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The Jewish year
Four minor fasts, each from dawn to nightfall, each marking a hinge in Jewish history. They are far less demanding than Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av, and the rules about who is exempt are far broader.
On these four days the bar is low, on purpose. You do not fast if you are pregnant or nursing; if you are unwell or recovering; if you take medication that needs food; if you are below bar or bat Mitzvah; or if going without food would leave you genuinely unwell, or unsafe to drive or to do your job.
Not fasting when you should not fast is not a compromise or a failure. It is the halacha. If you are not sure which side of the line you are on, call 408-910-2034 and ask — it is an ordinary question and it is asked constantly.
Sunday, December 20, 2026
The day Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem — the beginning of the end, two and a half years before the walls were breached. It is also kept as the general day of Kaddish for those murdered in the Holocaust whose date of death is unknown.
Monday, March 22, 2027
The day before Purim, recalling the three days Esther and the Jews of Shushan fasted before she went to the king uninvited. It is the only one of the four that commemorates something that went right.
Thursday, July 22, 2027
The day the walls of Jerusalem were breached. It opens the Three Weeks, which run from here to Tisha B'Av and are the saddest stretch of the Jewish year.
Monday, October 4, 2027
The day after Rosh Hashanah. It marks the murder of Gedaliah ben Achikam, the governor left in charge of the remnant of Jews in the land after the destruction of the First Temple — and with him the last Jewish presence there for a generation. A community can be finished off by its own people as surely as by an army, which is why this is kept at all.
Dawn and nightfall move by more than an hour across the year. The exact times for any of these dates are on the times page, worked out for Almaden Valley rather than typed in.
No eating and no drinking, from dawn until nightfall. That is the whole of it. Washing, leather shoes, anointing and the other restrictions that belong to Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av do not apply here. You go to work. You drive. You live an ordinary day, without food.
In the prayers, Selichot are added and the Torah is read morning and afternoon — the passage where Moses asks for forgiveness after the golden calf, which is the point of the day in miniature. Many people give Tzedakah, traditionally the value of the meals they are not eating.
Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av are different in kind, not only in degree. Both begin the evening before and run about twenty-five hours; both carry the five afflictions rather than only abstention from food; and both have pages of their own, including a long section on who should not be fasting at all.