This is the third and final book by Brazilian Rabbi Nilton Bonder in a series (The Kabbalah of Money, The Kabbalah of Envy) on the talmudic saying that a person's character can be judged by "his cup, his pocket, and his anger." The author explains that we feel the presence of God in our hearts while eating and drinking. The Great Banquet has already begun and it behooves us to eat consciously so that we are in harmony with the universe. Obesity is not just a physical problem; there is also an ecological and a political kind of obesity. Hence the choices we make about diet and exercise are moral ones; they are part and parcel of our spiritual practice.

Those who eat "to prove something, to express something, to avoid something, to control something, to repress something" are going to suffer the consequences with a life of imbalance. The Hasidic masters offer strategies other than food to satisfy emotional, mental, and spiritual hungers. Bonder presents Jewish wisdom on fasting, vegetarianism, blessings after a meal, the dishonoring of food by wasting it, the importance of fitness in each of the four worlds described by the Kabbalah, and the ways any exploitation of workers introduces a contaminating element into the food chain. The Kabbalah of Food by Nilton Bonder is a work of astonishing depth, profundity, and practicality; it makes conscious eating into an ecological act of spiritual worship.

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