Israel and Humanity - Nobility of the human body
III.
Nobility of the human body.
When Judaism affirms that man is the image and the temple of God on earth, it is, in Jewish thought, the human body as well as the mind. It's not today that the remark was made: among all peoples and all religions of antiquity, Judaism and the Hebrews were the only ones who have rehabilitated area. It has even gone so far as to claim that they would have gone so far in this direction they have totally disregarded the human spirit and glorified the matter alone, and that granting importance than external acts only, in practice they would have denied the existence of a spiritual substance in man. The ruling so exclusive and, let's away, so wrong, so we dispense with the rigor to demonstrate what Judaism believes holds the human body and all that concerns him. If false in its conclusions, it does not prove unless in the opinion of all, the human body has a distinguished Hebraism dignity. A cursory review of Pages biblical, talmudic, midrashic or theosophical enough to be convinced.
The image titles and temple of God have been provided, it is impossible to deny the body as in mind. The body is the subject of the utmost care on the part of the ritual laws of Judaism, no external act is deemed unworthy of religious concerns. This kind of constant supervision when the body is subjected, is completly different from rules of penance, in which the systematic subjugation of other religions try to keep it. The idea that [1] These other religions are based, far from being confused with that of Judaism, it is even completely unsympathetic. There are between two whole distance that separates the esteem of contempt, love for hatred, and desire to gradually transform the body and its operations into docile instruments of spirituality, the firm determination of the destroy, or even destroy, in short all the difference between the design of the glorified body and that of Nirvana . Material assets, health, wealth, happiness, longevity, are considered in the same aspect and the idea that we would form depends on the value we give to the body itself. Hence the error of those who see the price that Judaism attaches to the human body and material possessions proof that the concept of spirituality is lacking, it is instead the most unimpeachable testimony, since the shape and bodily health, life and property are inextricably associated with religion, holiness, smoking and the fear of God. This temporal blessing is tied to obedience to the commandments of God and is obtained as a reward, it loses as a punishment. It's always a purpose and high morale that uses them and is accompanied constantly graces and spiritual pleasures. This is not the spirituality that is missing is the material that is saturated, the mind seems to be absent because he is one with the body.
It is in this ritual and legislative phenomenon somewhat analogous to the fact that the author of Kozari reported in Israelite history. He rightly said that a people, a witness in all phases of his public and private existence of direct and almost visible from the Deity, we did not need him speak of the Spirit, his rights and its empire, since his whole life in quite eloquently pleaded the cause. It is roughly the same in regard to practical precepts of Judaism so numerous in comparison to the small number of professions of faith that the spiritual can be found in the Bible. Is that the material life itself was disciplined by rules above. We aspired to shape what so reproducing in itself the spiritual life and, with a logic that can not sufficiently admire, just as matter and spirit were not designed separately, so also in rules and laws concerning man, that being both physically and spiritually, we did not separate the physical act and the act of faith movement and [2] thought, the history and consciousness, earth and sky, this world and the Kingdom of God. While in practice as in dogma, connected to each other and what interested recalled the time domain and also assumed the life of the mind.
