For Jews who struggle with eating disorders, Passover is a monumental challenge
Not everyone with an eating disorder is ready to eat when a food-based ritual demands it
Eating Disorders
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Opinion On Yom Kippur, My Eating Disorder Haunts Me
Is Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement, or the day of Post-Traumatic Stress? For me, a “recovered” anorexic, it’s both. Liturgically, Yom Kippur is powerful, a day characterized by introspection, asking forgiveness, profound considerations about how to right wrongs and improve oneself. It makes sense it’s a day of self-denial, including 25 hours without food….
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Life Is The Orthodox Community Really Facing Mental Health Head-On?
When people tell me, again and again, that the Orthodox community has gotten better with regard to mental health issues, I secretly cringe. They point to the Jewish magazines, the organizations, the public talks, the community initiatives, as proof that Orthodox Jews, as a community, are no longer afraid to look mental illness in the…
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Life Israel Targets Fashion Industry Over Underweight Models
TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israeli lawmakers want to tighten a ban on the employment of underweight models and on the undeclared digital slimming-down of fashion images, amid concern that the measures are being routinely flouted even as they are adopted abroad. The fashion industry’s use of wafer-thin models has long been the subject of heated…
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Life Do Orthodox Jews Need Their Own Eating Disorder Programs?
“Airplane food. That’s what they gave me to eat while I was trying to recover from an eating disorder — airplane food. For 10 weeks! Everyone else had these normal-looking meals, and I had prepackaged stuff that looked exactly like you’d get it on a plane.” Sitting in a busy kosher cafe in midtown Manhattan…
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Community Why I’m Eating This Yom Kippur
A version of this article originally appeared in New Voices. Throughout college, I struggled with an eating disorder. In many ways, it first manifested itself during Yom Kippur freshman year. From there, it was a downward spiral into self-hatred, an obsession with calories, and compensatory cardio. Four Yom Kippurs in a row, I fasted too…
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Life Turning Rape and Bulimia Into Comedy
Jessie Kahnweiler, right, with her mother, Jennifer Kahnweiler, at the 2013 Los Angeles premiere of Jessie’s web series “Dude, Where’s My Chutzpah?” (Clark Henry) (JTA) — In an early episode of “Dude, Where’s My Chutzpah?,” the 2013 docu-comedy web series by Jessie Kahnweiler that put her on the comedic map, Kahnweiler’s character ends up at…
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Life Bulimia Comedy Conquers TV’s Last Taboo
Are eating disorders the last taboo on TV? Los Angeles-based filmmaker and comedian Jessie Kahnweiler thinks so and is setting out to change that with “The Skinny,” an episodic series based on her struggles with bulimia. “Every movie I see depicting eating disorders makes me want to barf,” writes Kahnweiler on the project’s Kickstarter page….
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