Question: What quotes from the Torah speak to the need for believers to be healthy? Does the Torah speak to the importance of being healthy over being religious?

Answer: There is a verse in the Torah we read just a few weeks ago: “Guard yourself and guard your soul very carefully” (Deuteronomy 4:9-10).The scholar Maimonides says that having a healthy body is part of our effort to follow G-d’s ways, as it is impossible to understand and know G-d while ill. For that reason a person has to avoid things which injure the body and do those things which are healthy and invigorating.

All of the Commandments, we are told to do in order to live by them. Since we live by them we have to make sure we are alive first—so most of the Commandments can be violated when necessary to save a life. This is why groups like Hatzalah (the Orthodox Jewish volunteer paramedics) operate on the Sabbath.

That’s not called being healthy over being religious though—one never stops being religious. The Torah tells us to violate other Commandments to save a life, so that is being religious.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken
Torah.org and JewishAnswers.org