Why do so few Jews possess the kind of muscular bodies one often sees among gentiles?
Upon returning from their reconnaissance mission, the spies declare, “And there we saw the giants” (Numbers 13:33). Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch suggests that these giants grew up in the Land of Canaan because only this land (according to one opinion in the Gemara) escaped the waters of the Great Flood and thus retained the “original strength of the earth” as G-d first created it. It therefore could produce the kinds of giants “whose enormous size and strength the sagas of the past are full of” (see Genesis 6:4).
When the Jews conquered the Land of Canaan, though, they did not begin giving birth to giants. Why not? Rav Hirsch suggests that Canaan’s potent environment “begets giant bodies” only among nations where “the mind lies fallow.” For nations that “are inclined preferably to mental and spiritual directions,” the environment chiefly nourishes the mind and soul, not the body.
This theory may strike one as “unscientific,” but in his explication of the laws of kosher in Horeb (p. 319), Rav Hirsch asks, “Do you know your own nature? How nourishment is related to the bodily powers, and bodily powers to those of the soul…?”
Indeed, we don’t. We know very little about the soul’s interaction with the body. Many people testify, though, that some foods make them feel sluggish and heavy while others make them feel light and alert. And Rav Hirsch seems to suggest that “even animals may become bloodthirsty and wild through one food” and “tame and mild through another food.”
Is it not possible, therefore, that non-kosher foods – e.g., birds of prey and wild animals – deaden our spiritual sensitivity? And is it not possible that people who place a premium on bodily strength may derive more physical benefit from their environment than those who believe in maintaining healthy bodies (as Rav Hirsch says one should) but primarily seek to develop their minds and souls?
We shouldn’t discount the possibility.
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.
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