What is the soul? Look for it, and it can’t be seen; define it, and it eludes description. And yet, for many ancient cultures, the idea that life could exist without a soul was unimaginable. However, Talmudic and Kabbalistic rabbis were not entirely dualistic either. Unlike, for example, Plato, most Jewish thinkers had a notion of life-energy that was quasi-materialistic. The spiritual world and the material world were interwoven, and actions in one could directly…
The following text is an apparently authentic letter by the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism. In it, he describes a mystical ascent he performed by means of Kabbalistic techniques, and what he learned from the messiah in heaven. Some notes for study of the text appear at the end. This translation is based on that by David Sears in The Path of the Baal Shem Tov(Aronson), although I have edited it in several places.…
Nearly all religious traditions have some teaching regarding life after death. To many scholars, this is one of religion’s primary roles: to assuage our fear of death by promising that, on some way, some aspect of ourselves will survive it. Biblical Judaism is extremely vague on the afterlife. Some verses — “the dead do not praise Yah” (Psalm 115), for example — seem to suggest that there is no life after death of any meaningful…