The Yom Kippur fast is not intended to be a picnic. But fasters pleading for repentance don’t have to make themselves sick over it either, say health and nutrition experts.

There is a plethora of advice out there for those who want to have an easier time of it come Kol Nidrei, says Shannon Gononsky, a Teaneck-based dietician who observes the Yom Kippur fast religiously.

Fasting doesn’t have to be hard on your body if you prepare properly, she says.

JERUSALEM – By now it would seem that Israelis are accustomed to calls for boycotts of Israeli products and institutions.

Many, however, may have been caught off guard this summer when those calls came from inside Israel.

In two separate incidents over the past few weeks, Israelis issued a call for boycott or announced a boycott of an Israeli institution for political reasons. One protest came from the right, directed at an Israeli university with allegedly “anti-Zionist” professors on staff; one came from the left, directed at an Israeli theater in the west bank.

If you can recall the opening sequence of the TV series “Get Smart,” where Agent 86 passes through a long series of security doors, you can picture my passport renewal experience at the American Consulate in East Jerusalem.

When I arrived at the consulate, on Nablus Road on the Arab side of Jerusalem’s Highway 1, I lined up outside to get my online appointment receipt verified and attached to a number ticket. Then I lined up again to start the many-doored journey into the building.

WASHINGTON – It’s a peace conference where nothing is off the table — or on it, for that matter.

The Obama administration’s invitation to Palestinian and Israeli leaders to launch direct talks on Sept. 2 attempts to reconcile Israeli demands for no preconditions with Palestinian demands that the talks address all the core issues: final borders, the fate of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

The administration does this by calling on the sides to “resolve final-status issues” without saying when and how these issues should come up, if at all.

WASHINGTON – The White House dinner on Sept. 1, prior to the official launch of renewed Palestinian-Israeli talks, will be key to outlining the contours of the negotiations.

“The dinner will help to restore trust,” Dennis Ross, the Obama administration’s top Iran policy official, said in a conference call last Friday with Jewish organizational leaders.

Unless, that is, it turns into a food fight.

WASHINGTON – Two weeks before their launch, the promised renewal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks has already engendered a first: a joint statement of welcome by mainstream U.S. Jewish and Palestinian groups.

“We congratulate the Obama administration on succeeding in getting direct negotiations back on track,” said a statement issued jointly last Friday by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the American Task Force on Palestine. “Both parties must now show courage, flexibility, and persistence in order to move towards a negotiated end of conflict agreement.”

Sarit Bendavid, a Yeshiva University honors student from Teaneck, just returned from working on archeological excavations in the ancient city of Gath, home of the biblical Goliath.

Under the supervision of Bar-Ilan University’s Prof. Aren M. Maeir since 1996, the excavations made news in July when diggers found positive evidence of a 10th-century BCE Philistine temple. Known as Tel es-Safi or as Blanche Garde during the Middle Ages, this site between Ashkelon and Jerusalem was settled continuously from late prehistoric through modern times. Archeologists have discovered here the world’s earliest known siege system and deciphered Philistine inscription, as well as preserved evidence of various cultures, peoples, and historical events spanning six millennia.