Sermons

Shabbat Bereshit 5786.

You can watch Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read it below

There are all kinds of soft markers of growing older:

Your bat mitzvah

Every time you jump an age category on an online form

The first time someone mentions the word ‘varifocal’

And when the clothes that you wore as a teenager come back into fashion again

I guess I find myself in that latter category, watching ultra low rise jeans, crochet scarf tops and those coin belts that go over layers of tank tops but don't seem to belt anything come back around. 

It's not just the clothes that have come back into fashion, but the body trends too - and in particular the jutting exposed hip bones that lead to headlines like ‘Is 'hip cleavage' the next major fashion trend?’ and ‘Hottest Fashion Trend Is The Exposed Pelvis: Ultra low-rise waistlines for the win’. 

We don’t usually use the bimah to talk about fashion and we have a pretty principled stance here in the shul leadership that we don’t talk about people’s bodies at all, but at some point over the last month or so I realised I’d had too many individual conversations with members on the same topic and dealing with the same very serious questions to ignore the fact that what happens out there at the edges of fashion is part of a wider social picture that's having very real ramifications close to home. 

It’s not just our teens, who are facing the pressures of unforgiving and exposing clothes that are designed to suit a very particular and very narrow image of an acceptable body, it’s just it's often easier to talk about teenagers because we all know how to express care for young people and feel some kind of paternalistic licence to do so. My conversations have not just been with teenagers, they've been with adults about how difficult it is to live in an adult body in 2025.

We are supposedly at the end of what observers have called the ‘body positivity era’. Bodies have always been part of fashion trends- from the 18th and century when curves were seen to be a sign of wealth to Twiggy in the 60s and Kate Moss in the 90s. For the past decade or so there was a very serious reckoning with the role that images of beauty played on people's emotional and physical health. A reckoning with diet culture and a whole industry built on plans that promise everything, trade on low self esteem, make money out of people’s insecurities, deliver in the short term and fail in the long term, and thus ultimately profit from creating an endless culture of dissatisfaction. The big brands collapsed. Weightwatchers rebranded then went bankrupt. 

And for a while I noticed people reflecting on how grateful they were that they and their children were growing up with a different vocabulary, seeing diverse models in adverts and being able to purchase collections for different body sizes and accessible clothing for disabilities. Fashion isn’t just about clothes, it's about the cultural zeitgeist, it becomes a place where wider political conversations and economic trends are projected. You may have heard the famous correlation between hemlines and economic prosperity. As a recent NYT article commented that alongside the global ‘war on wokeness, its fashion expression, including diversity of size, is under pressure. A retreat to the most conservative and traditional approach for showcasing clothes means a retreat to old-fashioned stereotypes of beauty. And that generally translates to homogenous, largely white and thin models, despite the fact that such body types are not representative of the fashion-buying population at large.’

The other thing at play of course is the availability of effective and accessible weight loss medications which changed things for many people- especially those with the medical conditions that they were designed and licensed for.
 

I care deeply about the individual and often very painful struggles people face when trying to do the best they can for their health. When people make health choices they often do create change inside that others might notice in a physical change to our exterior. Jewish tradition encourages us to treasure the vessels that we are given to live in, and taking care of our health is part of that. Every person has the right and responsibility to make their own health choices and decisions with their doctor about what is right for their body. If you’re sitting here worried that this is about to be a rant at you in particular I promise you that’s not the case, plenty of people are making choices that feel right and uncomplicated for them and if that’s you and it works for you its not for me or anyone to comment on that any more than any other health choice!

The concern I have is not about health choices, but rather about the changes people feel pressured to make to their outsides based not on health but on the desire to look a specific way. The outside-in changes. When moralistic overtones enter the conversation, we experience a shifting sense that having a ‘good’ or conforming body equals success, and something else means failure. 

We are in a totally different era as a result of these medications, and the social pressures that have emerged around this are causing some real challenges for many in our community. Not only are we talking about expensive subscriptions and a fear of rebound that has people locked in and struggling to manage the costs, but also about the culture of comparison and dissatisfaction that mass use of these drugs foments. It’s this pressure that is causing people to enter incorrect information online to access prescriptions, and creating a difficult climate for many people.

A member who I spoke to while writing this sermon reflected on how hard it is to not view other people’s choices as a commentary on your own body and how difficult it is to resist peer pressure when it feels like everyone around you is shrinking. It’s having a big impact on our teenage girls who are grappling with their own bodies developing to look like their mothers' very ordinary adult bodies, just as their mothers are expressing their dissatisfaction with their own bodies and opting for a medical solution. 

