It all goes back to the very beginning.

The text suggests that humanity's struggles stem from a fundamental choice: prioritizing the physical over the spiritual, the immediate gratification of the senses over the deeper wisdom of the soul. "When it was that they followed their eyes and the body rules and not the soul, therefore the Holy One blessed is He also went with them in hiding of his countenance.”

Think about that for a moment. When we let our desires, our yetzer hara (evil inclination), dictate our actions, we create a distance between ourselves and the Divine. It's not that God disappears, but rather, we lose sight of God. We hide from the Divine Presence, the Shekhinah, by immersing ourselves in the material world.

This idea echoes the story of Adam. Remember his punishment after eating from the Tree of Knowledge? "...by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread" (Genesis 3:9). It wasn't just about physical labor; it was about the constant, never-ending effort to satisfy a hunger that can never truly be quenched by physical means alone.

And the book of Ecclesiastes, Kohelet, reminds us, "all of the work of man is for his mouth, and also the soul shall not be filled" (Ecclesiastes 6:7). We strive, we acquire, we consume… but that inner emptiness persists. Why? Because we're trying to fill a spiritual void with material things.

The text continues that “wisdom became excluded and was removed from mankind.” What does this mean? It's not that wisdom vanished entirely. It's that our connection to it became obscured. We became so focused on the "how" of survival that we forgot the "why" of existence. We lost sight of the bigger picture, the deeper meaning.

So, what's the solution? How do we reconnect with that lost wisdom, that sense of wholeness? Perhaps it starts with recognizing the imbalance, with acknowledging that chasing only physical gratification leaves us perpetually unsatisfied. Maybe it's about consciously choosing to nurture our souls, to seek out meaning and connection beyond the material realm.

Maybe, just maybe, it's about turning our gaze inward, seeking the Divine spark within ourselves and reconnecting with the source of all wisdom. And maybe, just maybe, in doing so, we can begin to fill that persistent void and find a truer, more lasting sense of fulfillment.