Today is Thursday, October 2, 2025. I’ve survived another 25-hour fast with the ending of Yom Kippur tonight at 7:21 p.m. I’m happy to report that I had no twinges of hunger that entire time, even though I did look longingly in pizza parlors and the like as I walked through the neighborhood in the afternoon.

Yesterday Elliot and I attended Kol Nidre services at Temple Beth-El in Jersey City for the first time. This synagogue was the shul where Elliot’s deceased Aunt Esther attended for many years and one in which Elliot and his coexecutor of Esther’s estate have donated thousands of dollars to the building over the years. Thus Elliot preferred to attend services there last night instead of having me go to 34th Street to attend services at the Jacob Javits Center at the gay synagogue by myself, which is what I usually do. This time I had little interest in traveling once again on the subway since our recently deceased friend “Larry” attended services there with his spouse, “Jeff.” I can wait a year – or whatever.

So we left at around 3:30 to take the F train to 34th Street where we hopped on a PATH train to Grove Street, where we had dinner at Luna. We made very good time without driving there this time. I think we were in New Jersey in little over an hour.

The restaurant was quite empty when we walked in since it wasn’t even 5 yet. Services began at 6:30 and we had over an hour to eat. Since this amounted to my last meal before fasting, I pulled no stops. I had meatballs as an appetizer and pesto gnocchi as my entree. We then had creme brûlée and coffee for dessert. I thus began my fast around 6 p.m.

I then called for an Uber to take us to the synagogue on John F. Kennedy Boulevard. We got caught in rush hour traffic and just got to the synagogue around 6:30. We couldn’t help but notice the police cruiser standing outside as a form of law enforcement deterrence.

The synagogue looked old to me and not so well lit. There certainly weren’t thousands of worshippers here as you would see at the Javits Center, that’s for sure. However, the setting and atmosphere was certainly more intimate and you didn’t have good-looking young men with yarmulkes as a distraction during the service here. There were people of all ages sitting in the pews here.

Since this is a reform synagogue, there was more reading in English, which is not what I was accustomed to growing up. It was very easy for me to follow the prayers since the prayer book did not have so much Hebrew on the page.

The rabbi’s sermon was delivered with real folksy charm. She relayed her experiences over the summer on an Alaskan cruise and how she decided to take a Bible class being offered instead of the usual chazerai (game shows, bingo, art auctions, etc.) She recounted how many of the people doing this were Catholics and she was reluctant at first to say that not only was she Jewish, she was also a female spiritual leader. She went on for a considerable time tying this willingness to do something different into a treatise on being tolerant of others with different opinions than yourself. In this age of division, this is what we need more – a willingness to come out of our entrenched bubbles and get to see how the other side lives. Her message was certainly very apt for this time in history.

By 9:30, the service was finally over. Elliot decided to go up to the bimah and say hi to the rabbi. At first, she didn’t recognize him since they have only communicated generally by email. When she realized who he was, her expression brightened immediately and she kissed and hugged him. I sheepishly went up to greet her and she did the same with me.

Now it was time to call on Uber again to take us to the Journal Square PATH station. The wait didn’t take long; a driver pulled up on Montgomery Street where we were standing within minutes.

We had to wait awhile for a PATH train, but we didn’t have to wait for an F when we got to the 34th Street station. We got home in about an hour. Now it was fasting time for me until the next day.

So today, I took an extensive walk in the neighborhood. I also sat in MacDonald Park to read my new book, Lake Success, by Gary Shteyngart. I picked up this book only about a day or two ago and I’m about 200 pages in it already. It was written years ago during the reign of Dump I – about 2016. It tells the uproarious story of one Barry Cohen, rich, Jewish, living near the Flatiron Building, in a million-dollar pad who flees New York City and his Indian wife, Seema, and his seriously autistic three-year-old child, Shiva, by taking a Greyhound Bus across the country meeting all sorts of people on the road. The book is very funny and well grounded in the American zeitgeist, I believe.

Anyway, I cannot delve into MAGA World today since I took a 24-hour breather from it. Tomorrow is a different story.

Hope everyone’s fast was as trouble free and easy as mine.

And so it went!