12/08/2026
BODY VERSUS SOUL
God formed man out of dust of the earth, and blew into his nostrils a soul of life, and man became a living creature (Gen. 2:7).
For you are dust and to dust you shall return (Gen. 3:19).
Man is composed of two opposing components. He has a body that was initially formed from dust and is coarse like the physical world. Man is also the guardian of a soul, a fragment of Divinity, which God “blew” into Adam. Since God is not human who has a respiratory system, what does the Torah verse mean when it speaks of God’s breath?
God’s breath symbolizes His essence and vitality. In Jewish thought, breath equals life. Time of death is determined in Jewish law as the point when respiration ceases, and the Hebrew word for “soul,” neshamah, shares a root with the word for “breath,” neshimah. Life is essence. Thus, human breath represents man’s existence, and God’s breath is symbolic language for His essential vitality.
To blow means to push out breath from the depths of one’s being. “G-d blew into man” means He reached to the essence of Himself, cut off a piece, and endowed it to man as the human soul. Body (earthiness) and soul (pure Godliness) are opposite entities joined together.
PARABLE OF THE BLIND AND THE CRIPPLE
A parable helps explain their relationship: There was once a cripple who was blessed with vigorous eyesight and a keen intellect. One day he learned that his daughter, who lived in the next town, was organizing a party in her home celebrating the birth of her first child. The invalid sorely wanted to attend the party. The next town was only a few miles away, but he could not walk, and he could not afford to pay for a horse and buggy to transport him.
In the same town as the invalid lived a blind man who was healthy and strong. He had heard that a medical professor, expert in vision restoration, was in the next town for a short visit. The blind man desperately desired to visit the doctor. However, he knew that he could not attempt the trip on his own. Were he to try and grope along the roads he would quickly lose his way at the various turns and would be easy prey for the bandits who ambush passersby.
The invalid asked a friend to bring him to the town’s central square to find a ride to the next town. The blind man also came to the square for the same purpose. They ended up sitting next to each other. They both waited for hours but no ride materialized. Eventually, they started talking to each other, and the invalid realized that he and the blind man both sought the same destination.
He recommended that the blind man carry him. He would look out and guide the blind man along treacherous turns and watch from his elevated perch for ambushers who may be lying in wait, while the blind man’s vigorous strength would easily carry them both to their goal. Together they arrived in the next town.
The blind man is the body while the invalid is the soul.
The body does not see well. The body accepts pleasure as the purpose of life. The body desires to sleep and waste time. It is quick to anger, and it revels in foolish speech and thought. The body is often depressed, and it seeks pride and power. The soul however has perfect vision. The soul knows that we are on earth in order to display the Divine’s rule and thus mend His world. The soul sees ultimate reality, what truly matters and what real pleasure is. Alone, the soul is an impotent invalid. For its tikkun, to accomplish its mission of performing Mitzvos and learning Torah in this sphere of existence, it needs a body.
It was most important for the blind man to walk and the invalid to ride. Imagine if the order had been inversed, would they have achieved their goal? If the blind man had ridden atop the invalid, he would not have been able to see afar in order to protect the invalid from robbers who lay in ambush, nor would the invalid with his atrophied legs have been able to carry the blind man’s weight. The soul must control the body and have the body serve it. People in whom the soul serves the body lack the correct perspective on life, they enslave their moral thinking to legitimize base behaviors, and they torment their soul with the lowest desires.
The Differing Attractions of the Body and the Soul
Everything in nature seeks to return to its root. So as well is a child always attracted to his parental home. Home as the source of one’s life has the quality of a root, and branches are attracted to their roots. Consider the strength of the bond between father and child. The father is the source of the son, he is a root, and the son is an offshoot. Since the attraction to source is so powerful the son seeks to emulate his father and earn his father’s approval. Similarly every man is attracted to his wife, and when single he feels forlorn and incomplete. This too stems from the need to reconnect to one’s roots. Before birth each soul is a duality, with a male half and a female half. When we are born, only half of a soul enters the world at a time. There is another half, of the opposite gender, that is born into another family. The urge for marriage is a desire to return to the perfect state, the most natural form in which we were originally created. Marriage is not a union of disparate individuals; it is a reunion of the halves that were initially one soul.
The body and soul have different roots. The body is from the earth. It is organic and chemical like the earth. Since the body is attracted to its root, it is drawn to an animalistic life, one of passions, laziness, emptiness, and false pride. The soul however is also attracted to its root. The soul stems directly from God’s breath. The soul pulls us up to God Himself. The soul attracts man to the highest ideals. It inspires morality, and it demands behavior that connects man to God. The concentrated life force of the body is called nefesh ha-bahamis, “the animal soul,” since animals also have organic “spirits” that provide their life and attract them to lowly desires.
