[Avodah] Gilgul

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, March 16, 2008 2:55 pm, R Michael Makovi wrote on Areivim:
: I'm not sure how much weight I put in gilgul; as an aside, there's an
: interesting Rav Hirsch somewhere, where he says the Egyptians believed
: in gilgul but Judaism does not....

See also <http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/getindex.cgi?section=G#GILGUL>
and subsequent subject lines in the archive as well as
<http://tinyurl.com/32fkep> (that's a different part of the index than
the unshortened first link).

RSRH's comments are usually taken to refer to bodily resurrection.
Which is why the Egyptians took such care of how they preserved the
pharaoh's body. Then there is R' Saadia Gaon's rejection of "haatakah"
in Emunos veDei'os 2:9, which he considers an import of foreign
thought, and not from our mesorah.

I tried divorcing ha'atakah from gilgul in
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol10/v10n144.shtml#04>. According the
the Ari, every human being is a unique configuration, even if elements
of his neshamah participated in other configurations. This is a very
different notion than simple reincarnation. I think the biggest
problem with my resolution is that it would be odd for RSG to be so
condemning of one and not mention the Torah origins of a somewhat
similar idea.

In Plato's thought, reincarnation was part of the general cyclical
nature of time. It would then be logical to vehemently reject it in
favor of our notion of progressing from Adam le'achar hacheit to yemos
hamashiach. (Jewish "helical time" -- revisiting yetzias mitzrayim
annually as part of the trip to the geulah sheleimah.)

Josephus in BJ 2.8.14 mentions that we Perushim believe something
along these lines. R Dr Louis Feldman (RMFeldman's father) believes
it's techiyas hameisim le'asid lavo, but the author of the Britannica
article believes he is describing gilgul. (I also noted that Josephus
refers to future "bodies", in the plural, of a single soul, which
could well be early documentation of the notion of nitzotzos described
by the Ari zal.)

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
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