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Observing Yom Kippur With A Disordered Eating Past

By Sarah Simone (JTA) -- Yom Kippur is arguably one of the most important days in the Jewish calendar. It is the Day of Atonement, a day for reflecting and repenting, where sins of the previous year are acknowledged and restitutions are made. Your repentance sets the tone for the future, and intentions are set for bettering yourself in the year ahead. That the atoning traditionally manifests itself as fasting all day isn’t problematic for some.

For others, like me, who are either in recovery from or still struggling with an eating disorder, the issue is far more complex.

The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that one in five women suffer from eating disorders or disordered eating, a statistic that entirely excludes the men who are often overlooked. Regarding anorexia alone, men make up a quarter of those suffering and, according to the National Eating Disorder Association, are more likely to die due to the cultural denial of male eating disorders. Anxiety-related disorders have been amplified during the pandemic, and those with eating disorders may be reverting to harmful behaviors to gain a sense of control.

My eating disorder began when I was 12 and landed me in the hospital by age 16. At 18, I was firmly in the beginning stages of my recovery, though it’s important to note that recovery is not a linear process with a fixed endpoint but a process with ups and downs. Most everyone who has received treatment for an eating disorder is aware of the therapeutic conversations that surround big holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter: These holidays all center around food. That’s not unusual by any stretch; where people gather, they often break bread. What rarely exists in treatment, however, is a conscious awareness around Jewish holidays that center eating differently.

It’s one thing to have your mom looking over your shoulder making sure you fill your plate. It’s another to be religiously obligated to fast for a holy day, when fasting is exactly what you need to avoid.

Before my habits became public to my family and health care professionals, I would fast every year for Yom Kippur. As a child, I’d been difficult, always feeling there was much for which I had to atone. Later, in the thick of my eating disorder, it was an opportunity to restrict for a day without excuses or sleight of hand. Traditionally, you don’t have to fast until you’ve been a bar or bat mitzvah and are seen as an “adult” in the eyes of God. This usually falls around puberty, which is an unfortunate coincidence regarding eating disorder risk periods.

Once my eating disorder became public to my close family, at age 16, the conversation about Yom Kippur became all the more relevant. My overprotective mother immediately and adamantly said “No fasting!” She was right in doing so, and while I knew I shouldn’t — and couldn’t — disagree, I still felt like it was a copout. It’s not like every other girl my age hadn’t struggled with thoughts of frustration and sadness when it came to their body, I told myself, and they weren’t skipping the fast. A few years of unhealthy choices and suddenly I’m exempt for life? It didn’t seem right.

Children, elders and the ill are free from fasting. Those of us with eating disorders in our histories aren’t mutually exclusive to any of those categories. For me, that meant I needed more than a “well, babies don’t fast either” brushoff when I asked why I shouldn’t. Ultimately, Yom Kippur is a holiday about selfreflection and solitude, and I didn’t want to miss out on that. The point, as I’d always assumed, was kind of that you’re made to suffer, and in that suffering lies redemption.

But since then, I’ve come to realize several key things through my years of recovery regarding Yom Kippur, and what it means not to fast: 1. It’s a day for self-reflection, meaning that what everyone else is doing with their bodies in relation to their faith is none of your concern, and your eating habits should likewise be none of theirs (provided said eating habits are not causing you bodily harm). 2. The way to atonement is not through pain, and punishing your body has nothing to do with redemption. My belief is that God wants each of us healthy and kind to ourselves, and when you are engaged in disordered behaviors, you’re not being either. 3. In terms of atonement, Yom Kippur is a day not only for thinking about your actions, but how your actions have affected others. When engaged in your eating disorder, you are thinking of yourself. This is an uncomfortable thought, since so many with this disease are peoplepleasers and accommodators, but in practice, it has truth. So think instead of your family, of those who love you and want you healthy and alive, and practice love for them by nurturing your own body.

Yom Kippur, more than being a Day of Atonement, is a day for setting goals and sealing fates for the coming year. If you are suffering or have suffered from an eating disorder, rather than repenting through the act of not eating, repent by giving your body and soul the sustenance they had once been denied. Ask your body’s forgiveness, and more than anything, try to forgive yourself.

Punishment and atonement are not the same; what I had assumed about the role of fasting was incorrect. Yom Kippur is not at all about suffering — it is about apologizing. I used to spend the day, and much of my life, apologizing to others. Now that I am healthy, on the Day of Atonement, I apologize to myself.

If you or someone you know is suffering from an eating disorder, you can call (800) 931-2237 for help, or visit nationaleatingdisorders.org.

