Kabalah teaches that; “Food is to the body as wisdom is to the soul.” On the surface, this sounds like a nice catch phrase, but when you think it through, it provides some important rules for life.
Everybody wants wisdom, but obtaining it is not easy. It requires time and hard work. Very often we hear students (who supposedly are trying to seek wisdom) say “I studied all day yesterday, I don’t have to learn today.” But if we apply that to the food analogy, we see how ridiculous a statement it is. Have you ever heard anyone say, “I ate yesterday, I don’t have to eat today.” Just like the body needs to constantly ingest food to stay healthy, the soul needs to constant ingest wisdom to remain vibrant.
The Kabalah takes this further – there is a counterpart in wisdom to every type of food. It says that bread is the most basic of food; it’s the rules for living – Halacha. Meat is the questions and answers. It’s digesting wisdom. Then after you’ve finished eating, comes the wine, which represents mysticism. It’s the appreciation and meaning of the wisdom.
Just like the order for eating is bread, then meat, then wine. The order of learning is Mishna (which is a description of the laws), then Talmud (debating the laws to get to the core), then Zohar (mysticism). And just like you don’t drink wine on an empty stomach, one shouldn’t jump into the Zohar without first obtaining a firm basis in Mishna and Talmud. In fact, one is not suppose to start learning Kabalah until they are 40 years old and have mastered the more basic levels of Jewish thought.
If you don’t understand the basics of how to love your fellow man, what’s driving you, what is greatness, what is free will, how to make decisions, and how do you know what you know; all the things that one would learn by studying Mishna and Talmud; then when you get into mysticism your soul will respond to the wisom as your body would respond to wine on an empty stomach.
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