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<font size=3>At 10:10 PM 7/10/2011, Cantor Richard Wolberg
wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">[What I find fascinating is the
idea of Reincarnation being endorsed by<br>
some Sages while being denounced by others). I recall a shiur in where
<br>
the Rebbe believed in Reincarnation and said that you can only come <br>
back as a Jew. When I was a teenager I learned with a Rabbi Katz z"l
<br>
in Hartford, Ct. He said that if you don't wash prior to making the
motzi,<br>
you will come back as a dog (transmigration of the souls). That's
pretty<br>
scary, unless, of course, you come back as Lassie]. Personally, I
feel<br>
that gilgul hanefesh is plausible. (Interestingly, the Greek
philosophical <br>
term for transmigration of the soul is "Metempsychosis." What I
find <br>
intriguing is the implementation of the word 'Psychosis' which is a <br>
pathological psychiatric condition involving a loss of contact with
reality).<br>
</blockquote><br>
R. Saadia Goan (882-942) in his <b>Beliefs and Opinions </b>(Emunos
VeDeyos) writes,<br><br>
"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)<br><br>
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). <br><br>
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. <br><br>
<br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
Yitzchok Levine</font></body>
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