Once in a while something extraordinary happens that reminds us there is more going on in our lives than what we perceive on the surface. It happened to me one Friday in my early years of observing Shabbat. I was running late that afternoon and realized that I wouldn't be able to make it on time to the home where I had been invited for dinner.

So with only a short time left before candle lighting I cancelled my plans and dashed into a nearby Jewish bakery where I bought a package of smoked salmon and a salami. I rushed home, lit my candles and crashed on the couch, succumbing to the sweet feeling of surrender that sweeps over me the moment Shabbat has begun and I know there is no more that can be done.

"Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy." -- Sigmund Freud

After dinner I fell into a deep sleep and dreamt that I was hosting a large party. I was feeling great until I glanced over at the dining room and beheld one of the most sickening sights of my life. There, among the other delicacies being served to my guests, were giant and grotesque-looking creatures that resembled snails. They were as tall as the guests, and worst of all, they were being eaten while they were still alive. To my horror, I suddenly realized that I had inadvertently hired a non-kosher caterer. And that's when I woke myself up to escape from the nightmare.

The first thing I thought of when I opened my eyes was the salami in my refrigerator. Through a sudden flash of intuition, I understood what my dream had been trying to tell me: the salami I had eaten for dinner was not kosher. I then recalled that I had not seen the salami before purchasing it because the woman behind the counter had taken it out of the display case and put it in a bag without showing it to me. I was also under the impression that this bakery only carried Pearl's kosher salami, which I had seen many times through their glass counter.

I took the salami out of the fridge and searched the label but there was no kosher symbol to be found. I felt like someone who has damaged a relationship with a dear friend by being disloyal. Even though I had not intentionally eaten the non-kosher meat, I felt that I had been untrue to the commitment I had made – to God and to myself – to stop eating non-kosher food. I knew that even if I did teshuva – the process of realigning oneself with Torah – the spiritual damage had already been done, the same way that eating food to which one is allergic will have harmful consequences even if one ate it unintentionally. One could say that Jews are spiritually allergic to non-kosher food since the laws of Kashrut are designed for the benefit of the Jewish soul, not for the health of the body.

Jews are spiritually allergic to non-kosher food.

I thought about my dream and wondered how and why it had come to me. Perhaps I had developed an acute sensitivity as a result of eating only kosher food for the previous couple of years – a sort of spiritual antenna which had detected and alerted me to the fact that I had ingested something that was incompatible with the soul of a Jew.

The next morning I walked over to a nearby shul to get some advice from the rabbi. He didn't know me well, so you can imagine his astonishment when I proceeded to tell him a weird story about a clairvoyant dream, giant snails and a treif salami. When I was done speaking, he looked at me with a mixture of amazement and sympathy in his eyes and said that I shouldn't worry since I had eaten the non-kosher meat unintentionally. "But I'm concerned about the spiritual consequences of what I did." He nodded in agreement and explained that non-kosher food causes timtum halev, a blockage of the channels that connect us to higher levels of consciousness.

"Is there anything I can do to remedy it?" I asked, hoping that this sagacious-looking rabbi with the long beard might know of some esoteric formula which would help me get rid of the tumah (negative spiritual energy) that I imagined was being delivered to every cell in my body and would soon become part of my very flesh and bones. He made a couple of suggestions but I walked away feeling resigned to having to live with the consequences of my mistake – or at least until its spiritual effects would wear off with time.

Years later I was reminded of my dream about the giant snails as I watched an episode of "Fear Factor" while sharing a hotel room with a colleague. The contestants on the show were required to eat a three-course meal consisting of live worms, maggots and beetles in order to win the grand prize. As anyone who has ever had to share a hotel room with a TV addict knows, I did not have a say as to whether the TV would stay on or off. I watched the show for a few minutes before I had to leave the room, explaining to my roommate that I couldn't stand to watch these people voluntarily strip themselves of their human dignity.

The needs of the body can become a vehicle for holiness.

All my years of observing the Jewish dietary laws have sensitized me to view the act of eating as a vehicle for holiness rather than something that reduces people to the level of animals. When Jews wash their hands before eating bread we say a blessing that God "...made us holy by means of his mitzvoth (commandments) and has commanded us to elevate our hands." This statement reminds us that we have been given the ability to transform our animalistic needs, such as eating, into sacred acts that spiritually elevate the body, as symbolized by the hands.

Today, many years after the incident with the treif salami, I can see that it taught me something valuable. I learned that the mitzvoth were given to us for our own benefit. When we get careless about observing them, it is ourselves we are harming, like a child who hurts herself because she ignores her mother's warning to stop jumping on the bed. It also confirmed for me that staying away from non-kosher food is a pre-requisite to accessing higher levels of awareness. The old expression "you are what you eat" is never as true as in the life of a Jew.