A Healthy Body

Not every inner fatigue and not every fading of will stems from moral weakness or flawed faith. Many times the source is simpler: the body is weak. When the body is tired, lacking order, lacking resilience and stability, the will too, which is a deep and divine force in the soul, struggles to appear in the world - not because it is flawed, but because it has no fitting vessel to grasp onto. From here stems a real spiritual responsibility for physical life itself: strengthening the body, a daily order, sleep, movement, and basic health are not a distraction from the spirit but a condition for its appearance. The will does not hover above life; it is revealed within it, and when the material vessel is built correctly, the spiritual light rises on its own and gains force and depth. Work on the will, the Rav teaches, passes also through the body, as a necessary completion between heaven and earth.

*