A Brief Post On Eating On Erev Yom Kippur

Wireless is everywhere. A group of guys are completing hatarat nedarim to my left as another bunch finish davening on my right here in the back of the new YU Beit Medrash. I'm thinking about today, more-so than about tomorrow. It is erev Yom Kippur.

Much has been written about the mitzvah to eat on erev Yom Kippur. I think that besides being literal it may also be metaphorical, the idea being that on erev Yom Kippur it's we are supposed to live a perfect a normal day as possible.

Yom Kippur is an unusual day, one could say that it's an extreme attempt to attain purity and forgiveness through through isolation and separation that we are neither able nor expected to keep up on a regular basis. On the other hand, the day before Yom Kippur is the last typical day of life because Yom Kippur. How we live on this day is telling, for example - do we consider our eating to be a mitzvah, something holy that we do for G-d's sake, or is it an impulse that we don't even consider?