From a Glass of Water to True Faith: Seeing God Beyond the Physical

Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein was known to say that from something as basic as bread and water, a person can come to heresy against the Almighty. For when a person is hungry and thirsty, they feel that their very life depends on food and drink, and that only these will “return their soul” to them.

We find that Moses fasted three times for forty days and nights, and that Elijah walked for forty days in the strength of a single meal of bread baked on coals. If it is possible for a person to live without food and drink, why do we place our dependence on them?

The believer’s approach must be that my soul can remain within me even without eating or drinking, solely by the decree of God. However, He has decreed that the soul will not remain in the human body without food and drink and this Heavenly decree requires that food is the medium through which the soul is kept in the body. Without this decree, it would make no sense that a spiritual soul’s connection to a physical body should be maintained through eating and drinking.

As the holy Arizal writes (cited in Shulchan HaTahor), researchers have long been baffled by how food sustains a person. For if it is to give life to the body, why does it not revive a corpse? And if it is to give life to the soul, the soul itself has no need of physical nourishment, for it is spiritual. Rather, God in His wisdom decreed that the combination of body and soul, and their continued existence together, depend on food and drink — an illogical conclusion in human terms. [The Arizal further explains that eating is in fact a lofty spiritual act of refining the sparks contained within food.]

Therefore, when a person believes that a glass of water can save him, he is not recognizing that the water is nothing more than a means — decreed by the Almighty, to sustain a person. Does a person place their reliance on the food and drink, or on their Creator?

An acquaintance of the Chofetz Chaim had a daughter suffering from a chronic illness and constantly begged the Chofetz Chaim to pray for her. Once, the Chofetz Chaim went up to the attic of his home to pray, and people heard him saying: “Master of the Universe, have You not accepted my prayers so many times before? Please, accept them from me today as well…”