What does the Talmud say about who should eat on Yom Kippur?
Is there a requirement to only eat if fasting would immediately cause death?
There are many misconceptions about how sick a person must already be, or how sick they must become when fasting, in order to need to eat on Yom Kippur. Please follow along to see what this Talmudic text says about this important topic.
In the next section, the Talmud discusses what happens when the doctor says that the ill person needs to eat on Yom Kippur, while the ill person says that they do not need to eat. While we might not like the assumption that the ill person’s judgment must be impaired if they disagree with a doctor, here it is important to see that our Jewish texts want us to do whatever most preserves life and health.