Not So Fast: Who Should Eat on Yom Kippur?

Adapted from the writings of Dayan Yitzhak Grossman

November 6, 2025

From an interview with former Israeli hostage Agam Berger:

“We were being held in a tunnel—it was around January of 2024. I was with other hostages—Liri Albag, Emily Damari, Naama Levy, and Romi Gonen. We suddenly received a siddur along with this booklet, ‘B’chayil Uveruach,’ and a newspaper. One of our captors brought them to us. He had received them from one of his superiors. Israeli soldiers had simply left these items in the field—they were probably distributed to the soldiers, and they might have had to leave quickly from that place. They brought the siddur, booklet, and newspaper and asked what it was. When they realized it was in Hebrew and wasn’t military material they could use, they left it with us…

“I was struggling with a practical issue: I wasn’t eating the meat our captors brought us, because it wasn’t kosher. It wasn’t real meat—it was canned meat, like canned sausage. We didn’t receive it very often, but sometimes they brought it. But I wouldn’t eat it, as I knew it’s not kosher. I kept thinking, ‘I wish I had something that would tell me what to do. I can’t consult a rabbi. I know it’s pikuach nefesh (saving a life), but I still don’t feel like I have to do it.’

“Around October-November of 2024, I was really getting weak and starting to get sick. It was getting worse. At that time, only Liri and I were together, and we talked about it. I said, ‘What should I do? Should I start eating meat now?’ I said, ‘I wish I had something that would give me guidance so I’d know what to do.’…

“Liri and I went through this booklet together. Liri helped me collect various points while I read. Then she said to me, ‘Agam, listen, come look at what’s written here.’ We read it together, and that’s what helped me reach the decision to eat meat so I could get stronger. It was very difficult, and it came after a lot of deliberation. There was a chapter on pikuach nefesh…

“The Torah says that despite the importance of the mitzvos, ‘you shall keep my laws and live by them’ (Vayikra 18:5). There were many examples about not endangering oneself—regarding Shabbos and other mitzvos as well. So I said, ‘Okay, I understand.’ So I realized I was allowed to eat nonkosher meat. I told myself that it was OK for me to do it, until I would learn that there is a hostage deal; as soon I knew I would be returning home, I didn’t need to eat it anymore. The first bite that I took of the meat—I was crying.

“About two months later, there was already a deal. After I found out, I only had two days before I came home. I had the opportunity to stop eating the meat before I returned home.”[1]

Agam Berger was literally moser nefesh to observe the mitzvos to the best of her ability in horrific circumstances, and she sanctified Hashem’s Name magnificently; her reward from Heaven will undoubtedly be immense. This article considers the basic question of whether someone is permitted to violate the Torah and eat if he is not currently ill but there is a concern that he may become life-threateningly ill if he does not eat.

The Mishnah states:

If a pregnant woman smelled food on Yom Kippur and has a strong desire for it, we feed her small amounts of that food until she feels relieved. In the case of a sick person, we feed him on the advice of experts. But if the patient feels that he needs to eat and the experts disagree with him, we consider it as if there are no experts there, and we feed him based on his own opinion of his need, until he says, “I have had enough.”[2]

The Gemara cites a breisa that articulates the fundamental principle governing such situations:

For there is nothing that stands in the way of saving a life, other than the cardinal sins of idol worship, illicit relations, and murder.[3]

The Rosh cites an opinion of Tosfos that the dispensation for a sick person to eat on Yom Kippur applies only if we are afraid he might die. But the Rosh himself rejects this:

It appears to me that this is a great stringency when there is the possibility of danger to life. For there is no physician who will say, “If he does not eat, perhaps he will die.” It is rather the manner of the physician to say, “If he does not eat, perhaps the illness will intensify, and he will be in danger.”

The Tur and Shulchan Aruch side with the Rosh.[4] Some Acharonim explain that the Rosh means that one who is ill may eat even if he is not yet in any danger, to prevent the illness from intensifying and endangering him.[5] Some Acharonim go ever further and explain him to mean that one who is ill may eat as long as there is a concern that if he does not, his illness will intensify—even if there is no concrete concern that this intensification will endanger him—because the concern for intensification automatically entails a concern for danger.[6]

The practical meaning and import of this discussion is not entirely clear, but a couple of centuries ago, many poskim discussed these basic issues in the context of the virulent cholera epidemics of the period.[7] It was widely believed that fasting, even for a single day, greatly increased the susceptibility of even healthy people to the disease,[8] and the Acharonim disagreed whether healthy people should fast on Yom Kippur (or even other fast days).

The Chasam Sofer permitted healthy people to eat, based on the warnings of “expert physicians who say that one who exits the door of his home on an empty stomach on a fast day, his blood is on his soul[9] during a time of anger,[10] a plague of cholera, Rachmana litzlan”:

It is permitted for a healthy person to eat, because of possible danger to himself, even though he is currently healthy. Because the air is foul, and there is a concern lest the evil attach itself to him,[11] chas veshalom.[12]

The Mitzpei Aryeh (R’ Aryeh Leib Broyde) reports that R’ Yosef Sha’ul Natanson (author of Sho’eil Umeishiv) ruled similarly in 5633 (1872)[13] for the city of Ostroh, Volhynia (today Ukraine), that neither sick nor healthy people should fast; rather, they should eat in amounts that are each less than the shiur. He proceeds to record that in his youth, he heard that there was a dispute about this question among the rabanim of Vilna: R’ Yisrael Salanter ruled that people should not fast on Yom Kippur, but the rest of the great rabanim disagreed with him. R’ Yisrael disregarded their opposition and ate publicly in shul on Yom Kippur, and a great noise[14] ensued.[15] (The Mitzpei Aryeh proceeds to consider what the rationale of R’ Yisrael’s opponents might have been; the details of his analysis are beyond the scope of this article.)[16]

R’ Moshe Feinstein also apparently accepts R’ Yisrael’s ruling, and he invokes it as a precedent to allow even someone who is totally healthy to be mechallel Shabbos where there is concern that he may become dangerously ill if he does not:

It is also clear that even someone who is totally healthy, if he needs to attend to a patient with a contagious illness, and in order that he not become ill, they need to administer to him a therapy that entails chillul Shabbos—this, too, is permitted, because otherwise it is possible that he will become dangerously ill.

