Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon was a mountain of a man. Broad-shouldered, thick-armed, he used to earn a few coins carrying travelers across the river on his back. His strength was legendary.
One day the prophet Elijah came to him in the form of an old man and asked, “Get me a beast of burden to carry my things.”
“What do you need to carry?” Elazar asked.
The old man held up a threadbare tallit and a leather water-skin.
Elazar laughed. “I could carry you to the ends of the world. Why would you need a donkey?” He swung the old man onto his shoulders and set off across the hills and valleys, through countries and through thorns and briars.
After a long while, Elazar began to stagger. “Old man, get lighter, or I will throw you off.”
Elijah asked if he needed rest. They sat under a tree. Elazar gave him bread and water. Then Elijah looked at him quietly and said, “You have this strength and this beauty, and yet you have done no work for your Father in heaven.”
Elazar blinked. “Is there someone who could teach me?”
“Yes,” said Elijah. And he vanished.
Elazar went to the house of study. Thirteen years he sat there, bent over the Torah. When he emerged he was so thin, so hollowed out by study, that he could barely carry the weight of his own cloak. Yet he had become one of the great teachers of Israel.
The rabbis told a similar story of a servant of Rabban Gamliel, who used to carry forty loaves to the baker on his back but afterward, when he had been taught Torah, could not carry even one.
Torah does not add strength to the body. It gives it back to God and asks the body to make room for the soul.