I understand.
And if the whole emotional area in the brain is damaged, then in such a case I no longer love at all?! So then we’re back to the question: why not say that the soul and its emotions are a product of the body?

Just as I walk by means of my legs, I love, think, and want by means of the brain’s mechanisms. But the one who thinks and loves is not the brain. My legs do not cause me to walk; rather, I decide to walk and do so through them. The same is true of mental processes.

I understand. So if that’s the case, I’ll ask a question that may be forbidden or illegitimate…
Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, create things in such a way that even the soul’s emotions depend on the brain?

Maybe it is in order to allow free choice, so that the emotions of the soul are influenced by the body, its genetics, brain structure, etc.? After all, if every time I gave charity the soul would be filled with tremendous joy, then free choice would be canceled out?

P.S.
Another question—
Until recently I thought that emotions depend on desire. For example, I really want to win a car, and I’m disappointed when I don’t win. Meaning, emotions are the soul’s natural and automatic response to reality. But now I understand that they are in a certain area of the brain? Is that true of all emotions, or only of those responsible for our survival mechanisms, like fear or courage, for example?

There are no questions that are forbidden or illegitimate to ask. There are questions for which we may not be able to find an answer. Like this one, for example. I do not know why the Holy One, blessed be He, does things the way He does.
Emotions depend both on desire and on our psychological makeup. And this takes place through the brain, by means of it. Desire has the power to influence the brain, and together with its given structure that is what creates our feelings.

Thank you, Rabbi.

Continuing on the above topic (the field of brain science and so on has really been occupying and confusing me lately…):

Every other day we hear about areas in the brain that are responsible for various emotions and drives, and that different hormones are required for them to appear (as stated, for example, in this link: https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/MAGAZINE-1.8191615), such as dopamine for the drive to seek and for curiosity; the drive of “caring” is activated by estrogen, prolactin, progesterone, and oxytocin, as it says there in the article.

Personally, I always used to look with wonder at the soul’s endless thirst, the search for meaning, and the desire for the good. I always asked myself where all these deep feelings came from, feelings that give me no rest, if not from the soul…. And then studies like the one above come along and show me that these are merely hormones found in the body, perhaps even in animals as well in one form or another. Is it possible to reconcile these things?!

Hello Rabbi.
I would really be happy to get a response to the above.
Thanks in advance!

Shai

Hello.
I answered this, but for some reason I now see that it doesn’t appear here. I’ll repeat it.
Many people speak about our traits and behaviors as being determined by genetics and the brain. They point to some part of our genome that determines whether we will be believers or atheists (for some reason they use this as an argument against belief, but not against atheism), stingy or generous, lovers of this person or haters of that one, and so on. Not to mention the search for the good, the desire to do good, and in fact even the very definition of what good is.
But as I have explained more than once (and at length in my book The Science of Freedom), there is a logical leap here. So far there is not a single case in which they have found a gene that is solely responsible for a behavior or a trait. True, they usually say that it is not a single gene but a distributed system (in the brain and genome), but in my opinion that is incorrect. There is no determination in the brain or the genome at all of what we will become, not even in a complex and distributed way. The brain and the genome create an infrastructure (I called it a topographic outline) on which we walk. That infrastructure tries to pull us in certain directions or push us away from others. But in the end, the decision is ours.
If you want a full explanation, read my book The Science of Freedom, which in fact deals entirely with this issue. In brief, you can see it in two articles here on the site:
1.
https://mikyab.net/%d7%9b%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%9d/%d7%9e%d7%90%d7%9e%d7%a8%d7%99%d7%9d/%d7%9e%d7%91%d7%98-%d7%a9%d7%99%d7%aa%d7%aa%d7%99-%d7%a2%d7%9c-%d7%97%d7%95%d7%a4%d7%a9-%d7%94%d7%a8%d7%a6%d7%95%d7%9f
2.

מדעי המוח והמשפט: מבט פילוסופי-מדעי על הדטרמיניזם במשפט

Hello Rabbi.
I read and enjoyed both The Science of Freedom and Human as Grass…
So I understand that I have a soul independent of the body from the fact that it can choose otherwise, but at the end of the day feelings that are seemingly produced by hormones are what bring me to various sensations and traits such as curiosity, striving for perfection, and dissatisfaction with the material, etc. (maybe even the desire for connection and caring, as appears in the above article), and not because “the soul will not be filled” and because of the very distance from the Source?!
Best regards, Shai

Is there a question here? I didn’t understand it.

