Who you calling fat?

By Rabbi Tzvee Zahavy February 7, 2014, 5:00 am Edit

Tzvee Zahavy of Teaneck has worked as professor of Jewish studies, religious studies, advanced Talmud, halacha, Jewish law codes, and Jewish liturgy, at major U.S. research universities and seminaries. He has published numerous articles and books about Judaism and Jewish life. He received his Ph.D. from Brown University and his rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University. Go to www.tzvee.com for details.

I take issue with my rabbinic colleague’s opinion in “Are husbands responsible for their wives becoming overweight?” (February 24). Rabbinic ordination does not give someone the right to presume that overweight people are unattractive or unsexy or to mock them in a newspaper column, or even in a private conversation.

Further, I do not agree with what the rabbi suggests – that a person engage in insincere compliments or flattery, and that those compliments would be an effective mode of improving a relationship or of motivating weight loss.

I am a person who has been fat at times during my life and now I am much trimmer. I can tell the rabbi that being trimmer is better for my health. But even when a person is fat he or she can be attractive, sexy, and romantic. And most people can see right through false flattery. It doesn’t work.

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