Why do we cook? Why do we go to the trouble of envisioning the meal, finding the recipes,
standing over hot ovens, stoves, and barbecues, to then plate and serve the meal, that often
lasts us but a half hour, if that? For that matter, why do we mend a fence when it inevitably
will break, oil a hinge when we know it will rust, paint a wall, fix a chair, or obsess over just the
right spirit for just the right occasion?
Because we human beings are always looking to get filled up. McJagger offered his ironic take,
“You may not get what you want, but you get what you need.” But even what we need may go
by unnoticed, unless we stop and sense what it feels like when we get it. The Torah this week
commands us how to eat (not what to eat and what not to), but how. V’achalta, v’savata
uverachta, You shall eat, you shall be full (satisfied), and you shall bless,” in precisely that order.
Smell, taste, feel, consume. Be curious as to the changes in your belly as they happen. Channel
blessing and connection into this very moment.
According to the Torah, the table becomes an altar when eating is indeed the first act. Fill your
mouth, fill your belly, seek to be satisfied, to be full enough perhaps that the grumblings of
hunger have abated, the mineral levels in your body are in a state of equilibrium, and yet,
having left room for dessert! The dessert in this case, the Torah teaches us, is to be able to
offer an expression of gratitude for what we have just enjoyed. For what has filled us with
nutrition, fueling our hearts, our bodies, our brains. Could we have done it “enough” with a
microwave meal? Yes, enough, but not satisfactorily. Not enough to be filled with grace and
gratitude, kindness and hope, openness, and love. Am I holding eating on too high of a
pedestal? I don’t think so. Because just imagine if you felt all this every time you ate. If you
brought so much more of yourself to experience the food as a gift for the soul, what a world of
difference it would make in you. And then by you in others. And as the Prell shampoo
commercial went, “and so on and so on and so on.”
Offer up your thanks to the Source(s) of the food presented to you by others and to you by your
own hands, and you will indeed fulfill God’s command: “Eat, Be Full, and Bless.”
