Eat the Pain Before the Pain Consumes You
FreiFem2011A long long time ago, at one point during the bad times, after my family kicked me out but before I had landed on my feet, I developed a coping strategy to deal with the blizzard of trauma and sorrow I was living through:
Eat the pain before the pain consumes you.
I could put away three boston crèmes, two jelly and a sprinkle donut in one sitting. A full kakush cake. A party size bag of potato chips. The food went in, stuffing back the hurt, pressing it down, like a manhole cover on a geyser. I even developed a technique, to maximize the amount of bingeing I could do at once:
Sweet, Salty, Milk, Water, Book
Take a box of sandwich cookies, a large bag of corn chips, a big cup of water and an Agatha Christie novel. Begin to read. Meanwhile, open a sandwich cookie, scrape the icing off with your teeth, dunk the hard shells in milk until they’re soggy and let them melt on your tongue. Repeat until ill. Then drink some water. Your blood will be roiling with sugar, so open the chips and begin to snap them between your teeth, one at a time. The salt will calm you down. When you’re sick of chips, have some water and switch back to the cookies. Repeat until all boxes and bags are emptied. Keep reading all the while, so you barely register the mounting sickness and shame. Keep reading all the while, so you only notice the numbing pleasure of food piled on food piled on food, that keeps the pain at bay.
I was still a member of the religious community at this point. Ostracized by my family, I still tried to fit in. I lived with religious people in a religious neighborhood, worked with religious people, was friends with religious people. I still believed in god and kept shabbos and kosher. I wanted nothing more than to marry a religious man and start a family. So of course, I couldn’t just binge. Because, if you want to get married in the religious world, it’s a lot better idea to be cruel, stupid and leprosy-ridden, than a chubby girl.
So I starved. Periodically. The first day would be the toughest, the withdrawal from sugar, from food, excruciating, every moment hungry and never-ending. The second day was also difficult. By the time the third day or the fourth day came around I felt emptier, happier, uninterested in food. If I could make it to five or six days on water alone, then I’d feel like an angel, so light, I’d float inches off the ground, so righteous in my self-discipline, so sparkle-brained in my starving delirium.
I wasn’t, at that point, a typical frum girl, but my problem was borrowed from the thousands and thousands of religious young women who were dealing with the same thing, deeper in the religious community.
On the surface, the problem seems to be about an emphasis on Hollywood-approved appearance, which is so cruelly hypocritical to the messages of modesty that any religious girl is suffocated with. Or it could be about the pressures these young women have to marry young and well, produce many children, and still hold down jobs. Or Post-Holocaust-era stereotypes about Jewish mamas and food. A surprising New York Times article this week discusses this phenomena of food disorders among women in the religious world, and suggests these potential causes.
But there is a deeper truth underlying this epidemic, that the NYTimes reporter can only begin to glimpse in that hidden community:
In a world where a woman’s reality is defined by ‘modesty’, obedience, conformity, and enslavement to the men in her world, oppressed into a silence so absolute she doesn’t even have the sounds to resist it, anorexia and bulimia and other food disorders are natural outcomes. Without words to speak, without people to listen, the only vehicles of communication becomes one’s body, with which one has a silent dialogue of all the things one can’t say out loud and that noone wants to hear.
In truth, the “ultra-orthodox community” is composed of many many different sub-groups. Did you see evidence of food disorders in your community of origin? If yes, why do you think they developed? How do you think this “western” prejudice for thin women was internalized by such an outsider-resistant group?
5 Responses
Though I may not have shared your cravings for jelly doughnuts and kakash cake, I can certainly sympathize and identify with the addictive and self destructive behavior. I spent quiet a few years in spiritual (12 step) groups that sought to get to the bottom of those behavior patterns, and the most important lesson I learned in my discovery process is that pointing the finger at others to justify or explain my issues is not only a fruitless exercise, but its also detrimental. I truly sympathize with whatever terrible experiences you may have went through in life, I myself haven’t had the easiest life; yet blaspheming traditional Judaism and slandering orthodox Jews wouldn’t have gotten me very far, and I highly doubt it will get you further than a few skinhead sympathizers.