This is where its not personal at all, its about the society and the systems we are all part of, the language we use around the Kiddush table and at the school gates, in Whataspp groups, and out shopping with friends, as we cook in our kitchens and as we get dressed with our children around. It’s about culture and about what motivates the choices we make, the norms we seek, and the images we value. 

I spoke to our member Hannah Jacobi, an amazing personal trainer who trains people free from diets and diet culture and she reflected on the trends we’re seeing and the impact they’re having on people…

She said:

‘We forget that wellness is meant to make people feel well, not worse about themselves. Our bodies are not trends, our bodies are stories, of our parents, of our lives. They are our home, our one home and if we spend our lives at war with the body we call home, we are at risk of ruining its foundations entirely. The current rise in GLP-1's and re-popularisation of thinness has also led to a spike in eating disorder referrals and many other serious health complications but it also speaks to a larger societal problem, one that seeks to keep people, mainly women, small and conforming. 

 

Food and exercise have no moral value, they don't have the ability to make us a good or bad person. They are vehicles to help us live our lives bigger and better. My clients train with me not to spend hours punishing themselves for eating a jaffa cake, but instead so they can run after their grandchildren into their 90s or climb the stairs unaided. These are the things that make our lives richer.’

Hannah made me reflect on the fact that of all the funerals and shivas and memorials I've had the privilege to be a part of, I've never heard anyone say ‘I loved him because he was thin’ or ‘I didn't love swimming with my mum because of her cellulite’. But those are the feelings that have the power to dictate people’s daily choices about where they allow their body to take them, and how worthy and loved they feel.

In the Torah we read today, the creation stories and our foundational narrative we’re reminded that humans are created in god’s image. In her book, Every Body Beloved, Rabbi Minna Bromberg reminds us that:

‘From these deepest mythic roots flows the assurance of our birthright: every single one of us is of immeasurable, unconditional worth; each of us is unique; our humanity is not something we have to earn; we are called to be partners with God in the ongoing work of creation; and we are all deserving of basic respect and care.’

On the day that humans are created God doesn’t just look at creation and say it's good which is what is said for all the other days, but rather chooses to describe creation as ‘tov m’od’, very good. Noticeably, it doesn't say humans who look a specific way are good, or humans who meet a particular social standard are good, or humans with bodies that behave as they want them to are good, it just says humans were created in gods image and it was very good. 

Life writes stories across our physical forms, and many of those we are not in the driving seat.

'You’re looking great, ozempic?' Someone asked at kiddush. 'No,' the person replied, 'my husband has terminal cancer.' 

Focusing on how those bodies look through the lens of their conformity to size and aesthetic standards flattens the human experience and causes all kinds of unnecessary harm. It’s hard enough for people to get themselves out of the house and into public space without the sometimes crippling fear that comes with our own consciousness of our physical forms. 

It feels to me that as we embark on this new cycle of Torah we could all do with the reminder that all bodies are good bodies

Bodies withered by metastasis

Bodies swollen from life sustaining steroids

Bodies that change as they grow life

Bodies that eb and flow in the quest to become a parent

Bodies hollowed by loss

Bodies forgotten in times of stress

Bodies that we learn to love again during recovery

Bodies that shrink with the gift of age

Bodies that stretch in the awkwardness of adolescence

Bodies that don’t move the way they used to

Bodies that carry the signatures of those who came before us and gave us their genes

And bodies that remind us of people we’d rather not be reminded of

Unruly bodies, human bodies. All created in the image of God, and all challenging us to see blessing in the potential they gift the person who travels through life in their shell. 

When we set boundaries at shul- and some of you will know the clergy can be quite militant about shutting body or diet centric conversations down when they occur -  we’re doing so because we’re so acutely aware that appearance is a terrible measure of anything, but an extremely present force in social life. As we gather together to eat at Kiddush we see people who might be having their only meal of the day eating with people for whom allowing themselves a pastry is a milestone in their eating disorder recovery alongside people who are grappling with all kinds of illnesses and restrictions. 

And so we set a boundary that keeps everyone in ‘we just don’t talk about diets and the way bodies look around here’. In our offices because you’re looking for pastoral support, absolutely, with your friends when you and they consent to share, for sure, but at Kiddush and over a cake at Betty’s or at a Chavurah supper, let’s pick a more interesting and inclusive conversation. 

And here in shul let’s sanctify:

Blessed are You, Adonai our God

Who forms the human body with wisdom

And creates within it a miraculous combination

Of organs and arteries, tissues and sinews.

It is known before Your throne of glory

That if one of these were to be open where it should be closed

Or closed where it should be open

We would not be able to stand before you and offer praises.

Blessed are You, Adonai, creator of embodied miracles!