The body in our culture has become a dumping ground for a broad spectrum of emotional experiences and anxieties, and a concrete, socially sanctioned way of expressing self-doubts and existential angst. Many women live just under the radar of full-blown eating disorders as unhealthy eating behaviors have become normative, and perspectives on the female body distorted. Anorexia and bulimia are among the most emotionally and physically devastating disorders and are most prevalent within upwardly mobile demographic groups.
Jewish women are by no means exempt from these trends. The pervasiveness of eating disorders has affected the Jewish community, including the ultra-Orthodox sectors. Many Jewish women of all ages have chronic eating concerns and negative feelings about their bodies. I have found that young Jewish anorectics frequently receive communal endorsement of their emaciated frames. More than one mother has reported the need to ask other women at shul to stop complimenting their anorectic daughters on their weight loss and to stop voicing admiration for their discipline and restraint. Even within the ultraOrthodox communities, proscriptions such as no television in the home, designed to protect members from problematic cultural influences, have not provided a successful shield.
Frequently, mothers of the adolescent girls themselves have histories of eating disorders or unacknowledged subclinical manifestations of eating disorders. These subclinical eating disorders can take the form of excessive exercise, chronic dieting, occasional vomiting, skipping meals, adhering to a rigid list of permissible foods, cooking for the family but eating different, less caloric meals, body preoccupations, and body image distortion. Teenagers are acutely aware of their parents’ unhealthy eating patterns and may identify with parents who are essentially on permanent diets in order to be fashionably slim.
This preoccupation with the body is antithetical both to a feminist and Jewish perspective. From a feminist perspective, an imperative to curtail the appetite for food may be a symbol of a culture that demands that women limit their desires and not take up too much space in the world; women feel hungry when they are not permitted to fill their needs for power, comfort, and self-expression legitimately and may use food as a way of managing these suppressed needs. The “idol worship” of the body is also antithetical to Jewish thought and practice which traditionally view the body as the transient instrument through which we can engage in the fundamental religious goals of worship, study, and acts of hesed.
I am frequently asked whether there is a connection between Jewish rituals and values, and the problem of eating disorders in the Jewish community. Indeed, there are several popular views that seek to link Judaism and eating disorders and reflect the sociocultural context of modern Jewish life and practice:
- The pressure of shiddukhim and the psychological impact on young women to marry early and have large families.
- The fact that we celebrate Shabbat and festivals around meals with an overabundance of food.
- The impact of the Holocaust, with its legacy of starvation, on the second and third generation of children of survivors and, more broadly, on the collective Jewish unconscious.
- The practice of kashrut, which separates foods into permissible and nonpermissible categories analogous to individuals who suffer from eating disorders who separate foods into acceptable and not acceptable food groups
Clearly, there are genetic, biological, psychological, and familial factors that culminate in an eating disorder. What role then, if any, might these particular phenomena play? In the larger American culture, not everyone develops eating disorders even though all women are bombarded by media messages promoting an unattainable ideal of thinness. Similarly, in the Orthodox world, girls and women do not all develop eating disorders though many are exposed to the pressures of the shiddukh system, young marriage, early motherhood, the halakhot of kashrut, the tradition of lavish meals on Shabbat, and the legacy of deprivation during the Holocaust.
First, it has been suggested that observant young women develop eating disorders because they have no voice, no other way to say that they are not ready to take on the responsibilities of wife and mother. Many young women (or their families) worry that they are not skinny enough to start dating for fear that they will be passed over for a girl with a better body. The abhorrent question, “what size does she wear?” is often quoted. Unfortunately, these shiddukh stories are not merely apocryphal. Some young men and women harbor the illusion that a perfect body will produce a perfect spouse and a perfect life.
We tend not to think about the issue of shiddukhim and marriage from a male point of view, and ignore the possibility of men’s anxieties and insecurities. Young men may feel unready to meet this developmental milestone and therefore may ask some inappropriate and superficial questions. Perhaps they need help developing an awareness of their own needs and a vocabulary that would enable them to express uncertainties about themselves, women, sexuality, and marriage in more meaningful ways than by asking about dress size.
One way of thinking about the pressure of early marriage and large families is that each community imposes expectations on young adults and creates its own stressors. For example, many of the students I work with in my practice feel overwhelming pressure to gain admission to an Ivy League university. In cases where there is communal pressure toward early marriage, parents can work to mitigate these expectations by paying close attention to their child’s emotional development. The appropriate age for marriage should not be decided by communal expectations but rather by the unique psychological needs of each individual.
