The standard explanation for why G-d tells us to fast on Yom Kippur (Leviticus 23:27) is well-known: He wants us to resemble angels on this holiest of days.
But why? Man’s mission is entirely different than that of angels. Man is called on to sanctify the material world, not shun it, writes Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch. So why do we fast? Shouldn’t we be eating a special meal like we do on every Shabbos and Yom Tov, thus elevating the physical? In other words, shouldn’t we be practicing Torah im Derech Eretz?
Rav Hirsch doesn’t pose this precise question, but his explication of the Yom Kippur laws (in his Chumash commentary and Chorev) implicitly answer it. For Rav Hirsch doesn’t mention angels at all in explaining why we fast. He writes that on Yom Kippur we “give expression to the fact that we have misused the power with which G-d has equipped us” and thus have “forfeited the right to exist” (inui nefesh)” and “to be productive (issur melacha).”
We fast, in other words, because we have no right to eat (if I understand Rav Hirsch correctly). Everything physical is given to us to uplift. If we don’t uplift it, we have no right to use it.
On Yom Kippur we spend 25 hours contemplating this fact and hopefully commit to acting differently in the future. If we do, G-d gives us a clean slate to rejoin, and properly use, the physical world.
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.