Why is being alone the first thing the Torah calls “not good”?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau explains that the first time Hashem says “not good” in the Torah, it is about loneliness: lo tov heyos ha'adam levado, “it is not good for man to be alone.” It didn't speak about murder or theft, he notes, but about being lonely.
The reason, he says, is that “connection is the original oxygen.” When a person disconnects “from people, from love, from life,” even without any terrible event, “the soul starts to suffocate.”
That is why aloneness can wound as deeply as a dramatic event, and why “healing begins the moment you reach for someone.”
Related concepts: Relationships · Spirituality
In A Soul at Peace: The Exile Inside Us
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Loneliness is the first thing the Torah calls “not good.”
What may be behind it
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the first man was whole in body and mind and close to his Creator, and still being alone was “not good.”
Deepest human truth
Connection is oxygen for the soul.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Boundaries, Healing, and Emotional Resilience · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz