Why do I feel torn between my body and my soul?

Rabbi Landau explains that all week a person is split in two. “Your soul wants connection, and your body wants stimulation.” You pray, and your phone vibrates. You scroll, and your heart feels empty. “You’re not fighting the world, you’re fighting yourself.”

Shabbos is where that fight ends, not because the body stops wanting pleasure, but because it finds a pleasure the soul wants too. The taste of the challah, the warmth of the zemiros, the quiet of the candles: the same act feeds both.

Then the body stops fighting the soul and starts serving it. That, he says, is the peace of Shabbos.

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

The real fight is inside: soul wants connection, body wants stimulation.

What may be behind it

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes of the divine soul and the animal soul, and that during the week “the war between them does not stop for a moment.”

Deepest human truth

Peace comes when body and soul want the same thing, and the body serves the soul.

More questions from this teaching

• Why do we say Shabbat Shalom?