From Narrowness to Freedom (with Rabbi Minna Bromberg, PhD)

As we usher in the secular new year and vow to go to the gym and be a nicer person for nine days, one resolution to consider is recommitting to shmita, which began on Rosh Hashanah.

There’s an old joke that summarizes Jewish holidays: “Someone tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat!” But despite the ways in which Jewish food culture is rich, delicious and full of meaning and tradition, Jewish spaces aren’t exempt from mainstream — and often harmful — attitudes about diets, size and how the way someone’s body looks determines their worth in a community.

Rabbi Minna Bromberg was at a Chanukah party at her daughter’s gan, where everyone was invited to eat sufganiyot. When the song leader told the room, which was full of two- to five-year-olds and their parents of all sizes, that they should get back to dancing unless they’ve gotten too fat from all those sufganiyot, Bromberg was aghast.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Rabbi Minna Bromberg’s work addressing weight stigma in Jewish communal spaces took her to a lot of synagogues. She was often bewildered when organizers provided her a chair that was too small. Getting people to acknowledge her body and their discomfort with it is one reason she founded Fat Torah a year ago.

For over three decades, Rabbi Minna Bromberg has rooted her work as a fat-liberation activist in the wisdom of the Torah.

Containing Multitudes with Joy Ladin

A new wave of activists advocates for legal and cultural change.