| [Editor’s note: you can watch Rabbi Treu explain the Challenge in a short video here.] What’s holier, working out or praying? Who’s in for a spring fitness challenge with me? What does any of this have to do with Passover? Of all of the spiritual practices in the Jewish canon, exercise is perhaps our most neglected. We’ve come to separate our bodies from our souls, and both, all too often, from Jewish life. The gym (the walk, the Peloton, whatever) feels like an obligation; spiritual practice, optional… and Jewish spiritual practice a question mark. We think yoga is Buddhist or Hindu (I mean, it was, originally), that “going to services” is the hallmark of Jewish spirituality, and that Jewish embodied practice is bagels and kugel. But what if it turned out that the fitness commitments you have or want to nurture in your life are also part of the Jewish practice you seek? In Jewish thought, our bodies are sacred. Maimonides, a 12th-century physician and Torah scholar, taught: “Since a healthy and whole body is necessary for the ways of God – for it is impossible to imply or know anything of Godly wisdom when one is sick – therefore one must distance oneself from things that are damaging to the body and accustom oneself to things that strengthen and make one healthy.” (Mishneh Torah, H”D 4:1). “Guard yourself and guard your soul very carefully,” the Torah teaches (Deuteronomy 4:9). “’Guard yourself,’” wrote the commentator Kli Yakar in the 17th century, “means taking care of the body.” It’s spring, and it’s almost Passover, and that means we are about to have this incredible opportunity to explore connecting our bodies and our spirits. We will eat differently for eight days, starting with the seder. It’s the original spring detox. The Torah is telling us to re-evaluate our eating habits by intentionally choosing what we’re going to eat for eight (seven, in Israel) days. Now those eight days are a holiday, and we can choose to indulge as part of the celebration; but those eight days are the beginning of a longer period of spiritual practice… and that’s where this health commitment thing comes in. On day two of the holiday, we begin counting the omer. Every night, we say a blessing and count. (Literally. Today is day one, etc.). We count for seven weeks, and after we we get to forty-nine (seven weeks x seven days), we have our next holiday: Shavuot. (At Oheb, Shavuot starts this year with a big picnic bash, June 1, save the date!). The period of counting is designed as a finite seven-week period for spiritual journeys. This year, I’m making mine a “body and soul” practice. A spring refresh on the health and exercise front. Who’s in? I’m calling it The Omer Challenge: 49 Steps to Strength, and here’s how it works: 1. Set your own goal. Maybe it’s increasing your step count, or exercising daily, or laying off sugar, or going vegan. You do you. After all, we will be a group in which some of us will be nine years old and some of us 99! Each of us made in God’s image, with different ailments and abilities. Pick something that suits you to take on during the Omer (that’s this 49-day period of spiritual practice) this year. 2. Join me on WhatsApp. (Don’t do What’sApp? Download it here or in the app store. If you need help, let us know.) You can join the group here. Every day for 49 days, post in that group. There we will cheerlead one another and celebrate our health and every step we take in this body and soul fitness challenge. 3. Over the course of the 49 days, I will be offering Torah to keep us inspired to meet our goals. And of course, we will count the Omer together each day, matching our spiritual practice to the embodied. We’ll have a few meet-ups and check-ins along the way in person, and then at the end, we’ll come together over Shavuot to celebrate the blessing of our bodies and health. Studies show that having a fitness partner increases fitness goal achievement by 95%. Any Jew could have told you that, as we know that community keeps us strong. And believe it or not, studies show that people who are in an online fitness group (like our WhatsApp group) are 65% more likely to stick to their exercise goals compared to people who are doing their own routines at the gym. So, even if we’re working out asynchronously, as long as we hold each other in community, we are 65% more likely to stick with it – and will be fostering a sense of Jewish community with one another as we go. Passover is just two weeks away. If you haven’t started yet, now’s the time to clean your home, plan the seder, and prep your food for the week. Last year Leydi Rofman and I made a bunch of videos teaching us how to do that, which you can watch here. This year, as we think about getting ready for the holiday, the invitation is to choose a fitness goal and make that the centerpiece of our spring communal journey together. The 49 Steps Omer Fitness Challenge will, I hope, also be 49 days of friendship and fostering community in new ways. P.S. All you need to get ready for Pesach, including the form to sell your chametz and instructions on what to do since Erev Pesach falls on Shabbat this year, can be found here. |
