Reincarnation In Jewish 21st Century Mystical Thought – OpEd
Every human on earth has 8 great grandparents and 16 great great grandparents. Each of these 24 individuals contributes an equal amount of genetic material to their descendants. Nevertheless, siblings who share the same 24 ancestors do not have identical genomes. Even if they are identical twins their physical, mental and personality traits always differ, sometimes greatly, from their siblings who share almost the same physical genetic heritage.
This difference is the result of both the unique physical combination of genes that occurs at conception; and the unique human soul that enters the body during the first or second trimester according to Jewish tradition.
Every year many hundreds of people find out that one or two of their 24 ancestors might have been Jewish. For most of them this discovery is an interesting fact of little significance. For many of them it might be an embarrassment to be ignored.
But for some of them it becomes a life changing discovery. They feel drawn to Jewish people and seek to learn about Jewish music, food, literature, culture and religion. They feel more and more attached in some mysterious way to the Holocaust and the struggle of Israel to live in peace in the Middle East.
Many of these people eventually are led to become Jewish either by formal conversion or by informal reversion within Reform Progressive synagogues.
These people provide a rather unusual form of evidence for reincarnation that comes from the Jewish mystical tradition; the Kabbalah. Unlike Buddhism and Hinduism, Kabbalah does not teach that reincarnation (gilgul) occurs over the course of hundreds of millions of years to millions of different sentient species.
According to Kabbalah, only the souls of self conscious moral creatures like human beings reincarnate; and they reincarnate only when they have not fulfilled the purpose of their creation in their current lifetime. These esoteric Kabbalistic concepts from the 12th to 17th centuries; were popularized and spread throughout Eastern Europe, especially in Poland and Ukraine, by the Hasidic movement in the last half of the 18th and 19th century.
Since Judaism is an optimistic religion, most Kabbalists teach that most people can accomplish their life’s purpose in one or two lifetimes. A few souls may take 3-5 lifetimes or more. The bright souls of great religious figures like Abraham and Moses or Sarah and Miriam can turn into dozens of individual sparks that can reincarnate several times over many centuries.
The tragic souls of Jews whose children have been cut off from the Jewish people, either through persecution or forced conversion to another religion, will reincarnate as one of their own, no longer Jewish, descendants. These non-Jewish descendant souls will then seek to return to the Jewish people.
A majority of people who end up converting (or reverting) to Judaism and the Jewish people have Jewish souls from one of their own ancestors. Thus, the Jewish mystical tradition, claims that the souls of most converts to Judaism are the reincarnated souls of Jews in previous generations who were cut off from the Jewish people either voluntarily or involuntarily. Through conversion to Judaism they feel they are coming home.
Sometimes these souls are descendants of Jews who were part of whole communities that were cut off, like the Marranos of Spain and Portugal, or European Jews in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust and then the decades of Communist oppression. Other times they are descendants of individual Jews who married non-Jews and did not raise their children to be faithful Jews.
An example of the latter from England is recounted by Rabbi Barbara Borts: “One of the most touching conversions I ever did was a young girl of 11, brought to me by her mother, to discuss Judaism. The mother was a widow, living back at home with her mother and her father, who was a minister. This girl had done some research on Hanukkah for her school class, and in the process both loved what she learned and discovered that her late father’s grandfather was a German Jew.
I asked her mother why she would support this. Her response was that her two daughters were no longer going to church, and she was delighted that one of them had found a religious home. When I said that I could not imagine doing what she was doing if the positions were reversed, she said, “It’s different for Jews, after the Holocaust and all.”
So, the girl started Hebrew school classes, and attended services. I moved a couple of years later, and bequeathed her to the next rabbi. Some years later, we met up again when she was in University. She had converted, changed her name permanently, was an active member of a Jewish student organization, and planned to become a Rabbi; she may even now be in rabbinical school.”
Most of the time people who become Jewish do not find out that they have a Jewish ancestor until years after their conversion. According to a mystical 14th century Kabbalistic teaching found in Sefer HaPliyah, those non-Jews who do feel this powerful attraction to Jewish things and Jewish people, have Jewish souls that are reincarnations (gilgulim) of one of their own Jewish ancestors from 3-7 generations in the past.
That explains why they react to the discovery of some Jewish heritage in such a unusual way. It also explains why many people who do not even know that they have Jewish ancestors follow a similar path; and only discover a Jewish ancestor years after they have returned to the Jewish people.
