Rav Kook In English, III
And, yes, there are claims that are distributed that claim their will to actually destroy. And there are claims that come from a source that is corrupted by an evil spirit, that wants evil and ugliness. But there are also claims whose very purpose is straight and present, but, there are great hindrances in the nature of life that make it totally impossible that these claims would become realized in the present or in the past, and there are those that will be realized in the future, in varieties that are more whole than the claimants think, but the claimant's limited knowledge in the nature of life, and the rash of pushing the end (the end pushing), cause the same imaginary destructions, that if they would be realized they would destroy the world, and now that they are only said and written down they are blurring them, and make their hearts are dumbed, and it turns off the light of the divine and healthy soul.
We will now picture a man that lived a natural and healthy life, but he was unaware of any knowledge of existence of disease and medical treatment. He did not know anything about the reality of sick people in the world, and did hear anything about that there is another way of doings things that is different from his general natural way, which would take a place in reality. And he suddenly enters some hospital, and saw the doctors and their ways with the patients, and he was very much astonished. Because he knew only one thing, that is that the correct order for a physical and happy life was to eat until bread and meat satisfied him, to practice in a proper way in working with his hands, this is what he felt with all of his natural feeling, as he was good and nice for a man, and his life was sweet for him and he strengthened his forces. And what did he hear from the doctors, that seemed to be, truly, good and wise people. They command the patients to behave totally different. They negate the movement, and together with that the food that is more natural -- bread and meat, opposite they give him, not until satisfaction like with a healthy man, but small quantities with spoons with a fluid. He stands astonished and is surprised, and calls out a challenge to the doctors, exclaiming: my life is of nature, work, and rough healthy eating. And all the medical treatments were to him harsh and misleading decrees.
And, behold, there comes a man opposite to him, a weakling and a simpleton, known to disease so that he had not tasted the taste of natural life, because from his youth he was afflicted by G-d and tortured, lying in the hospital and behaves according to the order of medicine that doctors always outlined to him. He does know at all what is natural life, what is its quality. Behold, these two edges of one dispute. The healthy one, the unwieldy, the natural one, screams: Oh, is this not the correction of evil and folly. What is it that you are being confined at home eating easy things often, that fill only the faint of heart, and that, by their influence, weaken the body. Eat what I eat and behave according to the way I behave in my life, to hell with the doctors and their orders. The other one, the sick man whose sicknesses are always present, and who does not have a picture of the nature of health, claims against him: only nonsense will expatiate your mouth, only that is good, only to be confined at home, only to eat chicken soup, a couple of spoons per hour. But to do exercise, to move a lot, to eat bread and meat at one time so that it is sufficient for half a day, that is a bad and bitter thing, a distorted order. And see, both of them were right, according to their mental state. If we are more precise in the matter, we will know too, that from side of content of the matter, by itself, according to logical meaning, the most healthy was right, but in any case, from the side of the practical point in relation to the sick, the sick man was right. However, he makes a mistake in logic, when he reasons that there is here no better way of doing things from its own perspective, because the medical way of doings things comes after corruptions. The more whole of the two, that is the only one that can make peace between them, is he who feels the depths of the two mental states. That is, that he knows the delight of the natural and healthy life, and that he very much desires to be there and to actually behave accordingly, and with that, he recognizes also the seriousness of diseases and the ways of treating them. And he will recognize that who already fell victim to disease, exactly the striving for and the love for natural life, leads him to totally behave according to the ways of medical treatment, even though these are far away from the ways of healthy nature, over which no corruption ruled.
Mankind in general is not healthy. There are many corruptions that apply to it, through the ancient sin, through the evil inclination, which made us veer away from the way of natural straightness, and intensified on it many bad forces. Therefore, even the natural general ethics, does not altogether fit with the natural and healthy inclination, that the human soul strives for, in view of the natural deficit that she still has, and that is the challenge for a brave and altogether natural life. The same desire comes sometimes from a healthy and solid source, but is in no way fitting to the corrupted souls of mankind. Sicker than mankind in general, is the disease in the Jewish nation. It is there that the situation of her ethics should be pure, high and lofty, also the force of life needs to be with it, brave, enormous and great. Despite the many diseases that befell her, the many generations that passed in which our forefathers rebelled through idol worship, which is a terrible corruption that is penetrating, and goes down to the depth of the soul, and has its effect on the next generations in an innate, quite terrible, fashion, the exile, the wanderings, the spreading and the humiliations, that came as a medicine for the ethical public disease, also caused many changes to the order of natural life. What does it mean in our time, who wants to strive to in fact realize a claim of natural life, even if it was pictured with integrity that is in people, and with purity and with sensitivity, the national soul is the boss and creates a distance from her way of life, because she needs to behave in a way of medical treatment. "Sustain me with raisin cakes, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love." Therefore, we don't want to deny the natural strivings, if only to take away from them the waste. The good that is in them, even though it is not fitting to the way of life, and the practice in Israel, will be included in the full hope, that we pray for her in our daily prayers: "Restore our judges as in the earliest times and our counselors as at first; remove from us sorrow and groan."
