The 32 Teeth and the Tikkun of Grinding Food

The 32 Teeth and the Tikkun of Grinding Food

The Ari HaKadosh explains in Shaar Ta'amei HaMitzvot, on Parashat Eikev: “Throughout the meal, or at least while eating a kezayit of bread over which HaMotzi was recited, a person should mentally contemplate the following words: ‘The purification and extraction [of the Sparks of Holiness from the food] take place through the 32 teeth, corresponding to the 32 paths of wisdom (Sefer Yetzirah), for “everything is refined through thought.” These teeth grind and crush the food, thereby separating the edible from the inedible. This is analogous to millstones. They grind the grain, separating the chaff and bran (that is, the husk, the kelipot) from the flour (that is, the food), which before grinding formed an inseparable whole.’ It is also stated there that one must focus on two aspects of the purification of the food being eaten: - the first concerns separating the good, edible part from the weeds and impurities that entered the food as a result of Adam’s sin, as well as those that became mixed with it at the beginning of Creation; - the second aspect of purification concerns the rectification of the souls that entered the food and drink in the course of their transmigration—gilgulim neshamot. The AriZal explains this as follows: ‘Intend to swallow the food after chewing it, for there, in the stomach, its purification and extraction are completed. The food is digested there, and all the finest elements are transformed into blood, enter the liver, and spread throughout all the organs and arteries, while the waste descends through the intestines and is expelled.’ But if a person has lost most of his teeth and only five or six remain, he should not think that this is insufficient to perform the aforementioned Tikkun. Even with the few teeth he has, this Tikkun will be complete, since a person originally had all 32 teeth, and those that remain also derive from the 32 paths of wisdom. (Ben Ish Chai on Parashat Balak)