The soul of man
First of all, I should explain that I’m a wannabe Jew, my father was raised as an Orthodox Jew from a broken home raised by his mother. She was very strict, and my father didn’t have a father image, he joined a gang in New Orleans where he grew up and got into a lot of trouble. On one occasion he got arrested and his mother told the police to let him spend a night in jail. He spent that night thinking about where his life was leading him. He joined the CMTC (Citizens' Military Training Camp) at 17 years old, he lied about his age, soon after he joined the CMTC he went National guard, and one day later WWII broke out and his unit was called up to active duty and he went to ranger school at Fort Bragg North Carolina near Charlotte North Carolina where he met and married my mother who was a Protestant. I was raised in a secular home.
I wrote about how I discovered my Jewish roots in this article. When I discovered my Jewish roots
What is the soul of man? As I started to study this subject, I got confused. I wrote about this before.
Neshamah literally means “breath.” Think of it as G‑d breathing within the human body, as in the scene where G‑d formed Adam out of the earth “and He blew into his nostrils the breath of life.”
Just as G‑d is forever,
so too the neshamah is forever.
In my article about
Olam Ha-Ba
I wrote about Jewish afterlife or the world to come, some may think of it as Heaven.
What is the soul of man? Some may think of it as the Neshamah, what is it made up of? What is Nefesh HaBahamit? After doing some studying and doing some thinking on the subject. I came to this conclusion. I see the animal soul, or Nefesh HaBahamit as being the Yetzer HaRa.
Bereshit (Genesis) - Chapter 3
22 Now the Lord God said, "Behold man has become like one of us, having the ability of knowing good and evil, and now, lest he stretch forth his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever."
The yetzer ra is more difficult to define, because there are many different ideas about it. It is not a desire to do evil in the way we normally think of it in Western society: a desire to cause senseless harm. Rather, it is usually conceived as the selfish nature, the desire to satisfy personal needs (food, shelter, sex, etc.) without regard for the moral consequences of fulfilling those desires. THE ANIMAL SOUL!
The yetzer ra is not a bad thing. It was created by G-d, and all things created by G-d are good. The Talmud notes that without the yetzer ra (the desire to satisfy personal needs), man would not build a house, marry a wife, beget children or conduct business affairs. But the yetzer ra can lead to wrongdoing when it is not controlled by the yetzer tov. There is nothing inherently wrong with hunger, but it can lead you to steal food. There is nothing inherently wrong with sexual desire, but it can lead you to commit rape, adultery, incest or other sexual perversion.
The next thing I read about is “The divine soul involves five ascending levels of consciousness” I will only touch lightly on this subject.
The next thing I thought about is what happens to the soul after the death of the body? As mentioned above, the neshamah is forever. It never dies. So, what happens to it if it was part of an evil man? Will it go to hell? Will Hashem torture the Neshamah forever?
Judaism is not about “Do this and you get a ticket to heaven.” The Mishnah tells us that we shouldn’t be “as servants who serve master so that they will receive a reward.”
Maimonides is considered the great codifier of Judaism. He distilled thirteen principles of the Jewish faith. Two of those are directly connected to belief in reward in an afterlife: The belief in reward for the righteous and punishment for the wicked—which quite obviously does not happen in this lifetime—and the belief in the revival of the dead in a time to come.
I’ll add my 2 cents worth. Many people believe that the evil soul burns forever in hell? I can’t believe that G-d can be so cruel. It does say in many places within the Tanakh that G-d is a vengeful G-d. But it is also written in the Tanakh that G-d is also a forgiving G-d. Not that I think that we can go to the Amen corner, ask for forgiveness and do it all over again!
G-d is Omniscient
G-d knows all things, past, present and future. He knows our thoughts.
So, he knows our heart, so the Amen corner won’t work!
Let’s take a look at Yechezkel - Ezekiel - Chapter 18
24 And when the righteous repents of his righteousness and does wrong and does like all the abominations that the wicked man did, shall he live? All his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered; in his treachery that he has perpetrated and in his sin that he has sinned, in them shall he die.
“in them shall he die.” I personally believe that after our death our souls await the coming of the Mashiach, resurrected, then judged. If the soul does not enter Olam Ha-ba, it is then put back to death forever, nothingness.
According to Jewish belief, the Day of Judgement, or Yawm ad-Din, will occur after the coming of the Messiah.
Jews believe that God judges how good or bad people have been in order to decide their destiny in the afterlife. This is often seen as motivation to behave well and obey all of God’s rules.
Some Jews believe that they will be judged as soon as they die, while others believe that they will be judged by both God and the Messiah on the Day of Judgement. On this day, some Jews believe that everyone will be resurrected so that they can be judged, while others believe that only those who are morally good will be resurrected.
“in them shall he die.” But yet, when we read about the Neshamah, we read that the Neshamah is forever. Is there more to what Yechezkel is saying?
It is said that our neshamah lived a heavenly life before it entered our body on this earth, and it will live an even higher one afterward. For the neshamah, life in this body is but a corridor on the way to a yet higher place.
I may be wrong, but on thinking about all this, I think on the article I posted about the
Shechinah;
The word Shechinah is feminine, and so when we refer to G‑d as the Shechinah, we say “She.” Of course, we’re still referring to the same One G‑d, just in a different modality.
Recycled Souls
Our souls returned many times to this world until her job would be complete. And on the path of her mission, almost inevitably she will fall at times into the mire. She falls when she is blinded by the deceptions of the darkness, tricked by the passions of the beast into which she has been infused, and bribed by the ego in which she has been encased. Now she must redeem herself as well, and in doing so she not only redeems the most hidden sparks—she transforms the most intransigent darkness to which those sparks have given life.
The Shechinah Herself also stumbles and falls into the mud. Her children, our own souls, bring her there. So that now She, too, can no longer redeem them without redeeming Herself. Her destiny becomes wrapped up in theirs.
By now, all our souls have been recycled many times. What your soul accomplished in previous descents, and what is left to be accomplished—all that is of necessity hidden from you. As Rabbi Moshe Cordovero wrote, “Those who know do not say, and those who say do not know.” For if we would know, we would accomplish without struggle. And it is the struggle itself that brings out the innermost powers, the powers of redemption.
As with the sparks, and as with the Shechinah, the further the soul descends, the greater will be her ultimate ascent. Indeed, there is only ascent. For the descent itself, in retrospect, is the active stage that powers the ascent.
So, what this is saying to me, is that life is like a rehearsal, we rehearse, and rehearse, until we get it right! So, no burning in hell! So, what is the motivation to get it right, if it’s just a rehearsal. The memory of who we were in this life is forgotten, it dies with our body.
Yechezkel - Ezekiel - Chapter 18
24 And when the righteous repents of his righteousness and does wrong and does like all the abominations that the wicked man did, shall he live? All his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered; in his treachery that he has perpetrated and in his sin that he has sinned, in them shall he die.
“in them shall he die.” “shall not be remembered”
When we get it right, our neshamah, with our memory of who we were will ascend.
Ascend to what, what awaits our neshamah?
I have some ideas, but I want to hear from the readers