(The Hebrew text is the last two parts of Chapter 27)
We will now picture a man that lived a natural and healthy life, but he was unaware of any knowledge of existence of disease and medical treatment. He did not know anything about the reality of sick people in the world, and did hear anything about that there is another way of doings things that is different from his general natural way, which would take a place in reality. And he suddenly enters some hospital, and saw the doctors and their ways with the patients, and he was very much astonished. Because he knew only one thing, that is that the correct order for a physical and happy life was to eat until bread and meat satisfied him, to practice in a proper way in working with his hands, this is what he felt with all of his natural feeling, as he was good and nice for a man, and his life was sweet for him and he strengthened his forces. And what did he hear from the doctors, that seemed to be, truly, good and wise people. They command the patients to behave totally different. They negate the movement, and together with that the food that is more natural -- bread and meat, opposite they give him, not until satisfaction like with a healthy man, but small quantities with spoons with a fluid. He stands astonished and is surprised, and calls out a challenge to the doctors, exclaiming: my life is of nature, work, and rough healthy eating. And all the medical treatments were to him harsh and misleading decrees.
And, behold, there comes a man opposite to him, a weakling and a simpleton, known to disease so that he had not tasted the taste of natural life, because from his youth he was afflicted by G-d and tortured, lying in the hospital and behaves according to the order of medicine that doctors always outlined to him. He does know at all what is natural life, what is its quality. Behold, these two edges of one dispute. The healthy one, the unwieldy, the natural one, screams: Oh, is this not the correction of evil and folly. What is it that you are being confined at home eating easy things often, that fill only the faint of heart, and that, by their influence, weaken the body. Eat what I eat and behave according to the way I behave in my life, to hell with the doctors and their orders. The other one, the sick man whose sicknesses are always present, and who does not have a picture of the nature of health, claims against him: only nonsense will expatiate your mouth, only that is good, only to be confined at home, only to eat chicken soup, a couple of spoons per hour. But to do exercise, to move a lot, to eat bread and meat at one time so that it is sufficient for half a day, that is a bad and bitter thing, a distorted order. And see, both of them were right, according to their mental state. If we are more precise in the matter, we will know too, that from side of content of the matter, by itself, according to logical meaning, the most healthy was right, but in any case, from the side of the practical point in relation to the sick, the sick man was right. However, he makes a mistake in logic, when he reasons that there is here no better way of doing things from its own perspective, because the medical way of doings things comes after corruptions. The more whole of the two, that is the only one that can make peace between them, is he who feels the depths of the two mental states. That is, that he knows the delight of the natural and healthy life, and that he very much desires to be there and to actually behave accordingly, and with that, he recognizes also the seriousness of diseases and the ways of treating them. And he will recognize that who already fell victim to disease, exactly the striving for and the love for natural life, leads him to totally behave according to the ways of medical treatment, even though these are far away from the ways of healthy nature, over which no corruption ruled.
Mankind in general is not healthy. There are many corruptions that apply to it, through the ancient sin, through the evil inclination, which made us veer away from the way of natural straightness, and intensified on it many bad forces. Therefore, even the natural general ethics, does not altogether fit with the natural and healthy inclination, that the human soul strives for, in view of the natural deficit that she still has, and that is the challenge for a brave and altogether natural life. The same desire comes sometimes from a healthy and solid source, but is in no way fitting to the corrupted souls of mankind. Sicker than mankind in general, is the disease in the Jewish nation. It is there that the situation of her ethics should be pure, high and lofty, also the force of life needs to be with it, brave, enormous and great. Despite the many diseases that befell her, the many generations that passed in which our forefathers rebelled through idol worship, which is a terrible corruption that is penetrating, and goes down to the depth of the soul, and has its effect on the next generations in an innate, quite terrible, fashion, the exile, the wanderings, the spreading and the humiliations, that came as a medicine for the ethical public disease, also caused many changes to the order of natural life. What does it mean in our time, who wants to strive to in fact realize a claim of natural life, even if it was pictured with integrity that is in people, and with purity and with sensitivity, the national soul is the boss and creates a distance from her way of life, because she needs to behave in a way of medical treatment. "Sustain me with raisin cakes, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love." Therefore, we don't want to deny the natural strivings, if only to take away from them the waste. The good that is in them, even though it is not fitting to the way of life, and the practice in Israel, will be included in the full hope, that we pray for her in our daily prayers: "Restore our judges as in the earliest times and our counselors as at first; remove from us sorrow and groan."
(The Hebrew text is the last two parts of Chapter 27)