„Orot HaTeshuvah”

We find repentance in three systems: (a) natural repentance, (b) faith-based repentance, (c) intellectual repentance.

In natural repentance there are two parts: natural bodily repentance and natural repentance of the soul. The bodily encompasses all the transgressions against the laws of nature, morality, and the Torah that are connected with the laws of nature, for the end of all evil conduct is to bring illnesses and pains, and both the individual and the collective suffer much from this. And after it becomes clarified to a person that he himself, through his evil conduct, is to blame for all the impoverishment of life that has come upon him, he then sets his heart to mend the situation, to return to the laws of life, to keep the laws of nature, morality, and the Torah, so that he may return and live and life may return to him in all its freshness.

Medicine indeed engages in this a great deal, but this great work has apparently not yet been fully perfected, and the correct solution has not yet been found for all the questions of bodily repentance, as far as it is within the bounds of life to restore to a person all that was lost from him because of the sins that destroy the body and its powers. And apparently the field of this repentance is bound up, by a strong connection, with the other parts of spiritual repentance: the natural, the faith-based, and the intellectual. (Orot HaTeshuvah, Chapter I)

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Repentance according to Rav Kook is divided into three parts; today we will discuss natural repentance.

Natural repentance is the rectification of the failings we committed against the laws of nature. When we sin against the nature of the world, we pay a price for it: if we put our hand into fire we are burned, if we walk naked on a snowy day we catch cold, and so on.

The Rav makes clear that these things depend on us; the quality of our life is determined by our conduct. If we conduct ourselves properly, if we choose the good, we will receive a good life (and as we read in Parashat Re'eh: "and you shall choose life").

Rav Kook chooses to open Orot HaTeshuvah specifically with natural repentance, and within it specifically with the bodily.

It seems, in my humble opinion, that the Rav relies here on what the Sages say: "Proper conduct precedes the Torah," and likewise "If there is no proper conduct, there is no Torah." If a person does not build the foundation for spiritual life, he will not have spiritual life. If a person does not build a bodily and physical foundation, if we do not have powers of body and soul, we will not be able to develop a spiritual world, both on the individual plane and on the collective plane.

For the elevation of the soul of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook.