Eating disorders
Israel Targets Fashion Industry Over Underweight Models
The fashion industry needs to know it can no longer ignore the law.
Do Orthodox Jews Need Their Own Eating Disorder Programs?
Inside one young woman’s motivation to help the deeply religious overcome their eating disorders.
Notes from a Jewish Survivor of Anorexia
The first time I admitted to myself that I had an eating disorder was after watching a film describing eating disorders and the Jewish Community called “Hungry to be Heard.”
Lighten Up About Weight? Not Yet
It’s been two years since I’ve experienced symptoms of an eating disorder, such as skipping meals or over-exercising, but I’ve thought about the disease every day since then. In our world, it’s hard not to.
Anorexic Teens Get (the Reality TV) Treatment
Tracey Gold played a significant role in my childhood. I found most of “Growing Pains” terribly boring and annoying, but Carol Seaver, the fictional family’s perfectly nerdy teenage daughter, fascinated me. When I saw pictures of an emaciated Gold on the cover of magazines in the supermarket, I thought they seemed completely incongruous with Carol’s sensibilities. I was terrified by her skinny arms and protruding clavicle. (At one point in 1992, Gold reportedly weighed 80 lbs.) But I didn’t understand what was happening to her — until many years later, when it was happening to women in my family and several of my friends.
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 says that girl deserves the “highest praise” for sanctifying God’s name with her absolute dedication to Torah.
How Halacha Plays a Role in Breeding — and Treating — Eating Disorders
Eating disorders are famously misunderstood.
Rabba, Therapist Team Up To Fight Eating Disorders
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 — aimed at bat mitzvah-age girls through college age women, and their parents — will take place at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 12, at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. There will also be a screening of “Hungry to be Heard,” the Orthodox Union-produced documentary about Jewish adults struggling with eating disorders.
Prime Ribs: BRCA Study; Eating Disorders; Funny Jewish Lesbians
The Washington Post reports that eating disorders are on the rise in the Orthodox Jewish community — a trend that the Forward wrote about here
