Everyone loves to rave about their children, and being a parent (still very hard to believe), I can understand why. Children are the ultimate extension of a person in this world, both genetically and ideologically. And I am sure that soon I will be able to count myself among that generic group of raving parents, but just not yet. I have to be brutally honest with myself. My baby has absolutely no manners. When she is hungry she screams, and to make matters worse, upon receiving the food, she does not seem to appreciate it. Rather, it goes down her throat without even a hint of enjoyment.
Now, of course she is much too young to judge, but the way we eat is a defining characteristic of who we are. After all, the first thing G-d discussed with man is food, ‘And Hashem G-d commanded the man saying, “Of every tree of the garden you must eat, but of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad, you must not eat thereof; for on the day you eat of it, you shall surely die”[1]. Strange. Man’s relationship with G-d begins with G-d acting like the Jewish grandmother we all know that obsesses with food. To add to the mystery, the Hebrew word for food, ‘לכא’ is a composite of ‘alef’ and ‘col’, ‘G-d is in everything[2]’. I never considered Oreos to be particularly G-dly! Further, a large part of the Talmudic section on Derech Eretz, or how to act in the world, is about man’s relationship with food. The old adage, ‘you are what you eat’, is more appropriately stated, ‘you are what and how you eat’. Why is food so central to Jewish thought and spirituality and why does that define our level of social refinement?
G-d’s relationship with man begins with food because the process of eating parallels the process of acquiring wisdom and internality. The process of eating represents the break down of an external structure in order to get to its internal taste and goodness. The mouth takes an object and through the teeth, breaks it down into little parts, and the longer it holds the food, the more taste it extracts before it passes the food to the throat. That is exactly how a wise person looks at the world. Wisdom is the ability to discern parts and to analyze them. To do so require that person take things in slowly, and mentally chew on them.[3] For this reason, everything in the mouth is a hint to wisdom. A tooth is called ‘shen’, ןש, which means sharp and it means to teach over. There are thirty two teeth in the mouth, which mirror the thirty two paths of natural wisdom in the world.[4] And the mouth is called a הפ, or the same as the word ‘here’. If we learn how to eat, we can learn exactly what the depth of what is ‘here’ in the world. That is also why the word for taste, םעט, is the same for ‘reason’. The depth of a subject is its reasoning, and that is only discovered after the external relationships are broken down and analyzed.
Moving away from the mystical, practically, food is our daily encounter with whether our body rules our mind or our mind rules our body. And the way we eat is a good indication as to which one it is. The Talmud says in Derect Eretz: A person should not drink a whole cup in one swig, and if he does, he is throaty and famished. And how fast should a person drink? In two, that is social refinement. In three, that is arrogance. And a person should not eat an onion from the good part first, rather from the leaves. And if he does, he is throaty and famished. There are many questions here that we will leave unanswered. But the gist is as follows. If a person, bypasses the mouth and puts ingests things directly to the throat, then that is an indication that a person is enslaved by his body and lacks wisdom. If a person holds the food or drink in his mouth for so long, it is arrogance, because he pretends that the food is like a piece of artwork, but not really needed to sustain him; he is in denial of his physicality. If he eats or drinks carefully, but not like a connoisseur, then it shows that a person is ruled by his spiritual side, but appreciates that this food is keeping him alive. As for the onion, the Talmud warns us about not eating ‘the frosting without the cake’. Again, children tend to do that and it is another sign that the body is in control. Eating is our sign for who we are. Do we appreciate wisdom, and can we control our physicality? So remember to chew, but not too much!
[1] Genesis 2:16
[2] Aleph represent G-d in many ways: It is an ineffable letter, it is one, and it is made up of the letters ‘vav’, ‘yud’, ‘yud’, which adds up to 26 in its numerical value, which is equivalent to G-d’s name.
[3] That is also why a Kosher animal chews its cud an emphasis on internalty.
[4] G-d’s name of creation, elokim appears thirty two times in the creation of the world. It is a hint to thirty path of wisdom in the world.
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