Secrets for Living a Long Life

This week’s parasha is Ekev, continuing Moses’ final speech to the nation in the last 37 days of his life. In this parasha we find the second paragraph of the Shema. This paragraph ends by stating:

And you shall place these words of Mine upon your heart and upon your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand and they shall be for ornaments between your eyes. And you shall teach them to your children to speak with them, when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way and when you lie down and when you rise. And you shall inscribe them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates, in order that your days may increase and the days of your children…

The passage tells us to meditate upon God’s Word constantly, to never cease learning Torah, and teaching Torah. It tells us to place these wise words upon our hearts and souls, our arms and between our eyes, and onto our doorposts. It concludes by saying that doing so will lengthen the days of one’s life, and the lives of one’s children. God guarantees that persistent study and contemplation will lead to longevity.

Indeed, throughout history we see how our greatest Sages lived very long lives. Some of the earliest rabbis – Hillel, Yochanan ben Zakkai, Akiva – lived to 120 years, like several prophets before them, including Moses and Isaiah. In more recent times, the Lubavitcher Rebbe lived to 92 years, Rav Ovadia Yosef to 93, Rav Elyashiv to 102, and Rav Yitzchak Kaduri to 103 years – and some say 118!

The world-renowned Jewish neurologist Rita Levi-Montalcini said the secret to longevity is “minimal sleep, limited food intake, and always keeping the brain active and interested.” She would know: in addition to being one of the top scientists in the world, she was the first (and so far only) Nobel Prize winner to live over 100 years. Before calmly passing away from natural causes at 103, she still worked in her lab and served on the Italian senate! Her formula for longevity – little sleep, little food, and most importantly, busy brain – is probably true of every great rabbi in Jewish history.

Long before, the wise King Solomon taught the same thing in the ninth chapter of his Book of Proverbs. In this chapter, Solomon personifies Wisdom. He begins by saying that “Wisdom has built her house, hewing out her seven pillars.” He goes on to say that the First Wisdom is “awe of God” and “knowledge of holy things”. Simply collecting information in one’s brain is not enough; one must also be a righteous and Godly individual. A scorner or a proud person can never be truly wise, for such a person hates to be criticised, and will grow little. The real wise person is the one who loves those who critique and reprove him. “Teach the righteous, and he will increase in learning.” Ultimately, the pursuit of wisdom is the path to longevity, “For through me your days will be multiplied, and years of life will be added to you” (Proverbs 9:11).

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1896 Illustration of King Solomon Drafting the First Temple

1896 Illustration of King Solomon Drafting the First Temple

King Solomon tells us that wisdom has seven pillars. He seems to identify the first of these pillars as being the study of God, holiness, and spiritual matters – in other words, Torah study. What about the other six branches of wisdom? What other studies are worth pursuing? While King Solomon does not explicitly say what they are, a later Kabbalistic text called Kol HaTor does describe them in its Sha’ar Be’er Sheva: mathematics, medicine, grammar, music, and three more that are described as “formations and syntheses”, “repair and integration”, and “how the physical interacts with the spiritual”. The last of these is clearly related to King Solomon’s First Wisdom (others say it is psychology, the study of the mind, which bridges the physical and the spiritual); the other two might be referring to general science (how things form) and perhaps mechanics or engineering.

Unfortunately, Kol HaTor is a very controversial text. It is supposed to be based on the teachings of the Vilna Gaon, but many reject this claim, especially because the book was only published in the last century. More problematic still is that the section called Sha’ar Be’er Sheva (which describes the seven wisdoms) is omitted from many manuscripts because it encourages the study of non-Torah subjects – something the ultra-Orthodox world is typically not fond of.

In any case, we see that the seven pillars of wisdom according to Kol HaTor actually resemble the classical branches of study at some of the earliest universities in Medieval times. These are often referred to as the “seven liberal arts”, and are comprised of three “humanities” and four “scientific arts”. The three humanities, consisting of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, were studied first. Once a person had a good grasp of these three, they moved on to study the more complicated scientific arts of music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The first three were known as the trivium, and the next four as the quadrivium. Interestingly, this is actually the origin of the English term for something being trivial, meaning very basic or unimportant, since the trivium consisted of basic entry-level subjects while the quadrivium was more advanced study.

