We can substantially increase our chances of living a long life

Bari Weiss recently had a nearly two-hour discussion with Dr. Mark Hyman, the author of 15 books on preventative health care, on Americans’ state of health, and it was not a happy one. American medicine is the most advanced in the world in terms of diagnostic tools and surgical skill. Yet American life expectancy is declining, for the first time.

The central problem, according to Hyman, is that diagnosis and treatment are only relevant after a medical condition or disease develops, but do nothing to prevent it in the first place. And to do that, Americans would have to greatly change the way they eat and exercise. Hyman noted that when he went to medical school around 40 years ago, there was not one state with obesity rates above 20 percent of the adult population. Today there is not one with less, and two-fifths of American adults would be classified as obese.

The average American male weighed between 150 and 160 in the 1960s. Today that figure is 200 pounds. For women, the changes are even worse. The earlier figure was between 110 and 115 pounds; today it is over 170 pounds. Diet is the principal culprit. Ultra-processed foods constitute 60 percent of the average adult’s caloric intake, and 67 percent of that for children.

Despite the proliferation of gyms and ubiquitous runners, the average American is a couch potato. In 1970, two-thirds of kids walked to school; today less than 12 percent do. In 1960, half of all jobs involved some sort of physical activity; today less than 20 percent do. Three-quarters of American teens are physically unfit for the military.

And these unhealthy habits of diet and exercise directly impact health. Sixty percent of American adults suffer from one chronic condition requiring ongoing medical treatment and limiting daily activities, and 40 percent from two such conditions. When Hyman was in medical school, type 2 diabetes was not even a diagnosis. Today it is common.

Nearly one-half of Americans have a biomarker for inflammation called CRP, and one-third have autoimmune antibodies. That inflammation affects not only the body, but the brain, which, after all, is part of the body. Inflammation of the brain is associated with depression and Alzheimer’s. Physicians began to realize that when they repaired patients’ autoimmune systems, mental conditions such as ADD, depression, and bipolar syndrome also improved. As a consequence, both Harvard and Stanford medical schools now have departments of metabolic or nutritional psychiatry.

In the Orthodox world, ignorance of the importance of a proper diet and exercise is, if anything, even greater than in the general population. Our children are less likely to have gym classes as part of their curriculum. Stand in any checkout line on Erev Shabbos in a religious neighborhood, and you will see shopping carts piled high with Shabbos “treats” and soft drinks, each less nutritious and more loaded with sugar than the next. Highly processed cold cuts remain staples of Shabbos tables and kiddushim. At the local makolet, where the Rosenblums do most of our shopping, the only thing that meets one’s eye as one enters is a dozen or so types of cookies, extending several rows into the store.

MICHAEL KAUFMAN has made it his late-life mission to remedy the lack of information about proper diet and exercise in the Orthodox world. On any given Erev Shabbos, he can be found approaching anyone he sees smoking in Jerusalem’s Geula neighborhood and explaining that he may be shortening his life considerably and asking whether he is aware of how many Torah commands he is transgressing by smoking.

Seven years ago, he published Am I My Body’s Keeper: The Way of Torah and Science. And he has now published a fully updated second edition incorporating new information.

Kaufman’s passion to extend the lifespans of his fellow Jews and their ability to savor their later years in good health and mobility is only the latest of many passions in the course of his long life, many of which are touched upon in his memoir In One Era and Out the Other. Since leaving Telshe Yeshivah, he has been a journalist, a real estate developer, and a collector of Judaica. In the 1980s, he dedicated himself to kiruv, and his beautiful home overlooking the Kosel in Jerusalem’s Old City became an invaluable resource for Rabbi Meir Schuster’s kiruv activities. And in the 1990s, when the number of backpackers at the Kosel began to decrease, Kaufman created his own kiruv organization called VISA (Visiting Israel Students Association), a highly successful program with a broad range of classes, shabbatonim, and activities for students on half-year or one-year programs in Israel.

I FIND Am I My Body’s Keeper? to be both inspiring and the source of great optimism. What could be a greater source of optimism than the knowledge that we can substantially increase our chances of living a long life, free of many of the most dreaded diseases? And no less important, doing so with our mental acuity and mobility largely intact by watching what and how much we eat, exercising regularly, and leading a less sedentary lifestyle? Genes, as studies of identical twins have shown, are not destiny.

Of course, we are only speaking of statistical probabilities. If an Iranian missile strikes our apartment, no matter how healthy our diet and rigorous our exercise routine, it will avail us little.

Yet the statistical likelihood of living a longer, healthier life inspires me every time I read Am I My Body’s Keeper? — and I have been doing so since the first edition was in manuscript — to pay a little more attention to my diet and to increase my exercise.

Neither sticking to a schedule nor discipline are my strong points. But to ensure getting in a half an hour of exercise a day requires a fixed schedule, and that itself ensures that one’s day will have a lot less wasted time. And discipline in one area — e.g., eating smaller portions, more slowly — tends to spill over to other areas as well.

Michael Kaufman is his own best advertisement for the advice he is offering to anyone who will listen. Approaching 93, he still arises every morning for the haneitz minyan in the nearby Gerrer beis medrash, followed by an hour on his elliptical machine, and then learning an amud yomi. Then it is off to the gym for a workout with light weights and the rowing machine. He can still do one-hand pushups, though he generally confines himself to the more conventional ones. After the gym, it’s time for a brisk walk or swimming laps.

Only then does he eat his first meal of the day, as a prelude to a ten-hour day standing at his shtender/desktop, where he both learns and writes. Am I My Brother’s Keeper? is his ninth book, including lengthy and thoroughly sourced works on Jewish marriage and Judaism and feminism. On Shabbos, he walks to and from the haneitz minyan at the Kosel from his apartment at the far end of Geula.

