Body and Soul (part 1) – Shmini
Science casts into doubt the very existence of a soul, reducing the human organism to an agglomeration of chemical elements. One of the cornerstones of the Torah, however, is that humans are created בצלם א-לוקים, with a spiritual neshama that precedes birth and persists after the death of our physical bodies.
Many tend to draw a line between the physical body and the spiritual neshama, regarding the two as incompatible entities that do not interact with each other. In this week’s shiur, part 1 of a three part series (the next parts will be in parshat Tazria and Metzorah) we will delve deeper and explore the interaction (that does exist) between the physical body and the spiritual neshama, as brought in מאיר פנים, where a major section is dedicated to this concept.
In the last part of this week’s parsha, Shmini, the Torah discusses the laws of Kashrut regarding the animal kingdom – which creatures are טהור (permissible to eat) and which are טמא (forbidden). The distinction between the two is based on סימנים, signs that indicate whether the creature is כשר or טרף. Two signs for mammals (cloven hoof, chews the cud), two for fish (fins and scales), four for birds (מסורת, extra toe, crop, peelable gizzard) and two for flying insects (four wings overlapping most of the body, 3 pairs of legs).
In today’s modern society, determination of whether a creature is Kosher or not is "dependent" on the label on the vacuum pack on the supermarket shelf - if it has the stamp of Badatz Eida Charedit, the Rabbanut, the OU, etc. This unfortunate reality of “detachment” from our food chain has become prevalent in the last 70 years or so, ever since humanity relinquished responsibility for our daily sustenance to monopolistic food companies that now basically control our lives, health and level of spirituality (at least in terms of Kashrut).
I remember my mother (may she live long in good health b”H) reminiscing about when she was a child, taking a live chicken, that they reared in their back yard, to the shochet down the street. I grew up (some 50 years ago) in a reality that we had to Kasher the meat/chicken ourselves. I vividly remember the wooden Kashering board, the enormous rinsing bowl and the coarse salt. If you ask a child today where a chicken or a fish comes from, they will unhesitatingly tell you – “from the supermarket!”
As a result, we have also relinquished the knowledge and understanding of what makes a creature Kosher or not, to a minute portion of Am Yisrael, those who are actively involved in the food industry and its supervision. The layman is exceedingly ignorant in this regard.
Less than a year ago, I was privileged to attend a very unique event called a Seudat Masoret. This was an exposition (and a banquet) that explored the various creatures that are Kosher according to the halacha, but are not commonly found in the supermarket. It was an eye-opening culinary evening, sampling the different foods and learning about the סימני כשרות (I was asked to provide a buffet/display of the different Menachot breads for the event). The thing that most made an impression on me, is how “poor” our modern day food repertoire really is.
Most people mistakenly think that we live in an era of indescribable prosperity, that you can visit a supermarket and find thousands of different types of food. Compare this with our grandparents’ generation a hundred years ago, who perhaps had two choices of bread, 3 choices of cheese, 1-2 choices of meat/fowl. I read an article in the Reader’s Digest that said that the smorgasbord the common man can find in his local supermarket today is 1000 times more lavish and varied than a king’s banquet in the medieval period.
It is true, we have at least 100 different types of breakfast cereal, 50 different types of beverages, 1000 different types of candy and cookies, etc., and other foods that are man-made. However in the produce section (food that HKB”H provides from nature) you will only find perhaps two types of fowl (chicken and turkey), two types of meat (beef and lamb) and in the fish section maybe 3-4 types (sole, hake, salmon, Nile perch). The Seudat Masoret was an amazing revelation that there are literally hundreds upon hundreds of creatures that are permissible to eat according to halacha, but that are not available to us simply because they are not economically viable for the food monopolies to grow and process.
The goyim and non-religious Jews mock us – how much we are missing out on by only eating Kosher. This is factually incorrect. When HKB”H created the natural world, He provided us with an almost unlimited source of natural food, hundreds upon hundreds of creatures that are Kosher according to halacha that have the סימנים listed in this week’s parsha.
There is a misconception that the laws of Kashrut exist for nutritional reasons, i.e that eating non-Kosher food is harmful to the body. This too is factually incorrect. One need only look at the millions of strapping goyim who consume pork every day, who are the picture of strength and good health. The raison d’etre of the laws of Kashrut is to protect the soul, not the body.