And it is known that the gaon R’ Yisrael Salanter commanded, at a time that the plague of cholera was spreading, that all the inhabitants of the city should eat on Yom Kippur, because hungry people are more likely to catch the disease—even though they were healthy—so that they not become ill.[17]

But other poskim were skeptical of the doctors’ claims that fasting increased susceptibility to cholera and ruled that healthy people should fast. The Reishis Bikurim (R’ Betzalel Hakohein) cites the ruling of the Chasam Sofer and vigorously dissents:

It is incumbent upon us to proclaim this great matter for all generations, with the help of Hashem Yisbarach, that a chazakah (presumptive status) was established by three events[18]—by the thousands and tens of thousands of men and women that, praise to G-d, all fasted on the great fast (on Yom Hakipurim of the years 5592 (1831),[19] 5609 (1848),[20] and 5627 (1866)[21])—in all our countries, and no misfortune befell them, chalilah. And this was known then virtually throughout the whole world, and there is nothing that has been established by experience, in truth, to a greater degree than this…

He concludes that one may nevertheless be lenient on all other fast days, but certainly not on Yom Kippur, “chalilah.”[22]

Some report that R’ Betzalel Hakohein was the leader of the opposition to R’ Yisrael Salanter’s lenient stance in Vilna:

After him (R’ Yisrael), the most senior of the dayanim in Vilna, R’ Betzalel, ascended the bimah and protested in the name of all the dayanim against this general dispensation without a specific prescription from an expert physician in each individual case.[23]

But this seems doubtful, because the controversy in Vilna is reported to have occurred in 5609 (1848),[24] and the passage in R’ Betzalel’s own Reishis Bikurim—which was written decades later and explicitly mentions the cholera epidemic of that year—does not give the slightest hint of any involvement by the author in that controversy.

R’ Yosef Zecharyah Stern follows the view of the Reishis Bikurim:

…As experience has shown, even in days such as these, the fast caused no harm unless one was not careful after the fast not to fill himself. And of tens of thousands of people, it did not harm any of the fasters—only someone who has some weakness, who must hurry and taste something. And we may only be lenient for one who is ill, or old and weak…[25]

R’ Akiva Eiger, in 5592 (1831), likewise refused to issue a general dispensation to eat on Yom Kippur:

Yom Kippur is Biblical, and therefore the gaon av bais din (R’ Akiva Eiger) and the bais din tzedek ytz”v are unable to be lenient in a general way regarding the fast…[26]

In any event, the cholera debate revolves primarily around the question of whether fasting during a cholera outbreak is dangerous or not. It is not clear that there is any disagreement about the fundamental principle that even one who is currently healthy may eat if there is a real concern that not doing so may result in dangerous illness.[27]

[1]Faith in Captivity: An Interview with Agam Berger. HaMizrachi Magazine.

[2]Mishnah Yoma 8:5.

[3]Yoma 82a.

[4]Tur and Shulchan Aruch O.C. beginning of siman 618.

[5]Bach, beginning of siman 618; Pri Megadim ibid. Eishel Avraham s.k. 2 (and see Mishbetzos Zahav s.k. 1), cited in Biur Halacha at the beginning of the siman.

[6]Levush ibid. se’if 1; Bach ibid.; Magein Avraham ibid. s.k. 2. (The Magein Avraham says this is also the position of the Maharash and the Maharil (see Sefer Maharil (Minhagim), Yerushalayim 5738, Hilchos Yom Kippur pp. 46b-47a). Mishnah Brurah ibid. s.k. 2; Nishmas Avraham (Second Expanded Edition) O.C. p. 744 (778). Cf. Machatzis Hashekel to Magein Avraham ibid.

[7]“Seven cholera pandemics have occurred in the past 200 years, with the first originating in India in 1817.” Wikipedia contributors. History of cholera. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_cholera&oldid=1318200496.

[8]Modern science seems to agree with the Acharonim (cited below) that were skeptical of the medical consensus that fasting during a cholera epidemic is dangerous to a healthy person; see, e.g., Leung DT, Das SK, Malek MA, Qadri F, Faruque AS, Ryan ET. Impact of Ramadan on clinical and microbiologic parameters of patients seen at a diarrheal hospital in urban Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1996-2012. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2014 Feb;90(2):294-8. doi: 10.4269/ajtmh.13-0513. Epub 2014 Jan 6. PMID: 24394479; PMCID: PMC3919236.

[9]From Vayikra 17:14, although the sense of the phrase there is different.

[10]Bava Kama 60b. Cf. here.

[11]From Bereishis 19:19.

[12]Shu”t Chasam Sofer cheilek 6 siman 23.

[13]During the fourth cholera pandemic, 1863-1875.

[14]Yechezkel 3:12.

[15]Tnuas Hamusar (Yerushalayim 5776) Volume 1 Chapter 11 pp. 184-86 discusses this episode in detail.

[16]Shu”t Mitzpei Aryeh, Tinyana, Kiryas Arba, Inyanim Shonim, siman 45.

[17]Shu”t Igros Moshe O.C. cheilek 3 siman 91.

[18]Bava Metzia 106b.

[19]During the second cholera pandemic, 1826-1837.

[20]During the third cholera pandemic, 1846-1860.