Eitz Hayim Kabbalah Centre

Because our bodies are receptacles of our souls, and vessels of God'slight, we must keep them healthy and consider carefully what we put into them.Traditional Jewish thought suggests that we must keep our bodies well for thesake of spiritual pursuits and  in order to fulfill mitzvot, commandments.Today however, a focus on fitness is often seen as vain or improperly secular.

It is interesting to see how far back in our tradition concerns with our physical selves and the balancing of Torah and physical activity can be found.  Already in the Talmud (Shabbat 82a), Rav Huna urges his son Rabbah to study with Rav Hisda. Rabbah resists, saying that Rav Hisda only focuses on secular matters: anatomy and hygiene. Rav Huna admonishes his son, saying, "He speaks of health matters, and you call that secular!" Though some individuals in the Traditional world may value exercise, to say that as a community we do so, either philosophically, or in an organized fashion, would be a stretch.

Indeed, one finds a reluctance to focus on exercise, in part because timeis so limited and time spent on sport is time not spent on Torah study or chesed( good deeds) activity. Although many of us are familiar with Maimonides' long discussions in the Mishnah Torah about the importance of exercise and healthy, measured eating, we rarely take the details of his many recommendations to heart. For example, Maimonides states that a person "should engage one's body and exert oneself in a sweat-producing task each morning." Despite Maimonides'words, this centrality of exercise is simply not part of normative Judaism.

Many of us are also aware of the daily morning tefillah(prayer) that focuses on our health and posture: "Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who straightens the bent." Is this just a metaphor, or would participation in exercise that straightens our bodies so they are not hunched, stooped, bent, or subject to skeletal pain, not help usbe  true to the profound words of our prayer?

Martin Buber recorded a story of Rav Simhah Bunim, of Przysucha, who took very literally the words of our prayer that relate to physical awareness. According to the story, Rav Simhah arrived late for synagogue one Shabbat morning. When asked why he was so late, he quoted from Pesukei  d’zimra, preliminary blessings and psalms (Psalms 35:10), which he had missed reciting because of his lateness: "All my bones shall say, who is like You,God?" How then, Rav Simhah asked, could he come to pray before his bones were all awake?

Most likely, we view the words of Psalms that Rav Simhah quoted in a metaphorical sense. However, anyone who has done yoga, or any type of intensive physical activity, knows that awakening our bones need not be simply a metaphorical act. It can be profoundly physical as well as mental, and these realms connect to the spiritual. Nowhere am I more mindful of how much yoga has awakened my bones, lengthened my spine, and grounded my stance than when I stand and prepare to say the Amidah.

In the twentieth century, Rav Kook went much further in connecting physical and spiritual health. He claimed that physical health is in itself a value inthe process of repentance and that, in each human organism, there is a constant reciprocal relationship between body and spirit. Rav Kook promoted a Zionismthat strove to restore health to the body of the Jewish people so that its spiritual life could flower to its fullest. He intended this restoration to occur not only on the metaphorical level in terms of the strength of the State of Israel but also with respect to the strength of every person:

"Great is our physical demand. We need a healthy body. We dealt much with soulfulness; we forgot the holiness of the body. We neglected the physical health and strength; we forgot that we have holy flesh; no less than holy spirit..." He continues: "Our teshuva (repentance) willsucceed only if it will be--with all its splendid spirituality--also a physical return, which produces healthy blood, healthy flesh, mighty solid bodies, a fiery spirit radiating over powerful muscles..." A proper emphasis on physical health is linked with how and what we eat. Jewish tradition has elaborate guidelines for how we are to approach food: what we are permitted to eat, when we may eat it, how it must be prepared, and what types of blessings we are to recite over each bite that enters our mouths. Given this religiousframework, one might assume that Jews would have a healthy relationship withfood.

However, we fall victim to the same food fads and eating related healthproblems that plague society at large. When the words "Jews and food"are mentioned together, the reverence our tradition has historically had forfood is not the first thing that comes to mind. Instead, we recognize, often with humour, how linked our holidays and celebrations are with food customs and with eating. No significant date in the Jewish calendar is properly observedwithout either an overwhelming abundance or complete absence of food. Ourcelebrations are famous for fare ranging from bagels, lox, and rugelach tofull-blown, all-you-can-eat smorgasbords.

Ironically, we now scour specialty food markets for exotic ingredients toprepare the "traditional" foods that were once simply the local fare of our dispersed Diaspora ancestors, valuing the wisdom we find in a recipeover our own fresh and local ingredients. There are modern secular foodmovements called "slow food" (a counter to "fast" food) and"local food" which urge people to know and appreciate how food is grown and harvested, and if possible, to participate in these activities themselves.  Like fitness trends, Jewsare not at the forefront of these food movements. However, one can argue that the blessings that we recite over food in our tradition promote the same type of awareness and reverence these movements encourage.

The questions of how and what we eat and how we treat our bodies are both physical and spiritual, and they are definitely Jewish questions. Both our tefillot (prayers) and our berakhot  (blessings) would be more meaningful and our eating would be more healthful if we took the time to explore and consider these issues seriously. At the same time we should recognize that our religious traditions do give us a framework for relating properly to our physical selves.