אַל תְּשַׁקְּצוּ אֶת נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם בְּכָל הַשֶּׁרֶץ הַשֹּׁרֵץ וְלֹא תִטַּמְּאוּ בָּהֶם וְנִטְמֵתֶם בָּם (ויקרא יא, מג).
The word וְנִטְמֵתֶם is written חסר, i.e missing an א – it should be וְנִטְמֵאתֶם. Chazal say that by eating food that is טמא, not only will be become impure וְנִטְמֵאתֶם, but also that we will become “dulled” וְנִטָמתֶם, from the root טמטום. Obviously Chazal are not referring to becoming cognitively “dulled”, but spiritually. Many profound geniuses over the millennia ate non-Kosher food and this did not diminish their cognitive ability in the slightest. When a Jew eats food that is טמא it harms his/her neshama.
This concept brought by Chazal is mind blowing. It is categorically stating that interaction exists between the physical body and the spiritual neshama.
HaRav Moshe Odess shlit”a in his sefer בלבבי משכן אבנה brings R’ Chaim of Volozhin (נפש חיים, שער א, פרק טו) who explains the breakdown of the interaction between the neshama and the body, the concept of נר"ן – נשמה, רוח, נפש. R’ Chaim uses the allegory of a glass blower. The process begins with the artisan filling his mouth/lungs with breath. This breath is then transferred to the raw material, the lump of molten glass, by blowing the air through a glass tube which then inflates the glass and gives it form. Similarly, our neshama is the embodiment of the נשמת חיים that HKB”H “breathes” into us when He creates us, an entirely spiritual entity that is independent of our physical bodies. The physical body, נפש, the raw material/molten glass, receives its form from the neshama, not directly, but through a conduit, the רוח.
In this way there is bidirectional communication between the neshama and the body. Our spiritual neshama affects the way our physical body behaves and conversely, the way we behave with our physical body affects our neshama.
Chazal say that by eating food that is טמא, a purely physical action of the body, this adversely affects the neshama. The Kosher animals are typified by the fact that they are all animals that are נרדפים and not רודפים - they are all prey and not predators. By ingesting the flesh of a predator, the cruel nature of the animal somehow finds its way to our neshama and “dulls” our neshama, making us cruel. In other words, the laws of Kashrut exist to protect not our health or intelligence, but our spiritual middot.
The Midrash relates how Moshe, as an infant, refused to suckle from the Egyptian women, because the neshama/body that would one day communicate פה אל פה with HKB”H and receive the Torah could not be contaminated with the alien middot of the goyim. The daughter of Pharaoh had to find a Jewish mother (Miriam) to feed him. Rebi Mordechai HaKohen (שפתי כהן על התורה) says that until that happened, when the Egyptian women first tried to feed him, a few drops fell into his mouth. For this reason when Pharaoh tested baby Moshe with a bowl of gold and a bowl of glowing coals, Moshe took a glowing coal and put it in his mouth. If someone touches a burning coal, the natural instinct is to withdraw your hand from it, not to take the burning coal and place it in your mouth. The damage caused was so extensive that it impaired Moshe’s ability to speak. The Siftei Kohen says that Moshe was doing ליבון, Kashering out his mouth and reversing the damage done by the טמא food to his neshama.
Tosfot (Avoda Zara 10b) quotes a Midrash that when Rebi Yehuda Hanasi was born, the Roman emperor decreed that it was forbidden to perform brit milah. Rebi’s parents defied the decree and the local official informed on them to the emperor, who demanded that Rebi’s parents bring Rebi to Rome to ascertain whether the allegations were true or not. Rebi’s parents were friendly with Antoninus’ parents. The mother of newly born Antoninus suggested that they switch babies, that baby Rebi should remain with Antoninus’ mother while baby Antoninus should be taken in Rebi’s place to the emperor. This is in fact what happened. When “Rebi”/Antoninus was presented to the emperor it was clear for all to see that he was uncircumcised. The informer was flabbergasted and said that he had seen with his own eyes that Rebi was circumcised and it must be because the G-d of Israel was performing miracles for his people. The emperor summarily executed the official and rescinded the evil decree. Meanwhile, while all this was taking place, Antoninus was suckling from Rebi’s mother and Rebi from Antoninus’ mother. As a result, Antoninus, by imbibing the כשר milk from Rebi’s mother, eventually became king and converted. Rebi, who suckled from Antoninus’ mother, was later punished (Bava Metzia 85a) with 13 years of suffering from his teeth.