The Hebrew word for reincarnation is gilgul which means recycling. Many people are born with new souls who are here for the first time. Others have a soul that has lived on this planet before. Most people do not reincarnate after their life on this earth is over.
Most people who end up becoming Jewish, especially now, after the Jewish people have experienced several generations of assimilation, marriage to non-Jews, hiding from anti-semitism and outright genocide, are descendants of people whose children, in one way or another, have been cut off from the Jewish People. Among their non-Jewish descendants a few will inherit a Jewish soul (gilgul) that will seek to return to the Jewish people (Sefer HaPliyah).
Take as an example Kadin Henningsen, who grew up female and Methodist in the Midwest. As a preteen she was inexplicably drawn to Judaism, empathizing with Jewish characters in Holocaust documentaries on TV.
Then in junior high, Henningsen had a revelation while reading Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen”: “I remember thinking I was supposed to grow up to be a Jewish man.”
Less than two decades later, the premonition came true. At 30, Henningsen transitioned genders and converted to Judaism, all within the span of a single summer. “It was a circular process,” he said. “The more entrenched I became in Jewish knowledge, the more comfortable I started to feel with my masculine identity.”
Henningsen’s conversion certificates were the first documents that referred to him with male pronouns. Today he is an active member of Temple Beth Chayim Chadashim, a Reform congregation in Los Angeles. According to Naomi Zeveloff”s article in the Jewish Daily Forward (8/16/13) Henningsen is not alone in his trajectory. Transgender converts constitute a growing minority within the small community of LGBT Jews.
For some transgender converts conversion was intrinsically linked to gender transition; the process of soul-searching unearthed one insight after another.
For others, Judaism was a lifeline during a time of immense vulnerability and isolation. When friends and family members grew distant, transgender individuals found community at the Hillel House or at a local synagogue.
Some transgender converts to Judaism came from strong Christian backgrounds and wanted to supplant their childhood religion with one that would be more accepting of their new gender identity. Others came to Judaism from a nonreligious background.
“In one way it is a search for personal authenticity,” said Rabbi Jane Litman, a congregational consultant with the Reconstructionist movement who has converted close to two dozen transgender Jews. “People who are transitioning in terms of gender are looking for a way to feel most authentically themselves.”
Jesse Krikorian, a 24-year-old engineer, began exploring Judaism as a senior at Swarthmore College, shortly after she began her gender transition.
Unhappy with her decision to take hormones, her parents threatened to withdraw their financial support. “I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, and there was a lot of chaos and uncertainty,” he later recounted. “I found that I really needed community and ritual and all those good things.”
Though he was raised Methodist, Krikorian was always interested in the Old Testament. A visit to the campus Hillel confirmed that Judaism might provide him with the community he was seeking: The Hillel director at the time, Jacob Lieberman, was also a transgender man. “I didn’t have any questions of whether I could be transgender and Jewish,” Krikorian said. “It was really clear that the combination could work.”
Krikorian attended Friday night services at Hillel each week and began to recite a prayer about transformation each time he bound his chest to appear more masculine. After graduating from college, he moved to Philadelphia. There he joined Kol Tzedek, a Reconstructionist synagogue. He converted and hopes to go to rabbinical school.
Thus the Gilgul process, especially due to the large amount of geographic and social mobility in modern times, often leads to transformations that lead Non-Jews to become Jewish.
According to Kabbalah, only the souls of self conscious moral creatures like human beings reincarnate; and they reincarnate only when they have not fulfilled the purpose of their creation in their present incarnation.
Since Judaism is an optimistic religion, Kabbalists teach that most people can accomplish their life’s purpose in one or two lifetimes. A few souls may need as many as 3-7 lifetimes.
The bright souls of great religious figures like Moses or Miriam can turn into a dozen or more sparks that may each reincarnate several times.
The tragic souls of Jews whose children or grandchildren have been cut off from the Jewish people, either through persecution or conversion to another religion, will reincarnate as one of their no longer Jewish descendants.
These souls will seek to return to the Jewish people, and a majority of people who end up converting (or reverting) to Judaism and the Jewish people have Jewish souls from one of their ancestors. Thus it is possible to see this form of reincarnation occurring in the world today in the experience of thousands of non-Jews who become Jewish.
