Min­na Bromberg, author of Every Body Beloved: A Jew­ish Embrace of Fat­ness, is the founder of Fat Torah, an orga­ni­za­tion whose goals include con­nect­ing with sacred text, tra­di­tion, and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty to fos­ter body lib­er­a­tion for peo­ple of all sizes. The writ­ing of Every Body Beloved is an exten­sion of this mission. 

The book is struc­tured through mem­o­ries and essays in addi­tion to inter­spersed per­son­al let­ters from the author to peo­ple from her past who act­ed in fat­pho­bic ways and whom she wants to con­front with her con­cerns. In one let­ter, she address­es con­gre­gants at a Yom Kip­pur ser­vice who would not move to let her through the aisle and instead expect­ed her to take a more incon­ve­nient route down the stairs with her young chil­dren in tow. Bromberg express­es frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment in the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty for a lack of acces­si­bil­i­ty and kind­ness in places that are sup­posed to be com­fort­ing and com­mu­ni­ty oriented. 

Despite her frus­tra­tions, Bromberg has a strong con­nec­tion to her Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, and her book often moves from per­son­al sto­ries to bib­li­cal midrash about full­ness after famine and free­dom after slav­ery. Just like Miri­am encour­ages oth­ers to sing prais­es to God, Bromberg states, “ … my aim is to strive to be like Miri­am: using my voice to bring oth­ers into song. My hope is that open­ing my mouth in shar­ing my fat free­dom song — my own jour­ney toward a world that embraces fat­ness — will encour­age oth­ers to lift their voic­es as well.”

Bromberg refers to her­self as ​“fat” and uses this word in an empow­er­ing way to claim part of her iden­ti­ty. She writes, ​“Using the word ​‘fat’ to describe our own bod­ies lays claim to our right, as human beings cre­at­ed in the image of God, to deter­mine what fat and fat­ness mean.” She describes the strug­gles with body image that she had as a child and teenag­er, and reflects on the com­pli­cat­ed, neg­a­tive views so many of us have with our bod­ies. Bromberg express­es the impor­tance of lov­ing our bod­ies, no mat­ter their size, and avoid­ing spend­ing so much of our time wish­ing we were thin­ner or suf­fer­ing from a neg­a­tive self-image. Instead, we should make room for all bod­ies in all spaces, espe­cial­ly Jew­ish spaces. One exam­ple that Bromberg dis­cuss­es in detail is the size and stur­di­ness of chairs avail­able dur­ing events in order to ensure that every­one has space to exist comfortably. 

Bromberg recounts var­i­ous exam­ples of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als mak­ing assump­tions about her health based on her appear­ance while dis­re­gard­ing her actu­al con­cerns. She writes about her lack of desire for pur­su­ing inten­tion­al weight loss but that doc­tors often tell her she needs to lose weight with­out men­tion­ing any spe­cif­ic con­cerns about how her size might be impact­ing her health nor how to actu­al­ly lose weight in a way that’s ​“proven to be safe and effec­tive in the long term.” These dis­cour­ag­ing expe­ri­ences with doc­tors and in Jew­ish and oth­er pub­lic spaces prompt read­ers to think anew about what acces­si­bil­i­ty means for peo­ple of all sizes, and how we can work toward cre­at­ing a more inclu­sive, accom­mo­dat­ing society.