I am in my forty plus days 0f fasting. I have barricaded the kitchen so I am less tempted. Yesterday I opened the fridge for cool diluted coffee and saw a small half boiled potato in PE wrapping. My dear wife always keeps food remains for ages wrapped in several layers of plastic, till they start smelling, but this was fresh. I stole and ate it. I think never food tasted so sweet, so good. Heavenly.
It reminded me of my Father z"l. He told me his forced labor regiment were retiring back into Hungary from Bor, the copper mine in Serbia where they have been working (some ten thousand Jewish forced labor slaves had been loaned to the Germans) and they were starving but for the Serbian farmers that allowed them to collect potatoes from their fields. My Father said it was very very good. He had sweet memories of baking those potatoes on campfire. He also said that they all the time felt as Yom Kippur.
My Mother also had intimate knowledge of prolonged starvation but I cant ask her. I miss her.
6 comments:
My father said that you think about food constantly when you are hungry. Your posts seem to bear that out.
I don't know what his generation would make of intentional starvation amid plenty. I just heard that the mother of one of my son's high school classmates, a very wealthy woman, starved herself to death.
After the war, my parents both always kept a normal weight, neither fat nor skinny.
K
Probably anorexia nervosa, a type of OCD.
It is aggravated by our stupid advertising industry, which priorises young women who look like stick insects after the winter, and who do not look like normal healthy women should.
I blame the men who run the fashion industry, not being interested in having children.
Anon.
Probably anorexia nervosa, a type of OCD.
It is aggravated by our stupid advertising industry, which priorises young women who look like stick insects after the winter, and who do not look like normal healthy women should.
I blame the men who run the fashion industry, not being interested in having children.
Anon.
Yes, it was anorexia I believe. This disease is often fatal, unlike most forms of mental illness. It has among the highest mortality rates of any disease and it involves voluntarily starving oneself to death amid plenty. Unbelievable, I'm sure my father would say - his will to live was the very opposite. A disease that is perhaps the very symbol of the dead end that Western culture has driven itself into.
I am very thankful that my daughter is not afflicted with this disease - she has precisely the right personality type. Luckily she has channeled her competitive instincts into an athletic activity (fencing) and her coach, whom she respects more than her stupid parents (when you are 15 all parents are stupid) , has even convinced her to give up a vegetarian diet in order to gain strength. Truthfully, I could have conceived of a diet sufficiently high in protein without meat (tofu, whey powder, etc.) but she is a very picky eater and would not have accepted those foods.
K
Fortunately, among morbidly obese old Jews like myself, anorexia is unknown.
What about the 'nervosa'?
Anon.
Post a Comment