“Man does not live on bread alone, but by the utterance of G-d’s mouth…” (Devarim/Deuteronomy 8:3).
One of the teachings of the Kabbalists is that nestled within every created thing is an “utterance of G-d’s mouth” — these are the letters of Divine speech that are the instrument of its creation (as described in the first chapter of Bereishit/Genesis). A person desiring food may sense only his body’s hunger. In truth, however, “enveloped within” this physical hunger and thirst is our soul’s hunger for the “soul” of the food — the Divine “sparks of holiness” within it which it is our mission to not only redeem but to elevate.
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi explains a most puzzling fact of life. How is it that man, the highest form of life, derives life and sustenance from the lower tiers of creation — animal, vegetable, and mineral worlds? The answer is intriguing. The life-sustaining quality of the food that we so desire derives from the “utterance of the mouth of G-d” it embodies. And like a collapsing wall, in which the highest stones fall the farthest, so, too, the more lofty the Divine spark, the lower it descended into the physical world. Now we can understand the answer. The vegetable realm derives its sustenance from the mineral, the animal realm receives its nourishment from the vegetable and mineral, and the human being is nourished by all three, animal, vegetable and mineral. For the “lower” a thing is in our physical world, the higher its source is in the spiritual realm. The inanimate realm has a higher spiritual source that man!
Tsfat’s great Kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Ari, taught that absolutely no existence is devoid of a Divine spark — indeed, nothing can exist without it’s pinpoint of G-dliness that imbues it with “beingness” and purpose. But not every spark can be actualized i.e., redeemed and elevated. There are certain “impregnable” elements whose sparks are inaccessible to us. The fact that something is forbidden by the Torah (e.g. non-kosher food) means that its husk cannot be penetrated, so that its spark remains locked within it and cannot be elevated.
So, one who eats a piece of kosher meat and then uses the energy gained from it to perform a mitzvah, thereby elevates the spark of Divinity that is the essence of the meat, freeing it of its mundane incarnation and returning it to its state of fulfilled spirituality. However, if one would do the same with a piece of non-kosher meat, no such “elevation” would take place. Even if he applied the energy to positive and G-dly ends, this would not constitute a realization of the Divine purpose in the meat’s creation, since the consumption of the meat was an express violation of the Divine will. Instead of elevating this physical object by eating it, for a time we and it fall into the hands of the klipot, the shell that hide holiness.
This is the deeper significance of the Hebrew terms assur and mutar employed by Torah law for the forbidden and the permissible. Assur, commonly translated as “forbidden,” literally means “bound”, implying that these are things whose sparks the Torah has deemed bound and imprisoned in a shell of negativity and proscription. Mutar (“permitted”), which literally means “unbound,” or free, is the term for those sparks which the Torah has empowered us to extricate from their mundane embodiment and actively be involved and elevated by our positive endeavors.
The “bound” elements of creation also have a role in the realization of the Divine purpose outlined by the Torah. But theirs is a “negative” role. They exist so that we should achieve a conquest of self by resisting them. There is no Torah-authorized way in which they can actively be involved in our development of creation, no way in which they may themselves become part of the “dwelling for G-d” that we are charged to make of our world. Of these elements it is said, “Their breaking is their rectification.” They exist to be rejected and defeated, and it is in their defeat and exclusion from our lives that their raison d’etre is realized.
[Adapted from:
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/73827/jewish/The-Chassidic-Masters-on-Food.htm]
“The rock is so overwhelmed by its awe of G-d that it cannot move. That is why the mineral kingdom is still and silent.”
The raw materials of creation and the inanimate world hold the highest lights in their primitive vessels.
MEDITATION:
The Divine sparks in this food elevate me because their roots are higher than mine.
There is nothing but G-d.
My soul expands with this spiritual light.
I have this intention when I eat and enjoy all G-d’s creation.
[Adapted from Susan Schneider. Eating As A Tikkun. 1996. Pgs. 11-13. www.astillsmallvoice.org]