Maimonides' Guarantee

Parshas Beshalach

By Rabbi Dovid Zauderer

In this week’s Torah portion we read how after the Jews leave Egypt, G-d makes the following promise to them. "If you hearken diligently to the voice of G-d, and do what is just in His eyes, give ear to His commandments and observe all His decrees, then any of the diseases that I placed on Egypt, I will not bring upon you, for I am G-d, your Healer" (Exodus 15:26).

This verse is troubling. After all, if G-d is promising us that by fulfilling His commandments no illness will befall us, why does He refer to Himself as our “Healer”? If we are never to get sick, there's no need for us to be healed!
Maybe this anecdote about Maimonides – one of the greatest Torah scholars and doctors of all time – will help us answer our question:

[But first, a little background …Around the year 1171 BCE, Maimonides assumed the vocation of physician, for which he was to become famous. He had trained in medicine in both Córdoba and in Fez. Gaining widespread recognition, he was appointed court physician to the Grand Vizier Al Qadi al Fadil, then to Sultan Saladin, after whose death he remained a physician to the royal family.]

The Sultan once ‘lamented’ to Maimonides that since he had been healthy his whole life, he never had the ‘opportunity’ to personally test out and benefit from Maimonides’ amazing medical ability and healing. Maimonides responded to the Sultan that the true greatness of a doctor is not in his ability to ‘heal’ illness but rather in his ability to ‘prevent’ illness from occurring in the first place. As G-d promised the Jewish people in Exodus 15:26, “any of the diseases that I placed on Egypt, I will not bring upon you” – i.e. you will not get sick at all – “for I am G-d, your Healer".

As we see from this story, the best doctor is the one who can prevent illness before it happens. As Benjamin Franklin famously put it: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.

[Indeed, the Talmud in Shabbos 32b teaches: “A healthy person should always pray that he does not get sick, because once illness strikes he must have great merit to regain his health.”]

Yet even though most of us in the West would certainly agree with Ben Franklin’s famous adage, we seem not to live by it. For example, in the Western world’s health care systems, prevention is underfunded compared to treatment.

However, Maimonides himself certainly lived by the words he spoke to Sultan Saladin. He even devoted a full chapter in Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Ethics”, to providing proper health and nutrition advice, so that if one follows his principles, he will never get sick at all.

Here are some excerpts from Maimonides’ diet for good health as prescribed in his “Laws of Ethics” chap. 4:

[Ed. Note: When reading Maimonides’ diet, it is important to distinguish between ancient “medical remedies and prescriptions” - many of which are theories that may be disproved over time or are not applicable today for various reasons - and Maimonides’ “health and nutrition advice”, which is based on true principles that are timeless and unchanging. So, for example, exercise was, is, and always will be, a cornerstone of good health. And the same applies to the other main principles in Maimonides’ diet.]

“Since maintaining a healthy and sound body is among the ways of G-d - for one cannot understand or have any knowledge of the Creator if he is ill - therefore, he must avoid that which harms the body and accustom himself to that which is healthful and helps the body become stronger.”

“Together, day and night make up [a period of] twenty-four hours. It is sufficient for a man to sleep a third of this period; i.e., eight hours. These should be towards the end of the night, so that there be eight hours from the beginning of his sleep until sunrise. Thus, he should rise from his bed before sunrise.”

“They have given another principle with regard to physical well-being: As long as one exercises, exerts himself greatly, does not eat to the point of satiation and has loose bowels, he will not suffer sickness and he will grow in strength. [This applies] even if he eats harmful foods.”

“Conversely, whoever is idle and does not exercise, or does not move his bowels when he has the need, or is constipated, even if he eats the proper foods and takes care to follow the rules of medicine, will be full of pain for all his days and his strength will fade away.”

“Overeating is like poison to anyone's body. It is the main source of all illness. Most illnesses which afflict a man are caused by harmful foods or by his filling his belly and overeating, even of healthful foods.”

At the end of the chapter, Maimonides makes the most incredible “guarantee” to anyone who follows his main principles of nutrition:

“Whoever conducts himself in the ways which we have drawn up, I will guarantee that he will not become ill throughout his life, until he reaches advanced age and dies. He will not need a doctor. His body will remain intact and healthy throughout his life."

Maimonides then concludes with this disclaimer:

“All of these beneficial habits which we have stated apply only to a healthy man. In contrast, a sick person, or one who has a single organ which is not healthy, or one who has followed a harmful way of life for many years, each of these must choose different patterns of behavior in accordance with his [particular] illness as it is explained in the medical literature.”

Unfortunately, we live in a world with frightening health statistics. More than half of the United States population is overweight or obese, and many suffer from resultant health complications. Eating disorders abound, and we are flooded with conflicting advice and false promises to attain our dream of health. Confusion seems to be the norm. Ours is a world in which optimum health levels seem to be out of reach!

This “good health” guarantee, issued by a great Torah personality and one of the foremost physicians in history, should not be taken lightly. Indeed, the Halachic authorities state that Maimonides’ advice about health and the prevention of disease remains, for the most part, as relevant today as it was when he was still alive, so we would be wise to study that advice and to see what of it we can incorporate into our own lives.

http://www.torchweb.org/torah_detail.php?id=602

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