These additional resources that we have culled from around the web are meant to enhance the NLE Morasha Syllabus class entitled, Jewish Perspectives on Health, Nutrition, Fitness and Extreme Sports. We are certain that these resources can help you further impact your audience! If you know of any additional resources that we should add on to this page, please let us know by contacting us here.
Please note: The views expressed in the articles, links, videos, etc. reflect the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the thinking of NLE Resources.

Articles

  • Health by Rabbi Berel Wein
    Many times the lack of good physical health results eventually in weaker spiritual health as well.
  • Staying Healthy in Halacha by Moshe Dovid Lebovits
    A discussion of the obligation to preserve our health in general and in certain instances based on the writings found in the Gemorah, Rishonim and Achronim. 
  • You are What you Eat by Yakov Levinson
    The “way we eat” as Jews is an important part of our heritage and spans from simple rules of common eating etiquette to complex kabbalistic combinations of God’s Divine Name concentrated upon while eating.
  • The Mitzvah of Proper Diet by Rabbi Ariel Bar Tzadok
    Being that overeating is the major source of physical illness and that physical illness prevents us from having knowledge of the Creator and knowing the Creator as enumerated by RaMBaM as being the first and foremost of the mitzvot, it stands to reason that the sin of overeating more than just adversely affecting one’s physical health actually prevents one from fulfilling the most essential and importance of the mitzvot, that of knowing the Creator.

Links

  • Brain Trauma to Affect one in Three Players, N.F.L. Agrees from the New York Times
    The National Football League, which for years disputed evidence that its players had a high rate of severe brain damage, has stated in federal court documents that it expects nearly a third of retired players to develop long-term cognitive problems and that the conditions are likely to emerge at “notably younger ages” than in the general population.
  • Healthcare is a Mitzvah from the Azamra Institute
    Only with a fit, healthy body is it possible to perform the mitzvot in the proper manner. If the body is sick and in pain, it is impossible to pray to God with proper devotion, study the Torah with full concentration and perform many other mitzvot.
  • Is it a Mitzvah to Exercise and Stay Healthy? from Jewish Community Center Chabad of the Beach Cities
    while there are other belief systems that discourage people from being proactive in taking care of their health and instead believe that prayer itself heals, Judaism encourages people to look after their health and seek counsel from medical experts in addition to asking G-d for health. So does that mean that being very health conscious is a Jewish concept?
  • Exercise by Rabbi Yirmiyahu Ulman
    In order for the soul to exist in the material world, it must be clothed in a body through which the soul may achieve its purpose. For this reason we must supply the body with its essential needs like food, water, sleep, and exercise, without which the body could not exist and the soul could not fulfill its potential.
  • Exercise, Torah and Teshuva by Rabbi David Samson
    As long as you don’t exaggerate your holy work-out time at the gym, we don’t see this as infringing on your Torah learning. 
  • How ‘Bout Some Tae Bo with that Torah? from the Jewish Exponenet
    The idea was to reinvent the modern Orthodox school’s physical education program, encourage a healthier lifestyle and help students focus better in the latter half of the school day.

Blogs

  • The Torah Physician by Dr. S.H. Rhodes
    Our generation is being called upon to take a serious look at this and change our way of life. We will continue to seek new ways to save the precious resources of the earth, and at the same time, we need to save our own most precious resource, our bodies.
  • Prevention: Torah Perspectives in Preserving Health by Yosef Ben Shlomo Hakohen and Richard H. Schwartz, Ph. D.Judaism’s historic approach is fundamentally different from that of modern medicine. While treating sick people is certainly a Torah obligation, Judaism puts a priority on the prevention of disease.
  • A Torah Perspective on Exercise by Rabbi Daniel Myers
    Years ago, I had the pleasure of running the New York City Marathon. Looking back at that experience, the question arises whether that jog through New York (and all the training that led up to it) was a fulfillment of the Mitzvah of “And you shall guard your souls”, or an exhausting case of teenage time wasting. Let us take a look at some of the writings of our Baalai Mesorah in an attempt to formulate a position on the merit of exercising.

Audio

Videos

The Art of Healthy Living by Rabbi Jonathan Rietti

Health Care Reform: A Torah Perspective by Rabbi Moshe Tendler

The Exercise Song by Torah Tots