Am I My Body’s Keeper? is an excellent compendium of the current state of knowledge on the benefits of proper diet and exercise. Perhaps the most surprising chapter is that on the negative impact of our largely sedentary lifestyles, originally discovered through research on astronauts. Even daily exercise does not fully erase the impact of sitting still for hours at a time.

Kaufman’s baker’s dozen of the most healthy “super foods” — so called because of either the vitamins they contain or their high fiber content, or because they are rich in antioxidants — includes enough tasty fare for even the pickiest eaters: apples, almonds or other nuts, such as walnuts, blueberries, broccoli, cantaloupe, grapes, chickpeas, sweet potatoes, cabbage, or other leafy vegetables, grapefruit, and oily fish. He quotes one nutritionist’s pithy formulation: “If it’s a plant, eat it; if it comes from a plant, don’t.”

Exercise may not be a panacea for weight loss, as a recent article in Family First noted, but its benefits in terms of cardiovascular health — i.e., reduced risk of strokes or heart attacks — maintaining mobility, improved mood, and reduced risk of numerous cancers, are sufficient to call exercise the “best medicine,” not to mention a free gift from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. As the Rambam writes (Hilchos Dei’os 4:14), “So long as you exercise and exert yourselves vigorously... no illness will befall you, and your physical powers will be strengthened.”

OVERCOMING SUSPICION that there is something not Torahdig about taking care of one’s body or that perhaps it betrays a lack of bitachon to think that one can control the length of one’s days forms a large part of Kaufman’s book. For that reason, he begins every chapter with a quote from the Rambam.

Hashem’s greatest gift to us is life itself, for without it we cannot serve Him in any way — “the dead cannot praise G-d” (Tehillim 115:16). The more we show our appreciation of that gift by seeking to maximize our days in His service, the more Hashem gives us. Thus, Rav Yisrael Salanter taught, one who ignores his health, and thereby decreases his ability to serve Hashem, is guilty of ingratitude.

Rav Huna once asked his son Rabbah why he did not attend the lectures of Rav Chisda. Rabbah replied that Rav Chisda spoke of mundane matters, such as how one should conduct himself in the beis hakisei to avoid endangering himself. Rav Huna told his son that if Rav Chisda discussed such things, they were not mundane matters, and that indeed was all the more reason Rabbah should attend his shiurim (Shabbos 82a).

But what of the argument that one’s days are determined in Heaven prior to one’s birth? Reb Michoel cites a number of practices mentioned by Chazal to extend one’s life and a lengthy teshuvah from the Rambam to his talmid Rabbi Yosef ben Yehudah in which the Rambam proves from multiple Torah sources that one’s lifespan is not predetermined.

And even if our time on earth were determined in advance, one of my walking partners pointed out, who is to say that we are reaching our allotted time? Perhaps we are cutting short our days by not being sufficiently attentive to our health, and that is what Chovos Halevavos means when he writes that negligence with respect to one’s health is tantamount to suicide (Shaar Bitachon 4). That is the simplest way to understand the Midrashic statement: “Ninety-nine out of a hundred die from negligence; one out of a hundred from Heaven” (Vayikra Rabbah 16:8).

At the outset of another excellent book on health for the Torah community, Body and Soul: The Torah Path to Health, Fitness and a Holy Life, Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld and Dr. Daniel Grove offer an extensive compendium of how meticulous modern Torah greats were about their diets and all matters connected to health.

The Brisker Rav, for instance, used to go for a long walk every day, even on Yom Kippur. When questioned about the latter practice, he replied, “If it’s a mitzvah to walk every other day for my health, is it not also a mitzvah on Yom Kippur?”

A doctor attending Rav Elyashiv once asked him what he liked to eat. He did not understand the question. “I will eat whatever you tell me to eat,” he said.

After being told that whole wheat bread is healthier than bread made from processed wheat, Rav Shach ate only the former.

Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky was known for the speed with which he walked. Even in his seventies, yeshivah bochurim struggled to keep up with him. Asked whether yeshivah bochurim should exercise, he quickly responded yes. And when the questioner challenged him by asking whether yeshivah bochurim exercised in Lithuania, Rav Yaakov pointed out that exercise was built into their day. The stantzia where they slept was on one end of town and the beis medrash on the other. So they had to walk miles back and forth each day. If they wanted to heat their dwelling, they had to chop wood to do so. Even drawing water from the well or washing one’s garments by hand required a great deal of physical exertion. They did not need more.

“In modern times, when bochurim sit most of the day, we need to exercise,” Rav Yaakov concluded.

Rav Avigdor Miller put it simply, “If we are commanded to break Shabbos to save a life so that he can keep more Shabbosos, how much more so are we obligated to walk in order to be healthy and keep more Shabbosos.”

HOWEVER MINIMAL general knowledge of nutrition and exercise is in the Torah community, we do have a lot of positive factors going for us, in terms of longevity. In his concluding chapter, Kaufman cites studies of so-called blue zones around the world where centenarians are relatively common. All are places where people walk a great deal every day and are engaged in regular physical activity. Diets tend to be heavily plant-based, and people generally eat moderate portions and do not finish everything on their plates.

But in addition, these zones are primarily religious communities, in which members are engaged in religious and spiritual activities on a daily basis. Family is central in these communities, and people live with a strong sense of purpose. Other studies show a connection between a generally positive approach to life and being involved in helping others and health and longevity.

These factors help explain why chareidim have higher-than-expected lifespans. But for those interested in how to live even longer lives and in condition to serve Hashem more fully, Michael Kaufman is waiting to hear from you.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1069. Yonoson Rosenblum may be contacted directly at rosenblum@mishpacha.com)