About 15 years ago, I heard a story about Rabbi Mendel of Horodok. Someone had stood on Har Hazeisim and blown a shofar, and there were rumors about Moshiach’s impending arrival. The Reb Mendel went to see if Moshiach was indeed arriving – by opening up his window and smelling the air outside his house! He determined that it did not ‘smell like’ Moshiach.
His chassidim wanted to know why, if Moshiach had been coming, would the Rebbe not have smelled it from inside his house? Why open a window? Would the scent of redemption not make its way through the window?
The answer was that the scent of Geulah was already strong in Reb Mendel’s home.
With this, the chassidim learned a powerful message. Moshiach’s arrival will bring us national redemption, but with our actions, we can already live with the scent of Geulah in our personal lives.
Personal Geulah. This idea changed everything for me. I had spent so much time waiting—for a future moment, a transformation from above—without realizing that I could be actively working toward it from within. That’s when the concept of “geulah from within” took root. I began learning, teaching, and creating groups and spaces where we could explore what it means to live with that awareness.
The message became clear: every person carries a unique soul, a light that only they can bring into the world. Each of us has our own connection to Hashem. When we are aligned with that connection, living with dveikus, we experience a deep sense of calm and clarity.
Available to us at each moment is the experience of lived emunah — feeling, seeing, and experiencing closeness with Hashem at every twist and turn of life. That feeling itself is a taste of geulah, and though the taste can be fleeting, we can continuously work to stay in that consciousness as much as possible.
At first, I tried to access that connection by meditating on these concepts. It helped — I felt close to Hashem. But when I was done, I did not find the experience to have changed me, or my actions, and I came to understand that I had more work to do to reach my ultimate goal. Torah teaches that we are here to elevate the physical world, not escape it. Spirituality that stays “up there” isn’t enough; it has to be lived, embodied, and expressed in our daily actions.
That realization forced me to look honestly at my own life. Where was I disconnected? I found one area immediately: the way I ate. I was completely unconscious about my eating, cycling through diets, losing and gaining weight, and feeling stuck in a pattern that had no awareness or connection. Something had to change.
I pursued training in health coaching and emotional eating, but I didn’t leave Torah behind—I brought it with me. I began weaving together deep spiritual truths about the soul with practical tools for living in the body. What emerged was a discovery of some guiding principles that I discovered can reconnect us with ourselves and elevate even the most physical parts of life.
Our bodies aren’t obstacles to spirituality—they’re vessels for it. Our bodies house three of the five parts of the soul. When we learn to listen to our bodies, to trust them, and to work with them instead of against them, something shifts. We stop fighting ourselves and start partnering with who we truly are.
And that’s the heart of the message: geulah begins when we stop waiting for change to come from the outside and start creating it from within. When we bring awareness, intention, and connection into our everyday actions—even something as simple as eating—we transform the physical into something spiritual.
That is how redemption becomes personal and real—one person, one moment, one choice at a time to connect to our One G-d.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 82 – Shavuos.