From these two cases, we see the awesome power of ingesting permissible and forbidden food.
When HKB”H created the human body, He created redundancy – two ears, eyes, nostrils, hands, feet, chambers in the heart, kidneys, hemispheres in the brain, etc. The logic being that if one fails, there is a “spare”. A glaring exception of this is the mouth. There is only one mouth. The reason for this is that the mouth is such a powerful part of the body and has the capability of causing such harm if used incorrectly, that there cannot be two of them. The mouth has the ability to create or destroy, both by virtue of what comes out of it (speech) and what goes into it (food).
When you ingest forbidden food, it does not simply pass through your system, in one end and out the other. It is absorbed and becomes part of you. The components in the food, proteins, minerals, fats, etc. become part of your body, making up your bones, muscles, nerves etc. Since they are connected, this טומאה is also conveyed from the נפש to the neshama and damages it. And this is not only when the food itself is טרף, even if it is Kosher food, but eaten at an inappropriate time (like on Yom Kippur), or by the wrong person (a Yisrael eating הקדש – permissible only to a Kohen) or even if the required brachot were not made on the food. All the above adversely affect our neshama and as a result, our middot. The effect may not be immediate, it may be latent and manifest itself only much later in life, as it did with Rebi.
In the Gemara (Bava Batra 75a) it says that in the time of the Geulah, HKB”H will serve the tzaddikim a special seudah, food made from the לויתן and יין משומר מששת ימי בראשית. Only those who were makpid on never consuming any food with טומאה during their lives will merit participating in this special seudah.
Another vivid illustration of how forbidden food can adversely affect the neshama is in the parsha of מאכלות אסורות. Four specific animals/mammals are mentioned that have only one of the required two סימנים. These are the גמל, שפן, ארנבת, חזיר. Rabbeinu Bachyei (Vayikra 11, 4) says that these four represent the four galuyot. The גמל is Bavel (בת בבל השדודה אשרי שישלם לך את גמולך, תהילים קלז). The שפן is Madai (the שפן has one טרף sign and one כשר sign and king Daryavesh was the son of Achashveirosh-טרף and Esther-כשר). The ארנבת is Yavan (the wife of king Ptolemy was named ארנבת). The חזיר is Edom (they are destined להחזיר the מלכות to Am Yisrael in the time of the Geulah). The חזיר is Eisav, Edom – the impostor. To the outside world he holds out his cloven hoof “Look, I’m Kosher” he claims, but inside he is טמא. Eisav deceived Yitzchak by pretending to be a talmid chacham (how do you take ma’asrot from salt?) while inside he was rotten. These middot were passed on to his descendants. One of the staple foods of modern day Edom is still pig. Open up a non-Kosher recipe book, it is hard to find a single recipe that doesn’t have it in. The official food of almost every state in the US is centered around pig. I am not even going to speak about the Chinese, who do not settle only for pig, they eat everything that moves, including every category of שרץ that exists. The whole Chinese culture throughout history is based on war and conflict, it is part of their nature and it stems to a large degree from the food they eat.
HKB”H does not want Am Yisrael to be like the goyim, to eat their food and inherit their middot. For this reason the parsha of the מאכלות אסורות is repeated twice in the Torah, in our parsha and again in Devarim, parshat Re’ei, to emphasize its importance.
In מאיר פנים I discuss at length, the importance of preserving the קדושה in what and how we eat our food. The Gemara (Yoma 39a) describes how the Kohanim used to share the Lechem Hapanim every Shabbat and how even a small kezayit of it filled them up as if they had eaten an entire meal. Once there was an incident where one Kohen took more than he should have, instead of one kezayit, perhaps two kezeytim? For this he earned the derogatory nickname of בן חמצן – “the greedy one” till the day he died.
The Gemara (Menachot 97a) says that in the time of the Mikdash the Mizbeach atoned for the sins of Am Yisrael. Now, today, that there is no Mikdash (yet), it is our own Shulchan, the table on which we eat, that atones for our sins. We all have to be super makpid what food goes on our table, how we present it, eat it, in what frame of mind (do not bring stress and anger to your table), reciting the required brachot, studying Torah at the table, etc. We have to imagine that every time we eat, it is like bringing a korban on the Mizbeach in the Beit Hamikdash and act accordingly.
By virtue of this we will all merit the שפע העליון, blessing in our homes and be participant in the סעודת צדיקים לעתיד לבוא.
בבי"א