This article originally appeared on Alma, a sister site of JTA. (Sarah Simone (she/her) in 2020 was a student at the University of Colorado Boulder studying English literature, Jewish studies, and peace and conflict studies. She is involved with the restorative justice community in Boulder and is interested in applying restorative techniques wherever possible to build a more just world.)

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Sukkot’s Message Is Essential During Our Climate Crisis

By Esti Shapiro

(JTA) -- Growing up in the temperamental weather of Denver, Colorado, it was not at all unusual to experience rain, high winds, heat waves or even snow on Sukkot, the Jewish harvest festival that typically falls in September or October. Some years even saw all of these dramatic weather conditions over the course of the weeklong holiday. This always made the exercise of building a sukkah, a temporary and fragile structure to “dwell” in for the week, feel all the more absurd.

Yet Sukkot has always been my favorite holiday. At its core, the exercise of building and being in a sukkah is one of both trust and humility. While we try our best to construct a sukkah that is stable, we don’t go to extraordinary lengths to fortify it; impermanence and fragility are a feature, not a flaw. We design our sukkah to be easily disassembled and reassembled each year, often replacing materials such as the natural roof, or schach, with time. This annual ritual of (re)construction is also a celebratory moment, an opportunity to acknowledge the cyclical nature of Jewish time and life.

When I was in architecture school, we learned about the Ise Jingu Shrine in Japan, which has been ritually deconstructed and reconstructed on two alternating sites every 20 years for over a thousand years. This practice is designed explicitly to preserve the knowledge of traditional Japanese wood joinery techniques and craft as well as the physical condition of the structure itself. In designing something to be temporary, and crafting it out of renewable materials (in this case lumber grown in vast forests surrounding the site of the shrine), a far greater permanence is achieved. Ultimately the ritual lasts much longer than any building or structure constructed only once, regardless of how impenetrably it was designed, can.

The similarities and shared wisdom of this shrine and the sukkah are evident. These examples of ancient construction knowledge and ritual run counter to everything else we think we know about architecture. We tend to think of construction as an exercise in dominance over the environment, an attempt to protect ourselves from the natural forces of weather and erosion.

But the impulse to build bigger, stronger, more monumental and longer-lasting structures is one of the most direct and harmful contributors to our current climate crisis. Today, concrete is the most widely used construction material globally, accounting for approximately 8% of carbon emissions worldwide. More broadly, nearly 40% of global carbon emissions are a result of building construction and operation. The combative attitude that most of our structures express toward the environment is quite literally destroying it in real time at this very moment.

Conversely, on Sukkot we acknowledge that no construction endeavor is ever so enduring. We recognize uncertainty and vulnerability as fundamental to the human experience. We do not allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking that building something strong enough to resist the weather outside makes us impervious to the more pervasive element of time. A sukkah does not attempt to resist these conditions; it tenuously embraces them. It is in this very act of humility, in recognizing the need for continuous rebuilding, that the ritual remains enduring. There are few structures in the world older than the practice of building sukkahs on this week of each year.

When I teach about Sukkot to my religious school students, we talk about leaving our homes for the fragility of the sukkah as a metaphor for venturing outside of our comfort zones. The vulnerability of the holiday challenges each of us to leave what we know — what is easy — for an opportunity for growth. I would argue that this is an urgent and timely lesson, not just for Jewish people, and not just this week.

The reality of climate change is that it will make almost all of us a whole lot less comfortable over the coming years and decades. With unprecedented forest fires, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters across the United States and world, our current condition is requiring us to drastically reconsider the ways we live and interact with our environment

Acting with humility and acknowledging our vulnerability may mean accepting a broader range of temperatures as “comfortable” on our thermostats or resisting the convenience of personal car ownership. More importantly, however, this will require us to act not just as individuals but as a collective through policy and structural change to resist the tendencies of human ego toward building bigger and stronger and more destructive societies.

On Sukkot, and all year, we should remember that endurance is achieved not through material monumentality, but through the much more nebulous constructions of the social: tradition, interpersonal connection, ritual, and celebration.

So this year, when I bundle up in extra layers and blankets to brave a brisk autumn evening for a holiday dinner, I will take an extra moment to appreciate the insight of our ancestors. As I take in the familiar sound of wood-framed canvas walls gently swaying, the smell of pine branch schach overhead, and the glimpse of a full moon through its needles, I will consider how our tradition has always recognized the means to a healthy, livable, harmonious, and enduring, if uncertain, future. (Esti Shapiro is a designer and writer, trained as an architect, as well as a religious school teacher.)

This article originally appeared on Alma, a sister site of JTA.

Credit: (tovfla/iStock/Getty Images)

To all of my friends in the Jewish Community: Please accept my best wishes for a Happy New Year

Good luck and kindest regards,

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