Abrahamic Religions Each Share Their Own Decalogue – OpEd
People who simply want to put the Ten Commandments on the walls of our schools and our courtrooms often find themselves blocked by disagreements over which Ten Commandments to use.
The Decalogue, a central text of Judaism, appears in the Torah in Exodus and again in Deuteronomy, with wording that is not the same in the two books. The rabbis say that the two versions of the ten commandments correspond to the two sets of two stone tablets.
The version in Exodus was what was written on the first set of two tablets, which were broken by Prophet Moses after some Jews sinned with the Golden Calf. Deuteronomy repeats what was written on the second set of two tablets that God gave Moses.
Professor J. Cornelis de Vos points out, in an article that appeared on July 28, 2023, that Jewish Greek philosophy, the New Testament, Christian theology, Rabbinic Judaism, and the Church Fathers, all shaped and interpreted the Decalogue to meet the needs of their own community.
The Hebrew text in the Torah is fairly clear. “These words YHWH (God’s special name used by Jews) spoke with a loud voice to your whole assembly at the mountain, out of the fire, the cloud, the thick darkness, and he added no more. He (God) wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me (Prophet Moses) “. (Deuteronomy 5:22 )
Professor J. Cornelis de Vos adds that Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish Bible commentator and philosopher (20 B.C.E. – 50 C.E.), uses the Decalogue as headings under which he subsumes almost all of the commandments of the Torah. In a discussion of other examples of the number ten in biblical narrative, he writes: “But why note such examples as these, when the holy and divine law is summed up by Moses in precepts which are ten in all, statutes which are the general heads, embracing the vast multitude of particular laws, the roots, the sources, the perennial fountains of ordinances containing commandments positive and prohibitive for the profit of those who follow them?”
Philo was also the first to divide the Decalogue into two parts, reflecting piety and justice, respectively, which he considered to be the main virtues in ancient Judaism: “Further, the ten words on them, divine ordinances in the proper sense of the word, are divided equally into two sets of five, the former comprising duties to God, and the other duties to men.
“Philo (who was somewhat of a mystic) further claimed that the Decalogue, with its ten commandments, comprises the whole visible (space/time) world. He reasons that the world consists of (four dimensions) points, lines, surfaces, and solids, forms with 1, 2, 3, and 4 sides, respectively, and then notes that the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 is 10.
Four centuries later, Augustine of Hippo (354–430 C.E.) Christianized the Decalogue. Instead of dividing its contents equally across the two tablets, he argued the first tablet contained three commandments: 1. not to worship other gods or make idols; 2. not to misuse God’s name; and 3. to observe the Sabbath. These commandments symbolized the threefold nature of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The remaining seven commandments on the second tablet related to human behavior towards fellow humans, with the prohibitions against coveting divided into two parts. This became the standard way that the commandments were enumerated in the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches; but most Protestant Churches have a somewhat different division of the Decalogue which makes the Catholic single commandment not to worship other gods or make idols, into two separate commandments.
In the rare cases where the New Testament quotes specific laws from the Torah, it almost always quotes the Decalogue. For example, several parallel accounts depict Prophet Jesus citing the Decalogue in response to a question about what a person must do to gain eternal life in the next world.
Thus, when the question is posed by “a certain ruler,” Prophet Jesus replies (with only the human behavior tablet): “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother.'” (Luke 18:20)
Exodus tells us to “remember the Sabbath” while Deuteronomy tells us to “observe” it. More significantly, the purpose given in Exodus tells us to add holiness to God’s creation of the physical world; while Deuteronomy’s reason is grounded in social justice – to benefit all members of human society, including our own slaves.
Finally, emphasis is placed on these commandments in the Islamic faith: two sets of verses in the Quran, speak of them. The Quran speaks of them in chapter 6:151-153 and chapter 17:23-39 which is like a commentary on the commandments listed in 6:151-3. Some scholars call them the “verses of the ten commandments” simply because they speak of ten significant commandments to be observed by a Muslim. The Quran does not state that these are the same Ten Commandments that were given to Prophet Moses.
Detail of Guido Reni's "Moses with the Tables of the Law." Credit: Wikipedia Commons
Rabbi Allen S. Maller
Allen Maller retired in 2006 after 39 years as Rabbi of Temple Akiba in Culver City, Calif. He is the author of an introduction to Jewish mysticism. God. Sex and Kabbalah and editor of the Tikun series of High Holy Day prayerbooks.
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