TO YOUR HEALTH: The Torah Way to a
Healthy Life in Modern Times
Yechezkel Ishayek
Kulmus 2016 (English edition)
Food and water nourish, sustain
life, and, serve as a Covenant (preceding brit milah), between man and God
(Genesis 1:29). Adam and Eve enjoyed the bounty and sybaritic
splendor in the Garden of Eden, and in return they were faithful.
When Adam and Eve violated His trust
God banished them. Eve (a sobriquet for all women) suffer the pains of
childbirth as punishment. Adam is banished to work the soil to eat the herb of
the fields by the sweat of the brow to survive. The land became damnable sprouting
thorns and thistles. The quest for food and clean water became a chore bereft
of the divine (Genesis 3:15).
In his latest book, To Your Health: The Torah Way to a Healthy
Life in Modern Times, Rabbi Yechezkel Ishayek, seeks to rejuvenate the
transcendent mysticism of food and water as the linchpins for bringing humans
closer to God once again. His book “teaches a way of life…a guide to the reader”
that will fulfill the Torah obligation to achieve “the blessing of longevity.” It
is a guidebook teaching us how food (and daily chores) can make us more
faithful, bring us closer in spirit to God by protecting our bodies and enjoy a
healthy lifestyle.
Ishayek served for nearly four
decades as the humble right-hand man of the great sage and leading interpreter
of Jewish Law, Rav Elazar M. M. Shach of Jerusalem. From Rav Shach, Ishayek
learned the paramount Torah obligation to protect one’s health inspiring him to
collect all he learned and witnessed in Rav Shach’s behavior to write this
“recipe for health” for everyone.
I teach international university
students a course on Jewish and Western values. One student discussed how for
him how food and water best contrast values. Consuming food is a religious
experience, man’s esoteric search for spiritual potency and faith in God (also see
Levi Cooper, “The Tisch: The charm of cholent,” The Jerusalem Post, Magazine, p. 43). Through the acts of blessing each helping
before consuming, Grace After Meals, separating meat and milk, observing the
proscribed methods avoiding certain common foods, taking care to not consume
fruits and vegetables grown during Sabbatical years, contribute to a healthy
and spiritual lifestyle as a bond between man and God.
Ishayek’s oeuvre is teaching us
“our body is not our own personal property,” but food is another means of
building faith, for, “The Creator entrusted is with our bodies to use to
fulfill His will.” Each has an obligation to perfect his soul, through Torah
study, observing commandments, limiting materialism and physicality, and
obliging us to physical health and wellbeing.
In contrast, Western values
emphasize as much the gourmet experience and using to bring pleasure—how to
attain a better healthier looking body. The “other” value of food, the
spiritual one Ishayek writes about, is lost on a generation languishing in
apostasy.
To
Your Health teaches healthy behavior through knowledge, instruction,
exercises, and guides. He quotes Maimonides, “it is impossible to understand
anything about the Creator while one is ill. Therefore a person must distance
himself from those things that destroy his body and must conduct himself in ways
that preserve and enhance his health.” Ishayek pleads for us “to invest every
possible effort in order to live,” by preventing illness, by guarding one’s
health, to serve God as long as possible.
The author writes in silk glove fashion offering a complex
mix of science, direction, and authoritative commentary from studies, Jewish
sages and Talmudic figures. He refers to scientific studies but does not cite
nor footnote them. Instead Ishayek relies most heavily on examples from “Our
Sages” replete with citations justifying his conclusions and giving them
gravitas. He quotes Rav Yehuda on the importance to healing of spending “a long
time in the privy,” noting further this practice leads to a ruddy and healthy
complexion.
The book contains graphics easily found on line like a
medical history chart, a sample chart of blood test results, a body mass
assessment chart, and a Circle of Health for estimating one’s risk of heart
disease. The author urges readers to use these tools to measure daily health
assessments. Keep records of all tests
and regular measure your risk of heart disease.
The book travels beyond food and water. He writes about the
importance of proper digestion, talking during meals, chewing, swallowing, the
Torah’s view on drinking water while eating, irritable bowel syndrome,
regularity, obesity, and protein needs to mention a few of the topics. The last
hundred pages are devoted to caring for the body touching on everything from
eyeglasses strengthening pelvic and leg muscles, venous insufficiency, how cell
phones are endangering neck muscles, and insecticides. It is a trek navigating all the topics not
having an appendix.
He has advice for parents and “discerning young adults.” Age
will creep up faster than they can imagine. Start young practicing these
lifestyle rules. His earlier book, Life
without Smoking, made a huge impact on the religious community reportedly
influencing many yeshivot to forbid their students from smoking. The book is
credited with inspiring educators and community leaders to publicly speak out
against smoking as a forbidden threat to health shortening the days of our
lives.
This is not a diet book despite the look of its cover. The
contents carry the reader way beyond. It is a travel guide rebuilding spirit
and faith from the premise that those who thought about these issues before the
21st century offer a pathway to longevity and as one sage states,
faith will gravitate toward that person.”
To
Your Health is an essential complement to every home library for its
explanations and range of subject matter.
Every life coach, school nurse, doctor’s office, and health educator
will do well for students making this book readily available. The book brings
to life the symbiotic relationship of spiritual and practical essential to a
healthy lifestyle. Perhaps the point of the book is best summed up in the
author’s lesson from Maimonides that failing to protect oneself from illness or
danger is like deliberately causing personal injury, so we must strive to
protect health and life and will the be able to better serve and expand our
faith in God.
Actually, Ishayek and Dr. Seuss
share a great philosophy. Dr. Seuss warns kids, “In those green-pastured
mountains…everybody feels fine at a hundred and three ‘cause the air that they
breathe is potassium-free and because they chew nuts from the Tutt-a-Tutt Tree.
This gives strength to their teeth, it gives length to their hair, and they
live without doctors, with nary a care.”
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