The body of a person is full with the Holy Names of the Divine. 

This is what Reb Menahum Nahum of Chernboyl (1730 - 1798) teaches us in his first sermon on the Book of Exodus. More specifically, he explains, every part of the physical human body corresponds to a different vocalization of the unpronounceable Divine Name spelled yud heh vav heh (YHWH) — the skull is vocalized with the ah vowel (YaHaWaH); the right arm with the eh vowel (YeHeWeH); the right thigh with the ee vowel (YiHiWiH); and so on. Each distinct part of our body is thus a distinct manifestation of the Divine– put together, we become a microcosm of God’s proverbial body. 

It is not incidental that this radical teaching comes at the beginning of the book of Exodus when our people are descending into Mitzrayim ("Egypt," but literally means “the constricted place”). Reb Nahum clarifies that “they are filled with holy names even when ‘coming into mitzrayim" (Exodus 1:1), which is to say ‘even when they fall from their rung.’” [1] There’s nothing that we can do to change the fact that our human bodies are holy. It is inherent. Regardless of how low we collectively fall (or are made to fall), our bodies are always shimmering with Divinity.

And looking at the world around us today, it becomes clear just how far we are falling. 

As we watch our world descend again into heartlessness and fascism, we must remind ourselves and our neighbors of the sanctity of every body. In a time when our government is using “religious liberty” as the fodder to revoke reproductive and gender-affirming care; when "efficiency" threatens to cut the social safety net from underneath millions of poor and working class people; when “fighting antisemitism” is used to gut public health research and justify US residents being detained and threatened with deportation; and when the ceasefire in Gaza has been broken, the hostages put at further risk, and Gaza’s children are maimed, orphaned, and starving — we as Jews must remind ourselves and our neighbors that bodies are holy and no one has the right to desecrate them. 

But this is not the first time our global community has descended into the mitzrayim of fascism. Nor is it the first time that Hasidic spirituality can support us in resisting its disregard for the bodies that carry the yoke of its oppression. 

In 1934, amidst Hitler’s rise to power, the neo-Hasidic pioneer Martin Buber (1878-1965) was invited to speak at Eranos, an annual proto-New Age convention. Amongst the other speakers were luminaries like the mystical psychoanalyst Carl Jung, as well as leaders in the field of Religious studies who just-so-happened to be card-carrying Nazis. 

The conference focused on the transcendental religious “symbols” that exist beyond our corporeal existence and represent the true, spiritual reality. As the token Jew amongst many Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, Buber got on the stage and asserted over and over that religion’s focus should be on “corporeality, not spirituality.” [2] We should be talking about the body and all the ethical implications of its needs, not the transcendental Self that is so amorphous and “pure” that it exists beyond the realm of the ethical. In the words of scholar Sam S.B. Shonkoff, it’s as if Buber asked the audience to 

sober up from numinous meditation and to look into the eyes of the speaker standing before them. Look at his situation as a Jew. Look at history. Do not stare through bodily being into psychic timelessness. [3]

After all, as we will see in the essays in this volume, our tradition’s mystics understand our bodies to be the primary locus through which we interact with the Divine. In fact, Buber argued that “the essential messages of the Hebrew Bible and Hasidism are not expressed through any abstract content or information but through the very bodily lives of prophets and sages.” [4] 

Not only can we serve the Divine through our embodiment, but our “bodily lives” are also the primary avenue through which we can support each other. The moral implications of avodah b’gashmius (worship through the physical) — the very practice from which our magazine draws its name — are becoming more and more glaring every day. It is not enough to just meditate on the Divine, we must also go out and serve the Divine through serving others. 

Perhaps in this turbulent time, we must take it upon ourselves to make this remembrance a more active part of our spiritual lives. We hope the essays, poetry, and artwork in this volume can act as a reminder of the holiness in your own body, as well as in the diverse bodies of others around you, and that this awareness transcends “numinous meditations” and manifests in the actions of our ethical, interpersonal “bodily lives.”

In light of that, we offer one practice drawn from Marcia Falk’s rewriting of the blessing for handwashing. She unpacks this blessing by asserting that through it, “the spirit-self recalls its embodiment and reclaims the sacrality of that embodiment, thus also affirming its own holiness.” [5] We believe that in this time, it can apply not only to moments of ritual washing, but also to all ma’aseh yadeinu, to all of our work in this world. Here is the practice:

Anytime you  are overcome by how far we have descended in into mitzrayim, try rubbing your hands together, as if you are washing them, and recite Falk’s blessing:

Tizkor nafsheynu et kedushat haguf.

We call to mind the holiness of the body. [6]