I walked out of my kitchen depleted and exhausted. I couldn’t imagine that guests were coming in less than an hour. It was Friday afternoon and the smell of paneer cheese in a rich tomato sauce wafted out of my kitchen. I was rolling out dough for naan, instead of our usual store-bought challah, because I really wanted this Shabbat to be special! It was my husband’s 40th birthday and I wanted everything for him to be one of a kind.
After a full day of teaching, I spent the final hours before Shabbat in the kitchen. Despite my excitement for the upcoming celebration, I felt physically and emotionally depleted. That’s when the question hit me:
I have spent so much of my day nourishing and supporting my family and my students, but did I do anything to nourish myself today?
When I hear the term “self-care” and the way it has been co-opted by businesses marketing their latest offer, I tend to scoff. Self-care is often advertised as bubble baths, manicures, and days laying in bed. While these activities do hold benefits, Jewish wisdom invites us to look beyond the surface level.
To me, Jewish self-care is about a return to connections that nourish yourself, your hopes and dreams, your relationships, and your own spiritual connection. I wondered if there was a model in our tradition that could help frame this journey towards self-improvement.
When I was in graduate school I learned the concept of the Four Worlds through Rabbi Zalman-Schacter Shlomi who distilled this Kabbalistic concept. Each of these worlds simultaneously exist upon one another, are in relationship to the other, yet also stand apart from each other.
Each of these worlds are unique and have their own needs. So for example, food is something that will satisfy hunger in the physical world but also can easily get confused with nourishment in the emotional realm as well. There are numerous examples of different forms of sustenance that can be confused in each realm.
Many ancient Jewish practices are naturally self-nourishing. For example, daily tefillah (prayer) can nourish you in the spiritual realm — and can also satisfy a social-emotional connection if you have a solid relationship with your community. The weekly practice of Shabbat can satisfy us in all four worlds: it can be a physical experience of turning off from the weekly routine, it can be a social time for connection with family and friends, it can be a time of intellectual and deeper thinking, and it builds the container for a spiritual connection.
As I grew older, I began integrating the concept of the Four Worlds into everything I did. As a teacher, I worked for years to make this the foundation of my teaching. I built the container of my classroom to reflect these Four Worlds. It wasn’t an easy task — just building a physically safe space with some social-emotional connections was very challenging when the school system emphasizes focusing on students' intellectual learning. But I knew early on that if I was going to have any lasting impact on my students that I couldn’t just stick to one of these realms; I needed to build a container for all of them.
On that Friday afternoon, as I walked out of the kitchen after making a huge birthday feast, I turned to my partner and my children and said, “I think I have totally exhausted myself physically. I need to go nourish myself.” Thankfully they understood, and I went to take a walk in the woods.
It was there that I started to conceive of a tool that would help me check in with myself regarding my own self-nourishment. The Four Worlds model immediately came to mind, and soon after, I created a “How did I nourish myself today?” check-in guide to help myself and others. It offers simple ideas to nourish yourself each day in each of the four areas of life.
As a community, we need to provide others space for their own nourishment and also be able to verbalize when we need some time for ourselves. My organization, Jewish Educational Services, supports teachers to make sure that they are engaging in self-care in order for that to trickle down to their student’s mental health. Whether you’re a teacher or not, we all have contexts in life that ask so much of us, and this check-in guide can help ensure we build ourselves up each day and don’t get depleted. I hope it is a useful tool to help support yourself in your own journey of self-nourishment.
You deserve physical nourishment.
You deserve social-emotional nourishment.
You deserve intellectual nourishment.
You deserve spiritual nourishment.
As I look back on Jewish self-care, I think that if we can re-frame it as nourishment it feels more connected and holy to me. Let’s build the house from the ground up! Start with nourishing your physical body and go from there.
At The Well uplifts many approaches to Jewish practice. Our community draws on ancient Jewish wisdom, sometimes adapting longstanding practices to more deeply support the well-being of women and nonbinary people. See this article’s sources below. We believe Torah (sacred teachings) are always unfolding to help answer the needs of the present moment.
Sources
The Four Worlds, YourBayit.org
Aryeh Kaplan, Abraham Sutton. “Innerspace: Introduction to Kabbalah, Meditation and Prophecy”. Moznaim, 1990.
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Julie is a mother, teacher, and potter who lives outside Washington DC. She works as a Yoga teacher at Claybrook Yoga and is also working on a graphic novel on the life of Glikl of Hamlin with her husband, Rabbi Mat Tonti. Learn more at glikl.com.
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