My question is whether emotions and experiences (especially the existential ones) such as endless searching, curiosity, striving for perfection, justice, and so on, originate from the spiritual side of me, or are they merely the result of hormones and genetics, as stated in the above article?

I explained this. These tendencies may stem from genetics. But the decision whether to go along with them or not, and to what extent, is the result of your own choice.

That’s exactly my question: is only choice a revelation of my soul, and not psychological tendencies as well, at least seemingly?
The Rabbi quotes at length in Human as Grass the words of Zeitlin in his book On the Border of Two Worlds. But on page 40 there Zeitlin says that the source of all these things is not the body and matter:

“Whence come the longings that tear the heart, the yearning that gives a person no rest day or night? Whence comes the thirst felt by every person of soul, a world-thirst, a thirst that drinks up the very marrow of man, a thirst that all the treasures in the world, all the pleasure, goodness, and beauty in the world, cannot satisfy even a tiny bit? For what does the human heart yearn? Toward what does it so aspire? For what does it pine? What does it seek? And what is it that pours into the human heart so great a sadness, a melancholy, that no joy in the world can banish—or, more accurately, that bursts forth and exceeds its bounds דווקא at the moment of the greatest joy?

And in general: why does a person not rejoice in his labor? Why does he never know satiety? Why are all the spaces of the world too little for him? Why is it that “a man does not die with half his desire in his hand”?

We have all become so accustomed to this phenomenon that it has become ‘natural’ in our eyes. But let a person ask: in the end, why is the soul not satisfied? Why is it not filled? Why does a person never know rest? Everything around us, all that passes and moves before us, has an end and a boundary—and whence comes this aspiration that has no boundary?

And if a person says: the world itself has no end and no purpose, I will ask him: where did you get this idea that the world has no end and no purpose? Everything around us, everything known to us by our senses and grasped by our intellect, has an end and a purpose. There is no decisive proof of the world’s infinity. If so, then this very thing too—that a person tends to see the world as infinite—comes not from what is sensed and not from what is intellectually grasped, but from man’s own longing for the infinite, from his very desire to see the world as infinite.

Moreover: one who has paid attention to the nature of longing, one who has looked very, very deeply into himself, into what is hidden and buried in the wasting away of his soul, will know that it is not for what is here that we long, but for what is not here, for what we cannot name, for that to which speech and words do not apply…”

Does the Rabbi disagree with Zeitlin, or have I not understood?

I don’t know, just as Zeitlin could not have known. What I am saying is that these tendencies may come from genetics and the body (and they may not; apparently there is a certain, fairly high, dose of influence from genetics), but the choice of what to do and how to act does not come from there.

Meaning, belief in the goodness and uprightness of the human “soul” itself (an idea that appears often in Rabbi Kook) is only a belief or a received tradition, but cannot be explained?

A bit depressing…

How did we suddenly get to this question?
The tendency to believe in human goodness and uprightness may be inborn, but the decision whether to adopt it is our choice.
Whether this is tradition or whether there is an explanation for it, or perhaps it is an axiom with no explanation, is a completely different question that has nothing to do with our discussion. As for that question, go and see that the overwhelming majority of people in the world place a basic trust in human beings with no connection to tradition at all. On the contrary, trust in tradition is based on trust in people.

I understand, I’m only saying that if the desire for goodness and morality and so on is part of the body’s tendencies (hormones, genetics, etc.) and not part of the very essence of the soul, that somewhat lowers and weakens the conception of the self as a spiritual and idealistic being by its very nature—a portion of God above…

Not at all. A person is his choices, not his tendencies.

Hello, honorable Rabbi. I need to talk with someone about free choice. You don’t know me, but I’m an admirer of yours, and please don’t think I’m lying or making up what I’m writing, because I’m not. For many years I haven’t understood how, if the future is seen, there can be free choice, or choice at all. And I’m a person with a certain talent—I understand people very easily. I really see what’s going through their heads and what they’re thinking, and I see that everyone thinks their inner world is so special and that no one sees it, but most people are pretty much the same and surprisingly simple. I don’t understand how people have choice at all, and I’m not talking about the scientific side of it. Please, can you help me?

If you know with absolute certainty what each person will do in the future, then apparently we really have no choice. I don’t believe that you really know. [If you did know, then surely you could also know what I would answer you, and you wouldn’t need to ask.]
If you do not know with certainty, that means they have choice. Anyone can make estimates, to one degree or another of success, about what people will do in the future. That does not contradict free choice.