„what we will study today on the page in memory of”

Repentance is found in three systems: (a) natural repentance, (b) repentance of faith, (c) intellectual repentance.

Natural repentance has two parts: natural bodily repentance and natural spiritual repentance. The bodily part revolves around all the transgressions against the laws of nature, morality, and Torah connected with the laws of nature — for the end of all bad conduct is to bring illness and pains, and the individual and the collective suffer much from this. And after the matter becomes clarified to him — that he himself, through his bad conduct, is guilty of all that impoverishment of life that has come upon him — he then sets his heart to repair the situation, to return to the laws of life, to keep the laws of nature, morality, and Torah, so that he may return and live and life may return to him in all its freshness.

Medicine indeed occupies itself with this a great deal, but as it seems, this great work has not yet been fully perfected, and the correct solution has not yet been found to all the questions of bodily repentance — to the extent that it is within the bounds of life to restore to a person all that he has lost through the sins that destroy the body and its powers. And as it seems, this branch of repentance is bound up, in a strong connection, with the other parts of spiritual repentance — natural, of faith, and intellectual. (Orot HaTeshuvah, chapter 1)

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

Natural repentance is the repair of the mishaps we have 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 the fire we get burned, if we walk naked on a snowy day we catch cold, and so on in this manner.

The Rav makes clear that the matter depends on us; the quality of our life is decreed by our conduct. If we conduct ourselves correctly, if we choose the good, we will receive good life (as we read in the weekly Torah portion this past Sabbath — "and you shall choose life").

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

It seems to me, in my humble opinion, that the Rav relies here on what the Sages say: "Proper conduct (derech eretz) preceded the Torah," and likewise "If there is no derech eretz there is no Torah." If a person does not build the foundation for a spiritual life, he will not have a spiritual life. If a person does not build a bodily and material foundation — if we do not have powers of body and soul — we will not be able to develop a spiritual world, both in the private aspect and in the general aspect.

Have a pleasant rest of the day, everyone!