Abstinence (Hebrew: הִסתַגְפוּת, Ashkenazi pronunciation: Histagfus) was a tactic of draft evasion was a type of hunger strike (or other forms of self-harm, such as sleep deprivation, tending to cause tachycardia, or self-inflicted wound), employed by young men in the Russian Empire's Jewish Pale of Settlement (and in the neighbouring Austrian Empire's Galicia) to be found unfit for military service by the Imperial authorities.