T257 PNC - Don't Eat More Than You Need — Excess Food Harms

Beginner: The verse "When you come into your fellow's vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes... but you shall not put any in your vessel" (Devarim 23:25) is read here as advice about eating in general: "as your soul is satisfied — not more." Why? Every food has a root from which it draws life, just as a spice gives the person who takes it as medicine the very life-energy that animates the spice. Foods receive life from the fact that the person eats them and receives life from them — so foods get life from being needed. But when a person eats more than he needs, the surplus food has no recipient through whom to receive its life. It is like food left abandoned inside a vessel — it gets nothing back. So that surplus food now hunts for life — and the only life it can find is the eater's own. It begins to drain him. And other foods join with it and harm him too. "And to your vessel do not put" — don't eat more than you need, because anything beyond your need is like food deposited in an abandoned vessel: it turns parasitic. Intermediate: T257: "Ki tavo b'kerem re'echa... v'el kelyecha lo titen" (Dev 23:25): kol ma'achal sho'ev chayim mi-haadam ha-ochlo b'tzorech. Ochel yoter mi-tzorko — ein la-ma'achal me-mi le-kabbel chayim, u-vakeish chayim me-haadam atzmo. "V'el kelyecha lo titen" — efs ha-mu'tar k'mannach b'kli rek. LM 257.