The Intimate Act of Eating

Highlighting: “The Intimate Act of Eating: A Cosmic Approach to Food” by Deborah Jacobi. English. Hardcover. 152 pages.

Author Deborah Jacobi posits two questions that led her to research the role of eating in Judaic practice and to write two books addressing the challenges of overeating and the moral aspects of eating.

Jacobi’s first book, “The Intimate Act of Eating,” asks: Why did God create man with the need for bodily nourishment? In His all-powerful dominion, God could have totally forgone the need of man to consume anything at all. Indeed, the statement “For six days you shall work” (Exodus 24:19) could be more fully fulfilled if we skipped breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee and snacks. What was God’s purpose that He endowed man with the need to eat and be sustained by that which is lower than himself? Is there a higher purpose within the apparently lowly act? And why is it so difficult to restrain ourselves from overeating?