I am glad this issue is being talked about. It was only after “leaving” the community did I realize how unhealthy the food habits and attitudes really were. When I was part of that world I always struggled with food. Being “curvy” just didn’t seem tznius and I longed for a stick thin, twelve year old boy shape and desperately wanted my skirts and blouses to drape on me as if hung on a hanger.
I was made to feel awkward for liking meat. “Meat is for the men”, I was told. Salad (no oil, ch”v) and chicken breasts for the girls. I lived in a house where the women would have to sneak to the kitchen or basement to shove food in their mouths. Women would never sit at the table and eat a whole balanced meal. They would pick at their food and then sneak off to shove handfuls of sprinkles or chocolate chips in their mouths.
I would also follow the binge and starve cycle, though I could never quite figure out how to purge and could never get my hands on ipecac (oh, I tried). Feeling the after shabbos guilt from eating too much challah, I declared every Sunday “taanis BT Jewess” and my friends would laugh and join in. It was an accepted way to live.
Another issue at play is control. These frum girls are super skilled at controlling every aspect of their lives. They don’t let themselves enjoy, really enjoy, anything. So of course they can’t really savor their food.
After “leaving” I discovered how wonderful food is! It took a while to heal from the obsession with food and bizarre ideas and habits (among all of the other healing I had to do), but I eat everything now and take pleasure in every delicious bite -
E Great: Thank you for your comment. I’m also a huge believer in personal responsibility. However, I don’t think criticism is the same as blasphemy or slander. Blasphemy implies cursing god – I don’t criticize god anywhere in this piece – and slander implies that I lied about something.
I believe, much like the 12 step program, that even victims of terrible circumstances have to take responsibility for their choices, however, at the same time, its also really important to raise awareness about acts of cruelty and harm that are ongoing. Particularly if the perpetrators of those acts are doing their darndest to keep all critics silenced.
BT Jewess: Thank you so much for your thoughtful and raw response. Speaking one’s hidden suffering is such a powerful, brave act. And you remind me (in the way powerful art/writing can for a reader) of a feeling I thought I was the only one that really felt – the shame of developing breasts! How untznius and humiliated I felt I had become, becuase my silhouette was no longer flat and boy-like!
I’m glad to read that you’ve gotten to a place where you can really enjoy food!
As a fellow insider (yes, we are permitted to use the internet for good purposes – jk), I strongly disagree with this article and appreciate E. Great’s insightful comments very much. Blaming others will not help you deal with your mental health issues, and like Rabbi Goldwasser mentioned, through faith one can gain the strength to overcome their mental health challenges.
Blasphemy implies cursing or offending God, religion and or anything else held sacred. Slander implies defamation or a malicious reporting on something or someone. You’ve done both. From what you wrote I do feel that the orthodox Jews that raised you are nothing more than despicable, and I’m sure that the trauma that you must have from growing up with such people must be great. But contrary to how you and many other (bigots) try to portray Orthodox Jews, I have found a great many of them to be kind, simple, and spiritual people. I guess it depends on how you wish to see the glass. It probably also depends on how one deals with their issues, and if they are seeking justification for themselves.
I totally agree with you that there are orthodox Jews that are despicable and a disgrace. I’ve encountered one or two along the way. And for a long time I used them as my yardstick of what Jews were like. I kept those 3 or 4 perverts in my bag and took that bag with me wherever I went, just in case I may need an extra dose of self justification. And if I needed to feel the warmth of self pity’s embrace, than all I’d do is pull one of those Rabbis out of my bag, let my face work itself into a grimace, and god damn everybody.. I finally gathered the courage to put that bag down, and face up to the world and more importantly to myself. It was the most liberating feeling I’ve ever experienced.
I do agree with you that you were critiquing, but I think if you were brutally honest than you would admit that critiquing is probably all you really are interested in doing. I wonder if you would say something nice or complimentary. Besides if your goal in critiquing is to expose and hopefully rid the orthodox community of its derelict constituents (the pedophiles, wife beaters, and those that cause their daughters to starve) than the way to do that is not by inculpating the whole orthodox community, unless of course you would like to see them all go. By mixing the good and the bad together you make it nearly impossible to root out that evil