Many years ago, I read an article in Jewish Action by Rabbi Abraham Twerski, MD, entitled “Time for a Rosh Hashanah Overhaul.” His message has stayed with me over the years, but I am only trying to implement it now.

Rabbi Twerski, who has done extensive work in the field of alcoholism, was at a meeting where a man who was sober for 30 years said, “The man I once was drank. And the man who I once was will drink again. I can stay sober only by not going back to being the person I was before I began drinking.”

My Rav, Rabbi Binyamin Marwick, gave an inspiring talk on Yom Kippur at our shul, Congregation Shomrei Emunah. He referred to a tragic event that occurred last year: Three mountain climbers died on a most daunting 14,000-foot mountain in Colorado called Capital Peak. They were experienced climbers: young, fit, and knowledgeable. And they did not die while climbing up the mountain. They had reached the peak and then fell and died on the way down. The local sheriff said their mistake was a common one of focusing exclusively on reaching the top: getting to the pinnacle and signing the register there. On the way down, they relaxed, they were less careful, and they fell to their deaths. Apparently, most serious mountaineering accidents happen that way – not on the way up but on the way down. People put all their energy into reaching the goal and then they relax; they become less careful. In the words of the sheriff, “This was somebody taking a shortcut off the mountain. And there are no shortcuts coming off that mountain. There is only one way down.”

“It ain’t over until the fat lady sings” is a well-known expression. Every adult I asked had heard the expression, and I assumed that it had been around forever. However, according to Wikipedia, it was first coined in 1976 by Ralph Carpenter, the sports information director of Texas Tech, referring to a sports competition. The “fat lady” is thought to refer to the often overweight sopranos of the opera, particularly Richard Wagner’s operas, in which the soprano sings herself to death at the end of the opera.

In trying to rein in my eating, I have been thinking that more care with brachos acharonos (blessings after eating) should be a big help in curtailing or controlling compulsive overeating. How does one make brachos properly in a situation when one eats, tries (and intends) to stop but then continues? If you wait after eating something and don’t say a bracha acharona, you are implying that you are not done eating yet, that you anticipate that you will eat more. If you make a perfunctory bracha acharona, not meaning it, and then resume eating, and continue to repeat this behavior, you could be making tens of brachos a night. (This is not a halachic discussion; consult your rabbi for his guidance.) But, if you could bring yourself to make the bracha acharona with kavana (intention, concentration), you are saying that you are determined to end your eating session. If this idea could be internalized, it is possible that, even if only for a short time, “It is over when the fat lady bentches.” We could work on keeping that commitment of ending a food session. Even if this “holds” for only a short time and then eating is resumed, at least some interruption in the compulsive eating has been effected.

There are a number of lessons we can learn from Megillas Esther to help us with compulsive eating and, in general, with behaviors we would like to modify. Some of these have been discussed in previous articles in this series, which are available on the Where What When website.

Feel full and complete, not lacking: Haman had only one person (Mordechai) who did not bow down to him, and it was worth nothing to him that everyone else did bow down. He could not perceive himself as “full,” only as “lacking.” He inherited this bad trait from Adam’s eating of the Tree of Knowledge. Adam (Eve is included with Adam here) could eat from any tree in the garden but one. The serpent was able to convince Eve that she was lacking something, until she could not stand it and ate. This is one interpretation of the connection of Haman to the word “hamin” (both spelled H-M-N). Haman’s essence is included in Hashem’s question to Adam, “Hamin ha’etz… did you eat from the tree?”

There is a well-known story about Reb Yissachar and Reb Shmelke of Nikolsburg that is used to show the extent to which anger can be controlled. (Many versions of this story are in print; one is by Hanoch Teller, who heard it from the Bostoner Rebbe, zt”l.) After R’ Yissachar’s death, R’ Shmelke was asked to become the Rabbi of Nikolsberg. As he walked through R’ Yissachar’s empty house, which was to become his home, he smelled a beautiful fragrance. He knew that this heavenly smell meant that a wonderful good deed was performed there, and he asked around to find out what it was, but no one knew.

One day, an elderly gentile woman approached him on the street. She told him she heard he was searching for the remarkable event associated with the house, and she thought she knew what it was. When she was a young girl, she became a maid at R’ Yissachar’s house shortly before Pesach. One morning (erev Pesach), the parents and all the older children left the house, and she was alone with the younger children. The children began to cry because they were hungry. The maid looked all over the house but could not find any food for them. She finally found some crackers in a box in the closet, and fed these to the children.

We are all familiar with the statement of Chazal that finding one’s shidduch is as difficult as splitting the Yam Suf (Red Sea) (Sanhedrin 22a). A similar statement is made about parnassa (livelihood) (Pesachim 118a). I recently heard an interesting explanation of this that has relevance for eating issues as well.

The Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation distributes a set of CDs on emuna (faith) that have a collection of Rabbi David Ashear’s short talks on this topic. Rabbi Ashear attributes the following understanding to Rabbi Pesach Eliyahu Falk of Gateshead.

What is the difference between splitting the sea and splitting a thick wood board, for example? Once the board is split, it stays split and has no tendency to come back together. However, when water is split, as great as that miracle is, constant effort is required to keep the water split. There is a natural tendency for the water to recombine that has to be combated.