And this shall be an everlasting statute for you: in the seventh month, on the
tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls...
Leviticus 16:29
In the World to Come, there is neither eating
nor drinking...
Talmud, Berachot 17a
The human being consists of a body and a soul -- a
physical envelope of flesh, blood, sinew and bone, inhabited and vitalized by a
spiritual force described by the Chassidic masters as "literally a part of G-d
above."
Common wisdom has it that spirit is loftier than matter, and the soul holier
(i.e., closer to the Divine) than the body. This conception seems to be borne
out by the fact that Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year -- the day on which
we achieve the height of intimacy with G-d -- is ordained by the Torah as a fast
day, a day on which we seemingly abandon the body and its needs to devote
ourselves exclusively to the spiritual activities of repentance and prayer.
In truth, however, a fast day brings about a deeper, rather than more
distant, relationship with the body. When a person eats, he is nourished by the
food and drink he ingests. On a fast day, vitality comes from the body
itself -- from energy stored in its cells. In other words, on less holy days, it
is an outside force (the energy in one’s food and drink) that keeps body and
soul together; on Yom Kippur, the union of body and soul derives from the body
itself.
Yom Kippur thus offers a taste of the culminating state of creation known as
the "World to Come." The Talmud tells us that "in the World to Come, there
is neither eating nor drinking" -- a statement that is sometimes understood to
imply that in its ultimate and most perfect state, creation is wholly spiritual,
devoid of bodies and all things physical. Kabbalistic and Chassidic teaching,
however, describe the World to Come as a world in which the physical dimension
of existence is not abolished, but is preserved and elevated. The fact that
there is "neither eating or drinking" in the World to Come is not due to an
absence of bodies and physical life, but to the fact that in this future world,
"the soul will be nourished by the body" itself, and the symbiosis of matter
and spirit that is man will not require any outside sources of nutrition to
sustain it.
Two Vehicles
The physical and the spiritual are both creations of G-d. Both were brought
into being by Him out of utter nothingness, and each bears the imprint of its
Creator in the particular qualities that define it.
The spiritual, with its intangibility and its transcendence of time and
space, reflects the sublimity and infinity of G-d. The spiritual is also
naturally submissive, readily acknowledging its subservience to a higher truth.
It is these qualities that make the spiritual "holy" and a vehicle of
relationship with G-d.
The physical, on the other hand, is tactual, egocentric and
immanent -- qualities that brand it "mundane" rather than holy, that mark it
as an obfuscation, rather than a manifestation, of the divine truth. For the
unequivocal "I am" of the physical belies the truth that "there is none
else besides Him" -- that G-d is the sole source and end of all existence.
Ultimately, however, everything comes from G-d; every feature of His every
creation has its source in Him and serves to reveal His truth. So on a deeper
level, the very qualities that make the physical "unholy" are the qualities
that make it the most sacred and G-dly of G-d’s creations. For what is the "I
am" of the physical if not an echo of the unequivocal being of G-d? What is
the tactility of the physical if not an intimation of the absoluteness of His
reality? What is the "selfishness" of the physical if not an offshoot,
however remote, of the exclusivity of G-d expressed in the axiom "There is
none else besides Him"?
Today, the physical world shows us only its most superficial face, in which
the divine characteristics stamped in it are corrupted as a concealment, rather
than a revelation, of G-dliness. Today, when the physical object conveys to us
"I am," it bespeaks not the reality of G-d but an independent,
self-sufficient existence that challenges the divine truth. But in the World to
Come, the product of the labor of a hundred generations to sanctify the material
world, the true face of the physical will come to light.
In the World to Come, the physical will be no less a vehicle of divinity than
the spiritual. In fact, in many respects, it will surpass the spiritual as a
conveyor of G-dliness. For while the spiritual expresses
various divine characteristics -- G-d’s
infinity, transcendence, etc. -- the physical expresses the being of G-d.
Today, the body must look to the soul as its moral guide, as its source of
awareness and appreciation of all things divine. But in the World to Come, "the
soul will be nourished by the body." The physical body will be a source of
divine awareness and identification that is loftier than the soul’s own
spiritual vision.
Yom Kippur is a taste of this future world of reverse biology. It is thus a
day on which we are "sustained by hunger," deriving our sustenance from the
body itself. On this holiest of days, the body becomes a source of life and
nurture rather than its recipient.
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