“Body and Soul Are One and the Same”. The Religious Experience of Etty Hillesum

This article looks at the close relationship between body and spirit in the religious experience of Etty Hillesum. In general, in feminine religious experience, there is a strong connection between matter and spirit, between body and soul. In Etty Hillesum, this can be seen in the centrality of feeling in her spiritual itinerary, in how she kept sexuality and spirituality together, in the participation of the body in the practice of prayer, and in her attention to the daily practices that help to live in the present, in the here and now, and which implicate both the body and the spirit. The discovery of God as the innermost part of herself, as a place of silence and of peace, culminates in the attempt to help God, to let him dwell within herself precisely when, in the dark period of the Shoah, God runs the risk of disappearing completely from the heart of men due to the evil and the hatred that decay souls. Helping God, allowing Him to dwell within herself as if she was pregnant, Etty takes on a symbolic maternity with respect to God, in a relationship in which body and spirit are both involved in the attempt to save a small piece of God from the catastrophe.