Caring for Our Bodies, Nurturing Our Souls
It’s Kol Nidre. Perhaps the holiest moment of the year. You are about to embark on a luxurious journey that few people get to experience. That is, the journey into yourself, into your own inner self, taking this sacred moment to step out of the hustle and bustle, the challenges of the everyday,
Our stated goal for the next 24 hours or so is spiritual self-reflection. Where are we in our lives and where do we want to be? Focusing attention on our soul is facilitated by turning away from the needs of our bodies during this time period. Traditionally, we fast from food and water, we pay minimal attention to personal hygiene, we avoid sexual activity, and we refrain from wearing leather.
Scholars at ASU have undertaken a multi-year study on the impact of religious fasting. They have found that fasting when combined with attendance at services is important “for self-reflection, spiritual transformation, and closeness to the Jewish people which, in turn, are linked with well-being and flourishing.”[1] So it’s not enough that we fast, we also need to come together, and that unlocks an opportunity for personal growth.
Yet- before we turn to nurturing our souls, there is a lot to be said about caring for the vessels in which our souls reside- that is- our physical bodies. Forgetting what I said a moment ago about personal hygiene, it turns out that caring for our bodies is also a mitzvah.
There is a famous Talmudic story in which Rabbi Hillel is stopped by his students on his way to the bath house. They are surprised when he says that he is en route to do a mitzvah. He explains that just as there are workers paid to clean and care for the statues of the king in the public square, so are we, who are formed in the image of God, required to care for our physical well-being. The body is the house of the soul, and we have an obligation to keep it in good repair.
So what, exactly, does our body need? Some things are obvious- In the desert we need water. Lots of water. We need food, though what, exactly, constitutes healthy food is a constant subject of discussion among experts. The very first sin in the Torah is connected to eating, and poor Eve! All she served was fresh fruit! And what was her punishment? Shame about her body. More about that in a few moments.
I’m not here to lecture you about keeping kosher. The Torah has a few, quite reasonable requirements about what to eat and what not to eat, and, over the centuries, we have expanded that into an enormous industry and endless halachic minutia. From a simple requirement not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk, we are asked to maintain two separate sets of dishes for meat and dairy, to wait up to 6 hours after a meat meal before we enjoy some ice cream, and to abstain from eating dairy with poultry, even though chickens don’t have mother’s milk. Unfortunate, to me, because the expansion of kashrut beyond the Biblical text has caused most non-Orthodox Jews to reject the whole enterprise.
So, perhaps, think about what you might want to do to add a sense of holiness to your eating, and certainly, please, consider that routinely saying a blessing before you eat is an easy and meaningful way to elevate our meals and connect this most physical of activities with our spiritual essence. It doesn’t have to be a traditional blessing. Just a moment of gratitude for those who grew and prepared the food will suffice.
Our bodies also need rest. Observing Shabbat is a mitzvah- it’s right there in the 10 commandments, along with the instruction to work 6 days a week. I love this Hassidic story about how one rabbi learned the value of sleep. “Rabbi Shmelke did not want to interrupt his studies for too long a time, and so he always slept sitting up, his head resting on his arm. In his fingers he held a lit candle which roused him when it guttered and the flame touched his hand. When Rabbi Elimelekh visited him and recognized the power of the holiness which was still locked within him, he prepared a couch for him and with great difficulty persuaded him to lie down for a little while. Then he closed and shuttered the windows. Rabbi Shmelke slept until broad daylight. It did not take him long to notice this, but he was not sorry he had slept, for he was filled with a hitherto unknown sunny clearness. He went to the House of Prayer and prayed before the congregation as usual. But to the congregation it seemed that they had never heard him before. They were entranced and uplifted by the manifest power of his holiness. When he recited the verses about the Red Sea, they gathered up the hems of their kaftans for fear the waves towering to the left and right might wet them with salty foam. Later Shmelke said to Elimelekh: “Not until this day did I know that one can also serve God with sleep.””[2]
Food-yes. Rest-yes. We also need physical movement and here Jewish tradition does not offer a whole lot of guidance. We call the house of study a yeshiva, which comes from the Hebrew root “lashevet,” to sit. Sitting, I’ve heard it said, is the new smoking- not good for our health. So under the general proviso in Deuteronomy (4:9), “Guard yourself and guard your soul very carefully,” I think we can say that exercise is a positive value. Maimonides suggests that, “As long as a person exercises and exerts himself… sickness will not befall him and his strength will increase.”[3] Sadly, that is not literally the case. Sickness and diminution of strength come to us regardless of how much time we spend at the gym. The best we can do is care for and appreciate the abilities with which we have been blessed for as long as we can.
