#66 - Unpacking Diet Culture in the Jewish Community with Asher M. Seruya

This week, just in time for Passover, we’re talking to Asher M. Seruya, LMSW, a gender-queer social worker, psychotherapist, and illustrator specializing in trauma-informed care, weight-stigma, and eating disorder recovery. They have a special focus within their eating disorder work on Jewish identity, neurodivergent conditions, fatness, and queerness. Asher also co-hosts the podcast, Kvetching on the Couch, a podcast about Jewish mental health. 

We had an amazing conversation with Asher about...

• The complicated & unique Jewish relationship to food
• How diets & diet culture can be attempts at assimilation & safety in marginalized communities 
• The pressure of white eurocentric beauty standards & media representation of Jews
• How anti-Blackness informs antisemitism & the conditional white privilege of Jewishness
• The importance of bringing a Jewish lens to eating disorder recovery & body liberation spaces
• The antisemitism in anti-diet spaces
• And how reconnecting to our identities can help us heal.

You can find Asher's work on their website at ashermseruya.com or on Instagram at @badashtherapy.

Stay in touch with the pod on IG @satisfactionfactorpod!

And here's where you can continue to find us:
Sadie Simpson: www.sadiesimpson.com or IG @sadiemsimpson
Naomi Katz: www.happyshapes.co or IG @happyshapesnaomi