Q:
What is the purpose of humidity and heat?
A:
It’s a good question and I’ll answer it by giving you an analogy. Here is a man who comes home and he has to go through the kitchen in order to go, let’s say to the bathroom. So he tells his wife, “What is this? It’s so hot in this kitchen!”
So she says “I’m sorry dear. I’m going to turn the oven off.” She turns it off.
Now, a few minutes later when he comes out of the bathroom, he says, “Is supper ready?
She says, “No. I’m sorry but I had to turn the oven off.”
And so in September all the ripe red apples will be out on the stands. How does an apple become red and juicy and sweet? It’s only because Hakadosh Baruch Hu turns on the heat. The summer is the kitchen that ripens these delicious fruits that we’re going to eat all winter. And therefore are we going to complain because of the good times that are waiting for us? Summer is the time when all the fun for the ensuing year is being prepared.
Now that’s only one aspect of the heat. The truth is there’s much more to it because the climate is suited to the diet of the people. Every continent has its own diet – people don’t eat the same things – and therefore they have a certain climate that’s suited to them.
Now, there are things that we don’t know yet, many facts of which we are ignorant, but some things we know already. We know for instance that sunlight when it strikes the skin creates a certain vitamin. It’s very important. Children who are deprived of sunlight are prone to develop rickets. There are other diseases. Of course being exposed to too much sunlight certainly is unhealthy. That’s why clothing is important for people to wear. We’re not created to be nude. And those people who are going to go to the nude beaches are going to be carted off to the morgue sooner or later because there’s no question that skin cancer is on the increase today; more than it ever was before due to excessive sunbathing. We’re not created to be naked.
But the climate certainly is suited to our physical natures and as time goes on, we’re going to discover there are many benefits to the summertime heat.
Now people who have a tendency to arthritis, they love the summer because the sun bakes their old bones and it bakes the pain out of their bones. In wintertime, they’re reminded of the good old days that they had last August when the sun was making things comfortable. Now they’re taking aspirins to make up for the sun.
And so there are many compensations. Our knowledge of medicine today, although it made great leaps in the last seventy five years, but it’s nothing compared to what will be known in the next seventy five years. And so some day people will realize that the winter is good for us and the summer is good for us, and that each season brings blessings of its own.
TAPE # 276 (September 1979)
