Un-dainty fat Jewish daughter: Jewish mothers’ racialized disgust, and embodied recognition across racial difference

ABSTRACT

This analytical and exo-autoethnography begins with a depiction of how my Jewish family wished to control my fat body to fit into whiteness. I close with a narrative about an interracial and transnational relationship in which I experienced embodied recognition across racial difference. The purpose is to illustrate the broader intersections between Jewish women’s fatness, associations with blackness, internalized antisemitism, assimilation into whiteness, and the links between the African and Jewish diasporas. Jewish mothers frequently critique their daughters’ bodies to try to assimilate into white femininity. Internalized gendered antisemitism creates disgust for one’s own body that is passed down to daughters. My mom wanted me to have a private pride in being Jewish that she could not access because of her gender, but did not want my Jewishness to physically mark me. Historically Jewish women have been associated with fatness, blackness, vulgarity, and lack of femininity. Collective recognition and acceptance of fat bodies across racial difference is possible through the connections between the Jewish and African diasporas and the challenge to white-centric beauty norms within Black communities.

KEYWORDS:

• African diaspora
• autoethnography
• blackness
• fatness
• internalized gendered antisemitism
• Jewish mothers and daughters

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Cisgender means that my gender identity aligns with the sex I was assigned at birth. This term is the opposite of the term transgender.

2. The Reform movement is a progressive denomination of Judaism developed in the 19^th century in Germany, emphasizing assimilation into the “modern” culture Jews occupied through a reformation of traditional religious practices (such as keeping kosher and observing Shabbat) and a focus on working toward social justice within the communities in which Jews live(d) (Englander 2020).

3. This ceremony is the female equivalent of the boy’s bar mitzvah (when a Jewish boy symbolically becomes a man at age thirteen). “Bat” means “daughter” while “bar” means “son.” Traditionally, Jewish girls’ transition into adulthood was not marked in the synagogue because “women had no part in the public reading of the Torah except as listeners, segregated in the women’s gallery.” The creation of the bat mitzvah was linked to the Reform desire for assimilation; male leaders feared that limited roles for women in traditional Judaism led outsiders to think that Jews were not Westernized and were instead “orientals.” In 1953, thirty-five percent of Reform congregations offered girls this opportunity. By the 1970s, through Jewish feminism, every American Jewish denomination adopted the bat mitzvah (Hyman 2009).

4. This camp was affiliated with the UAHC (Union of American Hebrew Congregations), now the Union for Reform Judaism.

5. NFTY, the North American Federation of Temple Youth, the youth arm of the Reform movement

6. This is a Yiddish term meaning full, round, plump.

7. I met Jair while studying abroad in Northeastern Brazil in 2003. We applied for several visas for him to come to the U.S., including a fiancé visa. He was rejected every time. Our romantic relationship ended in 2009, but we still remain friends.

8. A racialized term of endearment meaning “my little Black girl”

9. Bahia is a state in northeastern Brazil where the majority of the population is of African descent.

10. In the Brazilian context, the term “negro” is more politically radical than the term “preto” that literally means “black.”

11. She was the head priestess at the Gantois temple in Salvador; mãe means “mother” in Portuguese.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Florida International University [Dissertation Year Fellowship 2017-2018]; The Reed Foundation [Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund Grant 2016-2017].

Notes on contributors

Abby Gondek

Abby Gondek is the Morgenthau Scholar-in-Residence at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum and the Roosevelt Institute. She utilizes digital humanities resources to raise awareness of the Holocaust-related collections held at the FDR library. Her research especially focuses on Jewish women’s involvement in the U.S. government’s response to the Holocaust.