Q&A: Body and Soul Come to Judgment
Body and Soul Come to Judgment
Question
God created my body just as He created my wretched soul.
Why is there a need to belittle the body and devote oneself mainly to the soul?
On the contrary, He created my body so that I would invest in it too, so that it would be successful in every possible way.
What’s more, how to develop the body is
much clearer—just ask doctors, nutritionists, and the like, and the results are empirically measurable and visible to the eye.
Whereas to develop my wretched soul I have to believe all kinds of rabbis, some of them Bibists and feeble-minded; the results aren’t measurable, etc.
If so, reason would dictate that the focus and most attention should be given to developing the body as well, since that too is God’s handiwork, and it is a relatively safer and more rational investment than investing in the soul.
So once again it turns out that the spiritual supervisor in the yeshiva was wrong and misled people?
Answer
I’ll ignore the nonsense you inserted in the middle. It is indeed proper to develop the body as well. But it is certainly not more important than developing the soul. This has nothing to do with considerations of efficiency. Developing the soul does not depend on asking this rabbi or that one. Ask whomever you want, or think for yourself.