.

Finally, if you need any advice on how to have the proverbial “easy fast,” here are my suggestions (caffeine suppositories optional). For further questions, do consult Tablet Magazine’s Yom Kippur FAQ.

Related: Fast Food [Tablet Magazine]

I have to admit that the jetlag this time was way beyond physical and made the return to Israel especially difficult. After three weeks in Urbana, Illinois, with my wife and son, the American Midwest had penetrated deep into our bones through the grease in the food, the bagel-shaped billboards, and the ubiquitous supermarket specials (otherwise it’s hard to explain why Lev, my five-year-old, insists on presenting himself as “only $4.99”).

My wife’s jetlag manifests itself in the new daily routine she developed in consultation with the unusually sticky menu of the Urbana IHOP. Back in Tel Aviv, she continues to begin her morning with pancakes and strawberries, goes on to a lunch of French toast slathered in butter, and rolls up to a dinner of Nutella crepes topped with whipped cream and a side of onion rings. If she lumbers in at this rate, very soon Lev and I will be able to leave our apartment and go to live inside her.

My son’s tough return to Tel Aviv has mostly taken the form of heartbreaking monologues about “our home in Urbana.” He’s constantly telling anyone who will listen how much he misses the safe we had in our hotel room and how much he wants to go back to the LL floor, “my favorite floor in the whole world,” as he loves to say in a pathos-filled voice. LL was where he was free any hour of the day to bowl and to choose from an array of alluring snacks and neon-colored energy drinks on display in the glittering, greedy vending machines.

And I, like the rest of my battered family, also got hit square in the stomach. My addiction was to doughnuts. Surprisingly, I discovered that the combination of the sugar high, the doughy softness, and the unsaturated-fat poisoning my body caused psychedelic hallucinations. After three doughnuts, the sky turned purple, and after five, I believed that the shanah tova card I got from the American Embassy was actually a three-dimensional hologram of a huge doughnut out of which Chelsea Clinton leapt, topless.

And burdened by all that baggage, we’re supposed to deal with Yom Kippur. I don’t want to complain, but you have to admit that diving into that fast while a 3-D hallucination of Chelsea Clinton jumping out of a huge sugar-coated confection rolls around my brain is a bit Job-like. Except that your faithful servant, unlike that cursed biblical figure, didn’t just sit on his backside and scratch himself, but decided while still in Urbana to prepare for resisting culinary temptation on the coming Day of Atonement. At night, when my sweet family was sound asleep and dreaming of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I was busy recording 60 straight minutes of fast-food commercials in our hotel room. The kind of ads where the announcer, with the jaded tone of someone who’s already seen and swallowed everything, promises you a 4-foot-long sandwich and a gallon bottle of Coke for under five dollars (maybe that’s where my son got it) or a free vat of fries with every sizzling 9-pound steak topped with bubbling cheese. And so, for the entire hour of my recording, the screen is filled with horrifying shots: a frenzied dolly zoom of a monster-sized hamburger bleeding ketchup; a giant pizza spinning wildly around your head, threatening to destroy the world with an artillery shelling of extra spicy pepperoni; and a waffle the size of the U.S. national debt sinking slowly into an endless swamp of chocolate chip ice cream in a calorie-rich homage to the Titanic.

Since we’ve been back in Tel Aviv, that disk has been sitting innocently in the inner pocket of my suitcase. And when the right moment comes, exactly one hour before the fast begins this evening, I’ll innocently invite my nuclear family into the living room, shove the doomsday disc into the kishkes of the DVD, and make us all watch it straight through to the end, extra-crunchy, jalapeno-coated Buffalo wings commercial included, no exemptions or bathroom breaks. And if that disgusting commercial diet fails to keep us food free for the next 24 hours, I’ll have no choice but to submissively accept any flood God sends my way. Although if it turns out that we have a say in the matter, my wife would strongly prefer a maple syrup one.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

• Some are worried that Iran’s soon-to-be-operational Bushehr nucler reactor could become, due to the opacity and haste with which it was built, a second Chernobyl. [LAT]

• The Bronx synagogue bomb plot trial was delayed as the judge considers how to deal with one defendant whose apparent mental illness has caused him to be unresponsive. [NYT]

• Jorge Puello, the maybe-leader of the Dominican Republic’s Jewish community, was extradited to the United States to face child-trafficking charges. [AP/Failed Messiah]

• A Saudi diplomat requested asylum in the U.S. (he works at the L.A. consulate) since he received death threats after revealing that he is gay and good friends with a Jewish Israeli woman. [NYT]

• Start drinking less coffee today! (Yeah, right.) [JPost]

There’s nothing like a good countdown to get ready for Tisha B’Av, the day we grieve the destruction of the Temple. To get in a mournful mood, the three weeks prior to Tisha B’Av—known as Bein Ha’Metzarim, or the period between the straits—are marked by a series of fasts and abstinences designed to induce somber reflection. The timing isn’t random: A fast begins on Shiv’ah Asar B’Tammuz, the 17th of Tammuz, the day the walls of the Second Temple were breached by the Romans in 70 C.E. Also, as the 17th of Tammuz occurs exactly 40 days after Shavuot, tradition suggests that it was on this day that Moses descended from Mount Sinai, saw the Golden Calf, and smashed the tablets. While customs vary, it is common to observe the restrictions of the period more stringently the nearer one gets to Tisha B’Av. The final nine days preceding Tisha B’Av are the period of greatest observance.

