Eat Like a Hassid

(4) Such is the way [of a life] of Torah: you shall eat bread with salt, and rationed water shall you drink; you shall sleep on the ground, your life will be one of privation, and in Torah shall you labor. If you do this, “Happy shall you be and it shall be good for you” (Psalms 128:2): “Happy shall you be” in this world, “and it shall be good for you” in the world to come.

Rabbi Hizkiah the Cohen, in the name of Rav, said, “A person will have to give a justification and accounting for any delight they saw but did not eat.”

(2) ‎“I place (shiviti) God before me, always” (Tehillim 16:8). Shiviti is the language of sameness. ‎That is, everything that happens to you should be all the same to you - whether people praise you or disparage you. And so it is with everything, such as with food: whether you eat delicacies or any other kind of food, everything should be the same in your eyes, because all evil desires have been removed from you.

Attach your thought to Above. Do not eat or drink too much, but only to the extent of maintaining your health. Never look intently at mundane matters, nor pay any attention to them, so that you may be separated from the physical. Because in focusing on matters of this world, one makes oneself physical.

When one suddenly sees a beautiful woman, one should think to oneself, "Where does her beauty come from? For if she were to die, she would not keep it. And if that is so, where does her beauty come from? It must come from a divine force that has infused itself in her, and given her this force of beauty, this color in her cheeks. So when one finds that the source of this beauty is a divine force, one must ask, "Why should I should I pursue just a part of this force? It is better to cling to the source and the essence of all things, for that is where all beauty is!"

So, too, when one looks at any physical thing, like a vessel. One should think, how did such beauty and form come into this vessel? So the physical matter is not the essence. The beauty and the form are spiritual and vital aspects of the vessel, which is in itself also a part of God above.

So it is when one eats, one should think: the taste and the sweetness of this food come from the force of life and sweetness above - this is its true life-force.

This is a major principle: Anything that a person wears or eats or uses in any way, that person is nourished by the life-force in that thing. For if not for the spiritual force in it, that thing would not be able to exist at all.

And in it are holy sparks which are connected to the root of that person's soul.

And I heard that this is the reason that one person loves something and another person hates that same thing, and loves something else.

And so when you use a vessel, or eat food, even though it is for your body, you repair the sparks in it. Because afterwards, that person serves God with the force that comes into their body from those clothes, or that food, or any other thing that gives us strength to serve the Blessed One. That is how they are repaired.