Nests and Parents

The Torah mentions longevity with respect to two more specific mitzvot. The first is to honour one’s parents (Exodus 20:11 and Deuteronomy 5:15), and the second is known as shiluach haken, “sending away the mother bird” from its nest (Deuteronomy 22:7). The latter mitzvah applies if one happens upon a bird’s nest and wants to consume its eggs (or chicks).* The person should shoo away the mother bird first so that it does not see its offspring taken away. This is a clear sign of compassion on the parent bird. In this regard, the two mitzvot which promise longevity are actually related, both having to do with compassion and respect for parents.

If the “First Wisdom” is awe and fear of God, we can understand how respecting parents ties into it. The Ten Commandments were given on Two Tablets: the first listing five commands between God and man, and the second listing five commands between man and man. Honouring one’s parents is on the first tablet, and is considered a mitzvah not between man and man (as one would naturally assume) but between man and God! After all, the Talmud tells us there are three partners in the creation of a person: mother, father, and God. Disrespecting one’s parents is therefore akin to disrespecting God.

A Scientific Look at Longevity

Several years ago, the National Geographic Society backed a project (led by Dan Buettner) to identify and study the world’s “blue zones” – regions where people live the longest. They found a number of places where people regularly live well into their nineties and hundreds, and in good health, too. After studying these populations, they came to a number of conclusions as to how to increase longevity. The first was to do lots of natural exercise, ie. not going to the gym and pumping iron, but simply being active within one’s daily routine. They confirmed the importance of not overeating (phrasing it as the “80% rule”) and to consume more natural, plant-based foods as opposed to processed or meat-based ones.

All of these echo the Rambam’s teachings hundreds of years ago (Hilkhot De’ot 4:2, 14-15):

“A person should not eat until his stomach is full, rather he should stop about a quarter before he is filled… Overeating is to the body of a person like a poison, and it is the source of all sicknesses. The majority of sicknesses come upon a person either from eating bad foods or from filling the stomach and overeating, even with good foods…

“As long as a person exercises and exerts himself a lot, takes care not to eat to the point of being completely full, and keeps his bowels soft, illness will not come upon him and his strength will increase. And whoever sits comfortably and takes no exercise, even if he eats all the best foods and follows healthcare principles in other areas of his life, all his days will be full of pain and his strength will decline.”

Amazingly, the Blue Zone project also showed how huge of an impact religion and community has on longevity. They found that “belonging to a faith-based community” and going to a religious gathering at least once a week for prayer and connection added as much as fourteen years to one’s life! (See Dan Buettner’s full talk on longevity here).

Seven Pillars of Longevity

All of the above information can be neatly summed up in seven key points for living a long life. (1) Keeping the body naturally active, and (2) keeping the brain active and engaged. The study of spiritual matters takes priority, followed by subjects like math, music, and language arts. (3) Keep junk foods and processed foods to a minimum, and avoid overeating. (4) Be a part of a faith-based community, and (5) pray and meditate regularly. (6) Make sure to honour and respect parents, and (7) maintain an attitude of calm, compassion, and kindness in place of stress, anger, and selfishness.

The Blue Zone project narrows it down even further into four key points: have the “right outlook, move naturally, eat wisely, and belong”. Their website has a fun “age calculator” that estimates what your “biological age” is, your life expectancy, and how many extra years you’ve added (or lost) based on your habits.

Ultimately, if all else fails, the Torah mentions longevity four more times. In addition to the four explored above (two for honouring parents, one for the bird’s nest, and one for meditating on God’s Word), there are four that speak in general terms, promising long life for being attached to God and following His ways. This resonates with King Solomon’s final piece of advice in Ecclesiastes:

“The end of the matter, all having been heard: revere God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole man.”




*It is important to note that, for some reason, it has become popular to believe that one needs to shoo away the mother bird of a nest even if a person does not need the eggs. Somehow, sending away the mother and taking the eggs is an “illogical mitzvah” that needs to be fulfilled. Such an interpretation is silly. The whole point is to have compassion on the mother bird. How would taking her eggs when there is no need for the eggs be compassionate? That would just be cruel! The Rambam writes that in most cases, this mitzvah is not going to be fulfilled since most birds and their eggs are not kosher – so why would anyone ever destroy a nest for no reason? See, for example, Moreh Nevuchim, III, 38:

“In most cases, this commandment will cause man to leave the whole nest untouched, because [the eggs] which he is allowed to take are, as a rule, unfit for food.”

A deeper analysis of shiluach haken can be found here.

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