Spiritually Healthy Diet | Parashat Shemini

everything you eat is going to turn into you now I know that there's a famous statement you are what you eat but this is going a step further he's telling you that this blood will become the body itself and if the blood that you're creating is coming from Dirty food what they call junk food what they call food that is simply unhealthy then the blood that you will create will also be impure coarse and simply problematic not only on a physical level but even more so on a spiritual level now how this affects intimacy we're going to get to but he's telling you now that if you eat good food food that is recommended not only by your local dietitian and and some uh local vitamin store but by the Torah itself then that food is going to create pure blood blood that is clean blood that will be just like the food and part of the reason of why God created the Torah with kosher laws part of it not all of it but part of the reason was because this is part of the ways that we could attain holiness by having things that are pure consumed we are turning our physical self into something pure into something better than what we were beforehand by consuming things that are impure things that are disgusting to the in the eyes of God things that are uh violent things that are a uh smell terrible or things that are simply considered a abomination in the eyes of God this turns us into that as well both on a physical and a spiritual level now he says there are some of them which Stupify the heart such as the hard fats and the blood so now he's giving us details he said there's some types of food that is going to make you spiritually stupid as it says in when it talks about the laws of forbidden Foods forbidden animals we're not allowed to eat God tells us which literally means and you will become imp purified because of these forbidden Foods if you consume them the sages say if you notice the word v is spelled the same exact way as V which means you become spiritually stupid which doesn't mean a person becomes dumb as far as they're not able to uh achieve uh great uh Heights in mathematics and archaeology and Science and History no but rather they become what's called atum closed their heart is closed to spirituality to truth to the words of the Living God so there are specific foods that cause this there are some the ramban says such as the predatory animals predatory birds and beasts which make a man arrogant and Brazen you can test this to yourself and surely you know some people in your life that are eating non- kosher food but not just the typical non- kosher food where they're just buying themselves a non- kosher cow or non- Kosher fish but typically you'll see that the more arrogant the person is the more they're into animals that are actually aggressive themselves animals that are aggressive animals that are simply not your you know doile type of cow they want something more even if it's once in a blue moon but they're interested in it they eat it they like it aggressive fish aggressive birds aggressive beasts these types of Creations make a person arrogant and Brazen there are some which close the doors of intelligence and understanding such as the hair the rabbit and the pig the reptiles the snake and the insects these types of animals typically are consumed by people that are not Jewish but needless to say people that Jews that don't observe to and travel to different foreign lands to Thailand to different parts of Asia uh they try all types of things and in fact many times their evil inclination entices them to the uh things that are the most forbidden and these types of things like the rabbit the hair the pig the uh the reptiles the snakes and the insects while a religious Jew immediately cringes when he hears these things the average non-religious Jew doesn't see a problem to eat a uh bacon egg and cheese type sandwich doesn't see a problem sometimes they eat it for breakfast lunch and dinner if they travel to a land where that offers a uh these types of reptiles or they go to different parts of the United States where it's the custom over there to eat these types of things in the South and different parts of Florida and Texas and uh other parts of the country they have no problem eating an iguana no problem eating a snake these types of foods not only affect the body itself physically but the ramban is telling you is also affecting their spiritual self and they actually Stupify the person they Stupify the person but here he's not talking about Stupify them in the same way that we talked about before where they're closed-minded to Torah that's already a given here he's saying these Foods actually make the person less competent their IQ drops it would be wonderful to uh see if there's ever been any studies done on these things on a scientific level not that we need science to agree with the sages but the point is is that the this uh generation always likes uh more facts more information there are also some foods which bring all kinds of evil and difficult diseases such as the Vermin of the earth and the Sea here he's talking about shellfish he's talking about the uh uh all of the fish the fruits of the sea they call it lobsters the uh uh all of these cockroaches that they uh call shellfish or all types of seafood is not only forbidden according to the Torah but it's the Torah calls them an abomination the Torah calls them Vermin now anyone that's ever looked at a closeup picture of a cockroach and a lobster you'll see that there's quite a few similarities between the two those similarities are not a coincidence one is a cockroach of the land the other one is a cockroach of the sea one is a Vermin of the land one is a Vermin of the sea these are different creatures that Hashem created in order to clean the Earth not to be consumed by the Earth not to be consumed by people and although the non-jews are allowed to eat these lobsters and shellfish there's no problem with them eating them as far as the Torah is concerned the ran is warning us that it's still a terrible idea to do so because they create all types of evil and difficult diseases meaning that shelfish the all of the different varieties of it are not only going to hurt a person spiritually and create all types of evil in their mind you know thoughts that are inappropriate but also disease physical disease we see that the bigger Commerce becomes the more new diseases are in the earth today they're fishing so much out of the ocean so many lobsters and different types of fish and different types of creatures from the sea without thinking twice that a uh a fisherman maybe for 60 years recently told me that uh there are many new barriers to entry for for for a lot of the things that used to be standard where you used to go to certain places to fish and you were able to take a few home today in many places you either can't take anything home at all or whatever you can take home is so rare that most likely you're simply not going to catch it because it has to be within a specific size and that's usually not common for that fish so there's so much fishing going on that the laws of the land are restraining it now of course there's still people that are breaking the law but the point being is is that you see that we're consuming a lot people are consuming a lot is constantly giving us more and more options but yet people are choosing to consume the things that are terrible for them because they don't put that much thought behind what they're eating and why they're eating it they're living to eat instead of eating to live the ran is telling us if you've noticed that the number of different diseases in the world has increased as the availability of these creatures has increased that is not a coincidence because these creatures are the Vermin of the earth and the Sea and they bring all types of difficult diseases in conclusion regarding all of this the Torah has said in Leviticus 11 verse 43 you will not make your souls detestable and thusly hasem notified that thereby all of these things are abominable despicable and they produce coarse blood which is ready for exposure to all kinds of danger and make the body and spirit despicable so here you can see that although there is certain laws that only Jewish people have and certainly this applies 100% to Jewish people in warning them there are certain benefits for the non-jews also to apply here because the non-jew also wants to be healthy and not have these evil diseases not have a diet of vermin and even more so just as the Jew wants to create pure blood so does the Gentile so later on in this not today but in probably I maybe another month or so of lectures the ran actually mentions noahides and he actually specifically says that much of this is for both Jews and Gentiles and in fact the food aspect of it more than anything else because even though the Gentiles are not obligated to eat kosher food and there isn't necessarily as anywhere near as much spiritual benefit for for a gentile to eat kosher food we see here that it's not that eating kosher food is going to improve the spirituality but rather that the non kosher food is hurting it both physically and spiritually especially if it's these particular animals if you're eating rabbits you're eating pig you're eating all of these Vermin these cockroaches of the of of the Earth and the SE it is not doing you any good if you're finding yourself having a difficult time with modesty with different character traits whether it's arrogance stinginess things of that nature fix your diet and you'll have an easier time fixing your life there's a lot of really cool stuff on our websites uh new features uh and uh a lot more uh projects that are on the way that will help get closer to to publicize name and know that he is the one and only God