[Avodah] Reincarnation (was Women and Tefillin)

[Prof. Levine]

At 10:10 PM 7/10/2011, Cantor Richard Wolberg wrote:

>[What I find fascinating is the idea of Reincarnation being endorsed by
>some Sages while being denounced by others). I recall a shiur in where
>the Rebbe believed in Reincarnation and said that you can only come
>back as a Jew. When I was a teenager I learned with a Rabbi Katz z"l
>in Hartford, Ct. He said that if you don't wash prior to making the motzi,
>you will come back as a dog (transmigration of the souls). That's pretty
>scary, unless, of course, you come back as Lassie]. Personally, I feel
>that gilgul hanefesh is plausible. (Interestingly, the Greek philosophical
>term for transmigration of the soul is "Metempsychosis." What I find
>intriguing is the implementation of the word 'Psychosis' which is a
>pathological psychiatric condition involving a loss of contact with reality).

R. Saadia Goan (882-942) in his Beliefs and Opinions (Emunos VeDeyos)  writes,

"Yet I must say that I have found certain people, who call themselves 
Jews, professing the doctrine of metempsychosis, which is designated 
by them as the theory of the "transmigration" of  souls. What they 
mean thereby is that the spirit of Reuben is transferred to Shimon 
and afterwards to Levi and after that to Judah. Many of them would 
even go so far as to assert that the spirit of a human being might 
enter into the body of a beast or that of a beast into the body of a 
human being, and other such nonsense and stupidities." (Treatise VI , 
Chapter VIII)

Others who followed R. Saadia Goan and did not subscribe to the 
doctrine of gilgul are R.Chisdai Crecas ( c.1310-c.1415) and R. 
Joseph Albo (c.1380-1444).

Rabbi Avigdor Miller would not talk about reincarnation, since it is 
not mentioned even once in the entire Talmud Bavli. Personally, I do 
not think that he believed in gilgul, but he never said this to me explicitly.



Yitzchok Levine 
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