ANY DOS AND DON’TS?

The three weeks begin with Shiv’ah Asar B’Tammuz, a minor fast day which begins at dawn and ends shortly after dusk. (By contrast, the Tisha B’Av fast day lasts from sundown to sundown.) Throughout the three-week period that follows, Jews refrain from holding weddings and bar mitzvahs, as well as from having other public celebrations, and from buying new clothes. It is also prohibited to play or listen to music, or to get a haircut.

During the nine final days, many Jews refrain from eating meat or poultry, drinking wine, taking hot baths, or wearing freshly laundered clothes. This corresponds neatly with the spirit of the Mishneh, which commands, “From the beginning of Av, happiness is decreased.”

ANYTHING GOOD TO READ?

Special haftarot are chanted during each of the three weeks. Known as the “three of affliction,” these portions from the Hebrew prophets do not correspond to the weekly Torah portions, but instead contain the prophecies of Jeremiah and Isaiah warning of the fall of Jerusalem.

FIVE MORE THINGS YOU CAN DO:

• Take a textual tour of the Temple.
• Relive Moses’ smashing of the tablets.
• Enjoy a healthy diet with some vegetarian recipes.
• Get serious with the prophet Jeremiah.
• Ponder the state of modern-day Jerusalem.

Could Vioxx Cousin Prevent Yom Kippur Headache? [Reuters/Vos Iz Neias?]

We Jews should’ve known this day was no good when, on it, Moses’s spies came from the Promised Land with reports of a terrible place littered with walled fortresses and roamed by angry giants. Moses ordered his doubting emissaries killed, but the curse of Tisha B’av lived on: the First Temple was destroyed on this day in 586 BCE. The Second Temple suffered the same fate exactly 656 years later, in 70 CE. Sixty-five years after that, in 135 CE, the Bar Kokhba revolt failed, its leader was killed, and its flagship city, Betar, was destroyed. Then, one year later, Jerusalem itself was burned, the Temple area plowed, and the fate of the Jews sealed for millennia. As if further insult was needed, in 1492, King Ferdinand of Spain signed the Alhambra Decree, setting Tisha B’Av as the deadline for all of Spain’s Jews to leave for good.

Coming at the end of the Three Weeks of mourning, which began with the 17th of Tammuz, Tisha B’Av signifies the conclusion of the period known as Bein Hameitzarim, or between the straits, a time of reflection and abstinence from pleasure.

ANY BAD GUYS?

In abundance: All of Moses’s cowardly and faithless spies, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, who said that the land was good; Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian, besieger of Jerusalem and destroyer of the First Temple; Titus, Rome’s fearful officer who set flames to the Second Temple; and, last but not least, Ferdinand “The Catholic” of Aragon.

WHAT DO WE EAT?

Nothing. But unlike Yom Kippur, most rabbis tend to be a bit more lenient about fasting, making exceptions not only for those whose lives are seriously at risk but also for the ill and the generally unwell.

ANY DOS AND DON’TS?

Don’ts, mainly. Anything that gives us pleasure is prohibited, which rules out, among other things, bathing, wearing leather shoes, and carnal pursuits. If you thought maybe you’d replace the day’s heavy petting with Torah study—think again. Reading our Book of Books is considered a supreme joy and is therefore forbidden on Tisha B’Av. So is laying tefillin, as phylacteries are referred to as pe’er, or glory, and this is a decidedly inglorious day for the Jews.

ANYTHING GOOD TO READ?

We’re compensated for the day’s prohibitions with two splendid literary masterpieces: the Book of Eicha (Lamentations), which is read in the evening, and the Kinnot, poems of lamentation, in the morning. Taken together, these two are a powerful lesson in mourning. Eicha, while lyrically describing the ruin of Jerusalem, also speaks of a hopeful future, a time when the children of God, chastised, will learn their lessons and return to their former glory. The Kinnot, a vast and changing collection of works written through the centuries, strikes very much the same tone. The most famous author to work in the form was Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, who forever changed the genre’s focus from weeping over the tragedies of the past to looking expectantly at a brighter future. Be sad, these texts tell us, but not for long.

FIVE MORE THINGS YOU CAN DO:

• Secretly rejoice with this uplifting story of one good thing that happened on Tisha B’av, for a change

• Get in the groove with “Eicha,” the hip-hop song.

• Or, for the more traditional, listen to the book-on-tape in Hebrew.

• Ponder author A.B. Yehoshua’s own Tisha B’av meditation on Judaism.

• Start planning for breaking the fast.