The soul is the nefesh Elokis, “the Godly soul,” since it is a piece that was hewed off of the Divine. The nefesh ha-bahamis is concentrated in the blood, which is why loss of much blood causes death to the body. The Torah severely prohibits ingestion of animal blood because what you eat influences your character. Since the blood contains an intense form of the animal’s vitality and nature, eating it would cause the human nefesh ha-bahamis to become too strong. The organ with the most blood in the body is the liver. The nefesh ha-bahamis is therefore said to be located in the liver, or the left half of the heart, a section of the heart that has excessive amounts of blood. The home of the nefesh Elokis is the mind, and it is concentrated in the right half of the brain. The nefesh ha- bahamis is sometimes called yetzer hara, “evil inclination,” for it draws the person to evil, the selfish behaviors of the animal world. The nefesh Elokis pulls man to attachment with the Divine and is called yetzer tov, “the inclination for good.”
THE SOUL OF MAN IS THE CANDLE OF GOD
“The candle of God is the human soul” (Prov. 20:27). Just as in a candle the flame seeks to leap ever higher, the nefesh Elokis seeks to leap out of the body into the embrace of the Heavens. The wick tethers the flame, and the body tethers the soul, keeping it grounded and constrained.
These conflicting urges may be the source for the custom to shuckle— sway back and forth—while praying and studying Torah. To remove an embedded tooth, a dentist must pull it. Resisting dislocation, it shakes back and forth. When praying or learning, the soul seeks to leap out of the body; it wants to rejoin its root and feel God without the limitation of flesh. Yet the body keeps the soul in this world. The two drives face off against each other, and as a result, there is a swaying back and forth.
The greatest miracle is the human specimen. According to Rav Moshe Isserles, the blessing recited after using the lavatory expresses thanks for the wonder of human life. The blessing concludes with praise to God: Baruch attah Hashem, rofeh chol basar u-mafli la-asos, “Blessed are You, God, who heals all flesh and created a wondrous creation.” The final few words seem incongruous. The ability to use the privy preserves health, but what is so wondrous about them? Seeing the intricacies of the microscopic realm or the magnificence of a waterfall does not elicit a blessing with the term “wondrous creation” in it, why does excretion? Rabbi Moshe Isserles answered that the paradoxical nature of man makes his existence wondrous. On the one hand, man is a physical being who eats, procreates, and excretes as the lowest animals do. On the other hand, man is a soul with the ability to praise God, thank the Almighty, and experience transcendent Divinity. Joining these two forces is a supernatural feat. Thus, after the most physical of activities, when we are reminded of the coarse nature of man it is the time to thank God for maintaining the union of body and soul.
Body and soul seem to be opposite forces destined to eternal conflict for supremacy. A deeper look, however, reveals that the body can help you learn about the soul, and that the body is neither exclusively nor permanently an opponent to the soul.
The Story of the Turkey Prince
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov related the following story:
Once the king’s son went mad and thought he was a turkey. He felt compelled to sit under the table without any clothes on, pulling at bits of bread and bones like a turkey. None of the doctors could do anything to heal him or cure him, and they gave up in despair. The king was very sad.
Then a wise man came and said, “I can cure him.”
What did the wise man do? He took off all his clothes, and sat down naked under the table next to the prince and also pecked at crumbs and bones.
The prince asked him, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“And what are you doing here?” he replied. “I am a turkey,” said the prince.
“I am also a turkey,” said the wise man.
The two of them sat together like this for some time, until they were used to one another.
Then the wise man gave a sign, and the king’s men threw them shirts. The wise man-turkey said to the prince, “Do you think a turkey can’t wear a shirt? You can wear a shirt and still be a turkey.” The two of them put on shirts.
After a while he gave another sign, and guards threw them trousers. Again the wise man said, “Do you think if you wear trousers you can’t be a turkey?” They put on trousers.
One by one they put on the rest of their clothes in the same way.
Afterwards, the wise man gave a sign and they put down human food from the table. The wise man said to the prince, “Do you think if you eat good food you can’t be a turkey any more? You can eat this food and still be a turkey.” They ate.
Then he said to him, “Do you think a turkey has to sit under the table? You can be a turkey and sit up at the table.”
This was how the wise man dealt with the prince, until in the end he cured him completely.
Rabbi Nachman’s parable can be understood as a display of the ideas in this lesson. Every human has a body that is his animal or turkey part, and a soul, that is a prince as the son of God. We should stress our soul and the fact that we are the children of the King of Kings. Yet the prince thinks he is a turkey. We so often immerse ourselves in bodily concerns that we view them as the sum of our essence. Physical desires become our needs and the body’s urges our obligatory behavior. We are the prince who is certain that he is a turkey.
The wise man used the turkey misconception to heal the prince and free him from his delusions. As a turkey, the prince had to act like the other turkey (the wise man), since turkeys cannot be different from each other. Guided correctly, the body itself, its physical urges, can further the cause of holiness and eventually become saintly.
Rebbe Nachman’s lesson can serve as a source of comfort. Even if I feel that I am lost in a morass of physical urges and I am naked of my spiritual dignity, there is still hope. I can be rescued by a wise man, a tzaddik, who will descend to my level and attach himself to me. The tzaddik will then show me how to channel my physicality and turn a turkey into a prince of God’s kingdom.
Study of the body is one of the ways in which the material aspect of man might help further the cause of his soul. Why can the body help further the soul’s agenda? Why should these opposites complement each other? Lesson Six will attempt to answer these questions.
FLAMES OF FAITH CHAPTER 5
