Foreword to the special section: Jews, race, and fatness

Abstract

ABSTRACT This foreword on Jews, race and fatness establishes an historical context in which to understand the articles included in the special section. Typically, discussion of Jewishness, race and fatness focus on the male Jewish body. However, racial definitions of Jewishness depend upon imagery of the fat Jewish woman who is supposedly vulgar, unfeminine, lustful and associated with blackness. A predominant theme within writing about Jewish women, race and fatness is that Jewish women (mothers) have attempted to control “Jewish wildness” to achieve assimilation into whiteness and distance from blackness, through strict adherence to white-centric beauty norms and diet culture. Some Jewish mothers’ racialized disgust for their own bodies and the bodies of their children (daughters) continues to impact Jewish embodied self-perceptions into the present, challenging the assumption that Jewish assimilation into whiteness is complete. The fat Jewish woman’s body is central to the struggle both toward and against assimilation. Jewish women, in their struggle against this forced assimilation, have been central to fat liberation. The contributors to this special section use autoethnography to contest this internalized gendered antisemitism and reclaim the embodied power of fatness, Jewishness and blackness. They repurpose Jewish philosophies in new ways, make and eat bread (challah), oppose diet culture through Fat Torah, embrace “Jewish wildness” and seek embodied recognition across racial difference. Jewish traditions already include the philosophies necessary to move beyond fat acceptance to advocate for fat liberation.