Despite my earlier post, it now appears that Rabbi Yizhak Silberstein did support the idea that a girl whose mother refused to buy her “religious clothes” should cut her legs in order to force the mother’s hand. An apparent recording of the rabbi’s discussion of this topic surfaced on the Internet today, in which he…
Eating disorders are famously misunderstood. Earlier this week, The New York Times shed some light on them in an article detailing the high rates of these illnesses among American Orthodox Jews. The writer, Roni Caryn Rabin, reports on the various pressures Orthodox girls face, and looks at whether eating disorders might be the result of…
Aviva Braun, a social worker and psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders in young women, and Rabba Sara Hurwitz, a pioneering Modern Orthodox spiritual leader at New York’s Hebrew Institute of Riverdale and Yeshivat Maharat, are teaming up for an event that will focus on body image from feminist, therapeutic and Torah perspectives. The event —…
The Washington Post reports that eating disorders are on the rise in the Orthodox Jewish community — a trend that the Forward wrote about here In the L.A. Jewish Journal, actress Annie Korzen writes about being too Jewish to play an “Annie Korzen type” in Hollywood. The lesbian pop culture site After Ellen profiles four…
Feminism has no doubt transformed Orthodoxy over the past three decades. Women have gone from begging to hold a Torah on Simchat Torah to holding their own services, to creating partnership synagogues in which women take active roles alongside men in running the service. It’s not only about women learning Talmud, but also about being…
Most Sundays I do laundry, or have brunch, or see a movie. But I spent this past Sunday immersed in various forms of female teenage angst, and what I came away with was that more boys and men should have been there with me. The day began at a conference on Food, Body Image and…
Humor is a great way to begin tough conversations — ones that might lead to healing and understanding identity. As Jews, we know this as well as anyone; just look at our long tradition of conspicuously Jewish comedians who joke about identity. That is why, at first glance, the “Murray Hill” YouTube parody video seems…
Observant Jews seeking help for anorexia or bulimia have long had the added burden of finding treatment programs that will accommodate their religious practices, such as adherence to the laws of kashrut and Sabbath observance. But now a nationwide network of eating disorders treatment facilities has launched a track specifically for observant Jewish women. The…
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