Oneiron

culture were visible in our day-to-day life. Dominant in my family were an ethos of success and a culture of glorifying wealth, which suffuse the entire American intellectual landscape. My father worked long hours in the book-printing industry. My mother was an overprotective, food-plying, loud-mouthed guardian spirit of the home who was one hundred percent focused on the family’s welfare. Rather dominating, sometimes smothering, according to my brother maybe even emasculating. So the prototypical Jewish mother.

For myself, I felt that my mother’s solicitude wasn’t entirely honest. There was always a touch of martyrdom, a sacrificial mentality that a child senses clearly even without understanding it. The hand ladling out the food is simultaneously unsympathetic. A finger is outstretched in accusation: Eat, little one, eat, devour the last remnants of your mother’s strength!

My father was completely ignorant of the power games my mother played. Maybe he was pretending; maybe subconsciously he benefited from the situation. In the evenings, after returning from work, he walked straight to the table and tucked into whatever meal was served. Me he considered ungrateful and headstrong because early on I began reacting to the tensions in the home by refusing meals.

*

I’ve been a prisoner of anorexia since I was a teenager. I don’t blame my mother for my disease—that would be so 1970s!—and I also don’t blame my father. My siblings are healthy even though they grew up in the same environment I did and were exposed to the same contradictory signals as me.

Rather, I’m convinced that I have a genetic predisposition to the seductions of the siren song of not eating. If this predisposition didn’t exist, I would have channeled my negative feelings into something else. I could have danced myself to freedom like my brother did. He became a successful choreographer.

I recovered from my disease briefly when I fell in love. Once again a very typical story. I got married, we moved to Israel to a kibbutz named Methuselah, and we had two children. That lasted the biblical seven years. Then everything fell apart. I returned to New York alone, and hunger furtively began to call to me.

I’ve done OK with my anorexia. Deep inside I knew as soon as I returned from Israel that one day I would have a true reckoning with this demon. I would have to descend into the depths of my disease and grub up its putrid roots; and my contention is that the principle branches are found in Judaism.

That day is now.

In order to heal, for a moment I give my body completely to the beloved beast, to the torturously pleasurable compulsion not to eat. I will look straight into its luminous, ice cold eyes and then: Goodbye.

Now is the moment I strike it down, here, as I speak to you.

One more thing before I move on to the actual topic. Don’t be concerned about my health. In just over an hour, I’ll be admitted to a private hospital. An ambulance is waiting for me outside. When I return from treatment, I’ll be a new person, no longer Shlomith-Shkhina. I’ll be as I was born. After tonight, please greet me as Sheila Ruth Berkowitz.

*

I begin with the indisputable fact that Jewish women suffer from anorexia and other eating disorders on average more than the general population. Although only two percent of the United States population is Jewish,¹ as many as thirteen percent of eating disorder clinic patients are Jews.²

Strictly observant Jews have been particularly affected since at least the 1970s.³ In recent years, anorexia among teenage girls in the Orthodox community has absolutely exploded. One study of a Brooklyn Orthodox Jewish high school discovered that one in nineteen Jewish girls suffered from some kind of eating disorder. This figure is fifty percent higher than among other American girls of the same age.⁴

A similar study is underway in the Toronto Jewish community. According to initial results, twenty-five percent of the high-school-age girls in the community have suffered from an eating disorder, while the corresponding percentage in the general population is eighteen percent.

In Israel, more than one in four women diets. That’s the highest figure in the world. Israeli Jewish women, regardless of their degree of religiosity, are significantly less satisfied with their bodies than Arab women.⁵

In order to avoid accusations of defamation, let me also mention that research results also exist that suggest that eating disorders are more common among secular Jews than the religious. Jewish Law emphasizes modesty and humility, which in some cases can be a protective factor when it comes to eating disorders.⁶

According to Jewish thought, humanity is the image of God. The concept of shmirat ha-guf means the protection of the body (proper nutrition, staying in shape, and avoiding risks). Anorexia, on the contrary, always represents rebellion, hubris, and excess. Anorexia is a startling manifesto against the prevailing environment. So we must assume that when an Orthodox Jew falls into the snare of anorexia, it happens innocently, as a result of the greatest and most powerful sort of self-deception.

Viewed from this perspective, it’s no wonder that the use of laxatives and diuretics, along with vomiting, all of which are active and aggressive weight control techniques that break the principles of shmirat ha-guf, are most common among secular Jews.⁷ On the other hand, Jews have also been more ready and willing to seek help for their problems than other cultural groups. This has been seen as a consequence not only of their low self-confidence but also because they have a more positive view of the psychiatric profession (with the exception of the most traditional Orthodox Jews).⁸ You may also know the saying that the Jewish imagination is paranoia, confirmed by history. Self-investigation and self-criticism, not to mention black humor, are a part of our culture, and all these things are excellent qualities in terms of successful therapy.

Jewish communities have also awoken to the need to help their own. One American Reform Jewish women’s group has compiled a handbook and course material packet named “Letapeah tikva—Let’s Feed