You are WHEN and WHAT you eat WITH

            Five minutes could be a matter of spiritual life and death.  What do I mean?  The clock strikes the nine o’clock hour and it is official, breakfast has begun, and after a spiritual boost of prayer and study, it is time to attend to my physical sustenance.  As the nine o’clock hour approaches, what is my response, a sense of sadness that I am going to momentarily put my spiritual pursuits on hold, or a sense of overwhelming glee at the opportunity to eat French toast, grilled cheese sandwiches, pancakes, or eggs depending on the day?  Further, am I first or last to the breakfast table, or in other words, even if the answer to question one is sheer glee to eat without an iota of sadness to leave learning, is there still a control switch that prevents me from sprinting to breakfast to ensure that the food is not eaten before getting there lest I be relegated to eating lowly cornflakes? And finally, when I do get to breakfast can I eat my eggs without the salt and pepper or the pancakes without the syrup?  So we return to our relationship with food, and will try to add layers of complexity to the subject. It appears it is not only how we eat, but also when we eat and what we eat our food with! Attuning to this interplay is an accurate indication of what how we identify ourselves- are we primarily souls riding temporarily in an earthy body, or are we primarily bodies that need to seize the moment in a short life.  We know what the advertisers think: Coke-‘do what feels good’ and Nike- ‘Just do it’, but what do we think?

            To raise the stakes, the Talmud describes the answer to this question of when we eat with what appears to be hyperbole.  It says in Trachtate Shabbos 10a: The first hour (after waking up) the cannibals eat, the second hour the thieves eat, the third hour the inheritors heat, the fourth hour the regular man eats, the fifth hour the workers eat, and the sixth hour the wise man eats…’  This does not mean that a person who wakes up and runs to breakfast is actually a cannibal, but it does mean that a person with such a strong desire to eat breakfast would be willing to injure another person if an essential physical desire were not met.  And the next level is that a person would be willing to take someone’s money if his physical needs are not met. On the other side, the worker and the wise man understand the need to prioritize the spiritual desire to create.[1]  Therefore, even in dire straits, soulful action would still win out.  Nowadays, most people are on the level of the thieves, even sadly, the Yeshiva guys.  Most people eat in the second hour of the day, and the truth is, in a dire situation where physical needs are not met adequately, it is not hard to imagine that people would not hesitate to steal. 

            Another part of the Talmud Eruvin 54a proceeds to imply that acquisition of wisdom is also dependent on our consumption habits.  How much do we care about what we eat?[2]  It says: Said Rav Huna, ‘Your flock settled in it, You prepared for the poor in Your Goodness, G-d’ If a man makes himself like this animal that crushes and eats or that spoils and eats, his wisdom  will remain with him[3]. Rashi explains that ‘crushes and eats’ means to eat quickly without worry as to fancy preparations and that ‘spoiled and eats’ means that the food is not in perfect condition.  Again, our spiritual well being is dictated by our approach to food. 

            So what can we do?  We are not at the level of waiting six hours everyday before we eat, or treating our food indifferently, but the test is can we wait five minutes or do one spiritual act before we eat to remind ourselves what we are?  From personal experience, I have found that a small reminder sets the tone for the rest of the day. 

           

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[1] Maharal Nesiv Derech Eretz Nesivos Olam page 250

[2] Actually, this is a dispute among scholars whether spiritual people should take care and eat particularly good food and further their appreciation of G-d in the process or eat simple food in order to show that spirituality is more important than physicality. For now we will take the second side that simple food is best.

[3] Wisdom is held in the ‘sechel or שכל’ which is the mind.  The idea of mind in Hebrew is ‘ש’- כל’ is that it captures ‘כל’, everything.  What does that mean?  The idea of everything is the idea of the big picture.  That is why the numerical value of כל is fifty, and why the Torah was given after we left Egypt, on the fiftieth day after Passover.  It is also the Jubilee year and represents going beyond the world of parts.  Our world is made up of parts as indicated by the seven aspects of a cube, the six sides along with it gestalt.  A full expression of parts, then, is these seven aspects all multiplied by itself, which is then forty nine.  So we see that a physical world made up of parts is captured by the idea of forty-nine thereby making fifty the notion of a world that is beyond particulars, but totally unified. That world is repelled by the physical world, so if we make physicality our main priority, we lose our minds in the process, since the world of the mind is above physicality.