Let’s go back to Adam and Eve. There they were, enjoying life in the Garden of Eden, they ate the forbidden fruit and became embarrassed about their nakedness. In their shame, they hid from the Holy One.
Along with everything else our bodies need, the hardest of all may be acceptance. It is incredibly challenging to maintain a healthy body image in a culture that bombards us with impossible images of physical perfection. We live in a world obsessed with how bodies look: how thin, how fit, how smooth, how youthful. We’re told — explicitly and subtly — that only certain types of bodies are worthy of love, attention, or success. Just this past week we read tragically of the death of a 14 year old girl, who died of complications following surgery for breast implants.[4]
I was powerfully moved by the words of Hollie Holden, who writes:
”Today I asked my body what she needed,
Which is a big deal
Considering my journey of
Not Really Asking That Much.
I thought she might need more water.
Or protein.
Or greens.
Or yoga.
Or supplements.
Or movement.
But as I stood in the shower
Reflecting on her stretch marks,
Her roundness where I would like flatness,
Her softness where I would like firmness,
All those conditioned wishes
That form a bundle of
Never-Quite-Right-Ness,
She whispered very gently:
Could you just love me like this?”
Could you just love me like this? So simple, yet so profound. When someone feels ashamed of their body, they’re not just struggling with self-esteem — they’re struggling to believe that they are truly b’tzelem Elohim, a holy image of God. At the end of our lives, when we look back on our life and legacy, I like to think that how we looked will matter less, and how we used whatever physical abilities we have to bring light and joy and goodness and caring into the world will matter a whole lot more.
I need to say a few words about serious illness. The blessing on page 156, asher yatzar, is traditionally a prayer of thanks after we successfully go to the bathroom. Our liturgy has expanded it in a more generic sense to be a blessing in which we appreciate whatever is functioning well, acknowledging that if something opened when it was supposed to close or vice versa, we would be in big trouble. The prayer is a reminder to appreciate our well-being and not wait until things go wrong to reach out to God.
Yet, we must acknowledge the reality that things can and do go horribly wrong, so much so that the pain of living becomes intolerable. We feel betrayed by our bodies, angry, we may even feel a sense of mourning when we consider the loss of who we were and who we want to be.
In the machzor on the page opposite the asher yatzar prayer, we read these touching words of May Sarton-
I can look at my body
As an old friend
Who needs my help,
Or an enemy
Who frustrates me
In every way
With its frailty
And inability to cope.
Old friend,
I shall try
To be of comfort to you
To the end.
Feeling good about your body in illness may not mean feeling beautiful or strong. We may need to find small moments, to appreciate what we are still able to do, allowing friends, family and community to offer support, and still connecting with and acknowledging that while our body is suffering, our soul is not diminished. It may also mean giving yourself full permission not to feel good sometimes — to rest in sorrow, without shame.
And so we enter into this holiest day of the year. We strive to create a day of spiritual reflection, of focusing on our soul on our character, on the essence of our being. As we do so, let’s never forget that we are, first and foremost, physical beings. Let us care for our bodies, be kind to our bodies, appreciate our bodies, even as we strive to elevate our neshama, our holy soul.
If you are fasting, I wish you a good fast, a meaningful fast. If you are not, that’s okay too. Let’s all use the gift of this day to remind ourselves of our essential holiness, body and soul together.
[1] RELIGIOUS & SPIRITUAL PRACTICE OF FASTING – 2024 PRACTITIONER REPORT, Adam B. Cohen, Kathryn A. Johnson, Amanda D. Kirsch, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, and Joel Gereboff, Arizona State University
[2] Buber, Martin, Tales of the Hassidim: Early Masters, NY: Schocken Books, 1970, p. 187
[3] Maimonides, Hilchot Deot, 4:14
[4] AZ Republic, Sunday September 28, 2025, p. 19A