When we speak about the soul, we must first clear away a fundamental misconception: the soul is not something personal that exists inside an individual from birth. The soul is rather a collective phenomenon, a mutual desire that exists between people.

The Torah describes a single created being, which it calls “Adam,” and which later became divided into many parts. We are its parts. Accordingly, the soul is not something individual, but a system of connection between these parts, a collective desire in which we are all interconnected.

If we want to understand this in a practical way, we should look at our world. When people connect “as one man with one heart,” in mutual love, reciprocity, and bestowal, when they truly relate to one another with the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself,” then a special force is created between them. This collective force, which appears in their connection, is what we call “the soul.”

This means that no individual possesses a soul on their own. A person’s soul is their connection with others. It is found outside of them, in their attitude toward others. When a person exits themselves, rises above their egoistic desire for self-benefit alone, and desires to be included in others, to connect with........

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