Kabbalah and Medicine
Liquids of the Torah Correspond to Attributes of the Heart The two-letter root of the word for "wolf" (ze'ev) is zav, which means '"flow." This is the root of a disease, described explicitly in the Torah: gonorrhea (ziva). Though both males and females may be afflicted by this disease, for the female it is more "common," for its symptom (its definition in Jewish law) is experiencing a flow of blood like that of menstruation, but not in its proper time. In any event, this clearly relates the wolf-image and syndrome to sexual disease. On the positive side, the land of Israel is praised repeatedly in the Torah as being "a land that flows (zavat) with milk and honey." The land of Israel symbolizes the holy feminine reality of creation. The Torah speaks of seven liquids: water, wine, dew, milk, blood, olive oil, and honey. In Kabbalah, these correspond to the seven attributes of the heart, from chesed to malchut, in their above order:
Let us first note that here, blood is associated with the sefirah of hod. In our above analysis of the physiological systems, the blood corresponds to the sefirah of binah, the origin in the mind (whose powers do not appear here in correspondence to the seven liquids) of the emotion of hod, as stated: "binah extends until hod." We saw above that good health is primarily dependent upon the flow of the blood--in the circulating state referred to as "run and return"--throughout all the limbs of the body. The fact that here the blood corresponds to hod reinforces our identification of all disease and cure with hod. In the expression "a land flowing with milk and honey," milk alludes to the endocrine system, that physiological system responsible for growth (the power of mother's milk). It is the right complementary sefirah to hod. As explained above, the rectification of each of the sefirot to the left is its inclusion and union with the respective sefirah to the right. In this case, the image of marital union is explicitly related to that of the two sefirot netzach and hod (milk and blood, the endocrine system and the immune system): "[in marital union,] he is in netzach; she is in hod." Honey corresponds to malchut, the digestive system. The very substance of honey is a product of the digestive system of bees. The proper amount of honey in one’s diet (in accordance with one's age) aids man’s digestive system. In Kabbalah, we are taught that the numerical value of the word for "honey" (dvash) equals that of the word for "woman" (isha, 306), the symbol of malchut, who ascends, in marital union, to hod. Thus we have completed a cycle: the rectification of blood (hod) depends upon its unity with milk (netzach); milk combines with honey (malchut), which then ascends to purify the blood (hod). This rectification process is an inherent property of the holy land, the land of Israel, which flows (alluding to the flow of the blood) with milk and honey. A new chapter is both uploaded to the web and sent out every week via the Inner Dimension (free) weekly Torah message email list. Click here to subscribe now!
|
The Healing of Body and Soul 