Second, it has also been suggested that Jewish rituals and festivals, so intertwined with food and lavish meals, may interact with the problem of eating disorders. Although delighting in Shabbat and holiday meals is a deeply embedded tradition that is halakhically dictated, it is worth considering whether a tendency toward excess, an American vulnerability, has infiltrated the way we host guests on Shabbat and celebrate life-cycle events.
Of further concern is that, in some homes, Shabbat meals have lost the intimacy of a family experience and have become primarily festive social gatherings. Although the firmly rooted tradition of hakhnasat orhim – inviting guests for Shabbat – is an inherent value, some families are either hosts or guests every week and thus rarely have a Shabbat meal alone. If families ate together during the week, this would not be of concern; however, I am dismayed at how expendable this fundamental building block of family life has become.
Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, a professor of epidemiology and expert on child nutrition surveyed approximately 5,000 adolescents and found that almost one-quarter reported eating family meals only twice a week or less. Her studies have concluded that families who do not eat together are more likely to have an adolescent who may be depressed, do poorly in school, use alcohol or drugs, have poor self-esteem, or have less nutritious diets than teenagers from families who eat together more regularly. 1
Observant families state many reasons why they do not eat together; synagogue and school meetings, shiurim, extracurricular activities, late nights at work, no time to cook or shop for food, and pickiness about the food that is available. This is true both in families with mothers who work outside the home and in those where mothers do not. One consequence of families not eating together is that parents often do not realize that their child is eating abnormally until a full-blown eating disorder has developed. Shabbat meals are an optimal time to observe a child’s reluctance to eat a piece of hallah or his or her odd eating habits.
Third, in stark contrast to our lavish festive meals, the Holocaust’s haunting images of skeletal victims hover over the pathology of self-induced starvation. One theory is that an unconscious, collective identification with grandparents who survived or relatives who perished may underlie eating disorders in the Jewish community. Food, like money, becomes a symbol of safety from annihilation and may be overemphasized in families of survivors. Several psychotherapists who treat eating disorders within the Jewish community have wondered whether there is a higher rate of eating disorders in families of Holocaust survivors. I have observed this in my own practice, although there are very limited research data to support this clinical impression and it is possible that other family dynamics may be more significant indicators for the disorder.
Fourth, it is also the case that within halakhic Judaism, food is highly regulated: Blessings are recited before and after meals, hands are washed ritually before bread is eaten, and kashrut laws define permissible and non-permissible foods in ways that may not be so psychologically different from eliminating food groups such as carbohydrates and fats. Although compelling, this comparison may be misleading. There is little clinical material or empirical evidence to confirm the connection between patients with eating disorders and those who observe the laws of kashrut. Moreover, these laws have been practiced for more than 2,000 years, whereas the prevalence of eating disorders is a contemporary phenomenon. Additionally, Judaism is not the only religion or culture in which food is regulated and plays a central role. In a 2008 study, Sarah Weinberger-Litman, a New York health psychologist, sampled a large group of female Jewish high school and college students and found no significant differences in the frequency of eating disorder symptoms between Orthodox and non-Orthodox groups, suggesting that kashrut and Jewish observance may not increase one’s risk of developing an eating disorder (Weinberger-Litman, personal communication).
Perhaps the more important question is not whether Jewish rituals and practices contribute to the problem of eating disorders but rather how the incorporation of Jewish values can help prevent the problem from arising. Some interesting research has emerged that supports the idea that religious experience can function as a potential buffer against eating disorders. Weinberger-Litman recently studied groups of Modern Orthodox high school girls in New York and Israel and found that an internalized religious orientation was correlated with a more positive body image and fewer disordered eating behaviors. 2 This finding suggests that personal religious beliefs may in fact mitigate negative feelings about the body or maladaptive eating habits. 3
The biblical verse, “Take good care of yourselves and take great care of your souls” (Devarim 4:15), has been interpreted by the rabbis as a directive to avoid habits that may harm the body. Furthermore, the Jewish idea that all of humanity is created b’tzelem elokim, in the image of God, reflects the view that a spark of the divine rests within each of us. Individuals with eating disorders are disconnected from this internal spark. The challenge is how to harness the transformative power of Judaism to nurture both body and soul. I have no doubt that Jewish values and practices can be powerful, positive forces in this endeavor.