Reform looks at ways to reinvent the movement
Returning food to its rightful place: Eating disorders in the Jewish community
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PrintThis piece is excerpted from Rabbi Zlotnick’s chapter in “A Sacred Table” (CCAR Press).
[M]any of us were raised with the philosophy that it is always better to have too much rather than too little food at a special event. Holiday tables are laden with dish upon dish placed before the family, while relatives urge one another to “Eat, eat!” Some people speculate that this phenomenon may be attributed to our history, during much of which we experienced periods of dire deprivation and starvation….
Perhaps the power of Jewish history subconsciously plays itself out every time we gather with food as our centerpiece.
This sets the scene for eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating / compulsive overeating) to become silent yet destructive forces in our families and our community….
Jews, especially but not exclusively Jewish women, are particularly vulnerable to eating disorders. People who are high achieving, well educated, and middle class are more susceptible to eating disorders than other people are. And this is often an accurate description of many of our families in Reform congregations.
Those who work in the field of eating disorders insist that … [e]ating disorders are not about food. They are about emotions and psychological wellbeing…. Hunger and nourishment are no longer connected to the nutritional value of the food on the plate but to meeting emotional needs that are not satisfied in other ways….
Occasions on which families gather for the Jewish holidays can be particularly nerve-racking for people with eating disorders. With every course, family members make comments and suggestions: “Try the kugel”; “Oh, take another piece. You can afford it”; “Sweetie, you’ve had enough dessert.”
…Anorexics often regard Yom Kippur as a day of licit fasting, a day in which everyone else experiences the “high” of self-starvation. For binge eaters, the overabundance of sweets at an Oneg Shabbat can be both tempting and painful. Passover seders, Yom Kippur break-fasts, and Chanukah latke-eating parties can all be extremely anxiety-provoking for those with eating disorders. Yet family members at these events often do not even realize that their loved one is counting calories, pushing food around on the plate, running to the bathroom to vomit, or inspecting each bite that everyone else is taking…. Jewish families have a difficult time accepting that a loved one is self-destructive.…
As a community, we have begun to chip away at the denial that compels us to say “not my loved one” or “not in my synagogue” when we see someone engaged in self-destructive behaviors….
Jewish values can pave the way to a healthy relationship to food and nourishment. Our Sages teach that in each generation since the destruction of the Temple, every table in every Jewish home has become an altar — that is, a center for the sacred in our lives. Judaism emphasizes that food should be enjoyed as one of the gifts of Creation, but it should be enjoyed in moderation…. According to tradition, every meal begins and ends with a b’rachah, a blessing, of gratitude for the food we are about to eat, which enables us to live, to work, and to love. Kashrut can also be a means to attaining a deeper reverence for the way in which we nourish ourselves, leading to an experience of wholeness in the world….
In Judaism, we believe that all human beings are created b’tzelem Elohim — in God’s image. For people with eating disorders, this belief has been submerged. As a community, we can help return a sense of their own sacredness to people with eating disorders by being sensitive to their needs at family and temple events, by focusing on who people are rather than how they look, and by reaching out to the entire family, not just the individual with the eating disorder. Together we can return food to its rightful place: not as a weapon that our loved ones use to destroy themselves but as a pleasurable part of our Jewish experiences and memories and as a means to nourish the best in ourselves. As Rabbi Akiva taught in Pirkei Avot 3:14, “Human beings are loved because they are made in God’s image.” We can help people with eating disorders discover that they, too, are loved and that they, too, have within themselves a spark of the Divine.
More on: Reform looks at ways to reinvent the movement
‘We are obligated to take care of and enjoy our bodies’
Rabbi Ruth Zlotnick’s contribution to “The Sacred Table” is about eating disorders.
This is not the first time she has written on the subject. In the late 1990s, when she was an intern in the Reform movement’s department of Jewish Family Concerns, “eating disorders were quite prevalent in our congregations and I was asked to contribute to a manual about them.”
Called “Litapayach Tikvah: Nourishing Hope,” it is subtitled “Eating Disorders: Perceptions and Perspectives in Jewish Life Today” and was disseminated to Reform congregations and used at workshops at synagogues and the movement’s biennial conference. It is still available online at rjyouthworker.urg.org also see EatingDisorders.)
Fish: A complex issue
This piece is excerpted from Rabbi Mosbacher’s chapter in “A Sacred Table” (CCAR Press).
[T]his past year I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals.” … Little that I read in Foer’s work surprised me, until I came to the section on fish. Those four pages … have challenged me, as a Jew and as a human being, to question the ethics of eating fish….
Foer disturbed and agitated me when he wrote, “Although one can realistically expect that at least some percentage of cows and pigs are slaughtered with speed and care, no fish gets a good death. Not a single one. You never have to wonder if the fish on your plate had to suffer. It did.” This was a stunning statement — one that Foer backs up by explaining the realities of both wild-caught and farm-raised fish….
‘A way to reclaim kashrut in a broader context’
Rabbi Joel Mosbacher, who contributed a chapter on eating fish to “The Sacred Table,” has a “holistic sense of kashrut.”
“Many people across the religious spectrum,” he explained, “are trying to figure out how to blend traditionally held beliefs about kashrut with a modern understanding of the industrial food system … and to what extent we can and should expand our conception of kashrut to include the way our food is raised and the way it gets to us.”
Is Reform movement going kosher?
Kosher — it’s the first word in the book. And tackling the “k” word head-on is part of what makes the first Reform guide to Jewish dietary practice so significant.
“The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic,” to be published in February by the Reform rabbinical association, uses an array of essays by Reform rabbis and activists to challenge Reform Jews to develop a conscious dietary practice grounded in Jewish values.
And it’s not shy about suggesting kashrut, both traditional and re-imagined.
Area rabbis reflect on Reform’s past, future
The Reform movement that is marking its 200th anniversary this year looks vastly different from the movement that began as a rejection of what early Reform Jews saw as the rigid and outdated Judaism of their parents.
Today’s Reform Jews aren’t rebelling, because they don’t know as much about their religious traditions, said Rabbi Stephen Wylen of Temple Beth Tikvah in Wayne.
“That has resulted in a return to tradition,” said Wylen who has spent the past 30 years as a Reform rabbi, navigating the movement’s changes. He chose Beth Tikvah because the synagogue has more of a focus on tradition, which he said he likes. And he has noticed a yearning among his congregants to give their children more in-depth Jewish educations than they themselves had.
After the Reform movement broadcast online its first session devoted to reassessing itself, in mid-November, the comments poured in.
One viewer suggested that the movement create a network of schools, camps, shuls, and seminaries focused on “tikkun olam,” the Jewish injunction to repair the world. Another said the movement should train five times as many rabbis and cantors to provide more entryways into Judaism through music, social action, and prayer.
