Guarding the Body
„When much time passes, and because of corrupted tastes a person does not set his heart to the repair of bodies, and they become impoverished, a great flaw is created in the need for prayer and in its possibility in the world, and a force opposing the very essence of prayer, and the thoughts and feelings related to it, is created.”From Shemonah Kevatzim I, 753
There is a halachah that states that bodily needs precede every other need, and a person who needs to relieve himself must do so before anything else, even if he thereby loses matters of holiness. This is true also on the spiritual plane – a person who does not attend to the body will not be able, sooner or later, to attend to the spirit either. Therefore the matters of the body come first – not because of their importance, but because of the way of the world. 'If there is no flour, there is no Torah,' and correspondingly we may say that if there is no body there will be no spirit, and there will be no soul able to dwell within it and to function in the world. A body depleted of powers is not a body that can pray and serve God, and is not a body that can rise to lofty thoughts out of the depths in which it finds itself.
From the community archive of Mishpetei HaRav Kook — studying Rav Kook's teachings since 2011.