THE WORLD IS READY FOR ISRAEL'S BODY-SOUL HARMONY- Parshat Shmini

Beit Midrash

Torah Portion and Tanach
Vayikra
Shmini

קטגוריה משנית

The modern world has only recently discovered what Judaism always knew: the body and soul nourish each other. Today we all know children on diets to stay away from certain physical foods which negatively influence their personality or behavior, e.g. certain artificial colorings increase impulsivity and restlessness, especially among ADHD. Conversely, modern medicine knows we can psychosomatically mentally "think" ourselves into being physically sick, which will even show up on our physical  blood-tests. Psychosomatic illnesses are the "missing link" that proves physical actions (mitzvot) aren't just symbolic. If the mind can make the body sick through stress, the body can "heal" the soul through structured, purposeful physical actions. We are essentially using the body's hardware to "reprogram" the soul's software. This interplay between the physical and spiritual are an essential part of Rav Kook's Torat Eretz Yisrael whose time has come, but does this apply outside of Israel and to gentiles, as well?

To dedicate this lesson

Female Lesson Parashat Hashavua Series'Library Piskei Din (Hebrew)Test Yourself

This week's Parshat Shmini directs us regarding the details of Kashrut that "we are what we eat" (see Vayikra 11, 43, & Yoma 39b and Shulchan Aruch Y.D. 81, that we shouldn't give non-kosher even to infants, for it harms their spirituality), but even generally how our bodily acts influence our spiritual soul. People used to ask how eating pig harms my spirituality, for one is physical and the other spiritual?! But the modern world has only recently discovered what Judaism always knew: the body and soul nourish each other.
Today we all know children on diets to stay away from certain physical foods which negatively influence their personality or behavior, e.g. certain artificial colorings increase impulsivity and restlessness, especially among ADHD. Conversely, modern medicine knows we can psychosomatically mentally "think" ourselves into being physically sick, which will even show up on our physical blood-tests. Psychosomatic illnesses are the "missing link" that proves physical actions (mitzvot) aren't just symbolic. If the mind can make the body sick through stress, the body can "heal" the soul through structured, purposeful physical actions. We are essentially using the body's hardware to "reprogram" the soul's software.
As secular Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon once wrote (in his classic article: "The Kippa Srugah"): "I would prefer to be able to ignore the fact, and really don't understand why, but the kosher kitchen simply (and statistically) produces better youth." The Torah teaches that not only eating kosher, but also matzah at the proper time, donning tefillin, shaking lulav, and the intricate details of Family Purity all actually contribute to our spirituality.
Rav Kook's stresses that our national return to Israel is also a return to the original "Torat Eretz Yisrael", calling for "a healthy body in a healthy soul" (Orot HaTeshuva 5, 1). The G-d of history has decided that mankind is already mature and complex enough to broaden this concept even outside the Land of Israel & the Jewish People. Rav Sh. R. Hirsch, who was an anti-Zionist, believed and often wrote about the fusion and interaction of body and soul, for it's an IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME.
Like gentiles who are not obligated in all of the aforementioned examples, yet today understand the holistic harmony of body & soul, so too the Chafetz Chaim holds that Jews outside Israel CAN eat kosher & practice many of the mitzvot, yet are only tuned-in to 5% of their spiritual benefit (L’Netivot Yisrael, p.202, regarding this QUALITATIVE difference when done in the Holy Land, see Devarim 5, 28; 6, 1; Sifre Ekev 43 ,Ramban Vayikra 18, 25).
For 2,000 years in exile, Judaism was seen as a religion which stresses the soul at the expense of the body. We opted for the yeshiva-boy who just sits and learns, rather than the Religious-Zionist prototype we find throughout the Tanach. True, halachically, the Chatam Sofer (Sukka 36) stresses that this ideology of Torah vaAvoda belongs only in Eretz Yisrael where every constructive act of livelihood is not just to make money but even more important, is a spiritual and national Torah Mitzvah of settling the Land (Bamidbar 33, 53). Yet already many observant Jews who live in Teaneck (as opposed to Lakewood), who still live in the diaspora, but are already tuned into this Religious-Zionist mindset.
How much more so will they be elevated when they will come to Israel, where it's not just the MINDSET, but they actually will officially be doing HOLY ACTIONS called MITZVOT. The laws of Kashrut serve this holistic ideal regarding food even abroad, but in Israel, where there are actually 58 agricultural mitzvot and even holiness in each and every raisin (Bach, Or.Ch. 208, that's why we say in Al HaMichya, "והעלנו לתוכה... ונאכל מפריה"), it is actualized, not just declared theoretically.
True there is a general directive even in galut to be healthy and be, like Ya'akov's ladder, firmly planted on the ground while one's head is in heaven (Breishit 28, 12), but there's no Torah mitzvah regarding sports in America. On the other hand, when directing that energy and fitness to serve in the Israeli army, work or settle the Holy Land and our national economy, or represent the Jewish State in the Olympics or FIBA World Cup to bring honor to G-d's Nation, it not only theoretically but also halachically realizes the ideology of holism- harmonizing body and soul. Shabbat Shalom, Rav Ari Shvat (Chwat)

Shmini