B”H
Last week I shared about eating on Shabbos.
Shabbos isn’t supposed to be the hardest day of the week when it comes to eating.
Chassidus explains that physicality – and consequently the food – on Shabbos is elevated and doesn’t need our help with its tikkun. It’s already on a different level.
But our habits aren’t…
A Y.Y. (Jacobson) post was going around recently:
Try doing teshuva from a place of love instead of hate.
I’ve been marinating in a similar sentiment when it comes to food.
For many of us, a major challenge to the precept to “know Him in all your ways” is how we show up to eating and our eating habits.
Imagine showing up to your food and your body, not because you hate it, but because you love it.
Often, the struggle stays a struggle because we change our habits only because we hate the way we look.
Enter Sukkos.
Everything we do in the sukkah is a mitzvah – an act of connection to Hashem, including our eating.
We sit inside the walls Hashem commanded us to sit in, and suddenly the very act of eating is enveloped in mitzvah. The act of eating becomes elevated.
On Sukkos, Gdliness envelops and permeates us. We are surrounded by the walls and schach of the sukkah/mitzvah and saturated with an elevated Tishrei-desire to live in alignment with Hashem. And eating is where the two meet.
When we engage with festive, fun holiday foods, we can do so from a place of love and connection. From the place inside of us that is a piece of Hashem, the place that is already completely aligned, the power source of change.
Instead of fighting ourselves into better habits, we can let what is inside us naturally emerge and align with what surrounds us.
We are literally sitting inside the mitzvah.
Our eating can sit inside it too.
Good Shabbos and Chag Sameach!
