Hot answers tagged soul
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Summary: One who drinks water on the eve of Shabbat or, according to other opinions, following mincha on Shabbat, steals water from the souls in Gehenom and thus harms them.
There is little, if any, Scriptural discussion regarding the continued life of a soul following death, therefore we are left exploring the murky depths of Midrash. I refer you to the ...
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By the way, generally a "Talmudist" means someone who studies the Talmud; the rabbis who wrote the Talmud are known as The Sages, Hazal (an acronym for "our sages of blessed memory"), or the Tannaim (those before the year 200) and Amoraim (from 200 to 500).
Okay, let's back up here.
The reading of Deuteronomy is a very nuanced one, which your translation ...
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Kabbala (Jewish mysticism) talks about there being multiple worlds, but our laws of who-is-a-Jew basically pertain to the world that we know right now.
Reincarnation is a concept stressed by kabbalists starting in the late 1500s, though some traditionalists challenged it. Today I'd say most rabbis have heard of the concept, but if someone doesn't believe in ...
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Rashi in Maseches Beitza 16a writes that the neshama yesera is:
רוחב לב למנוחה ולשמחה ולהיות פתוח לרוחה ויאכל וישתה ואין נפשו קצה עליו
This very roughly means that it expands his heart so that he has a greater capacity for rest and joy and is able to eat and drink more without overdoing it.
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I had understood this Mishna to be speaking of an actual physical life, so unless you murdered somebody c'v... There are surely other understandings, and maybe somebody more versed in the commentaries will bring one.
As to your other question, Judaism teaches that you can always repent, no matter what. Rebbe Nachman of Breslev zy'a stated this principle ...
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The Torah says (in the 10 commandments) that God punishes the guilty for 3 or 4 generations.
In many places, I have seen people troubled by this idea, and the general kiruv answer is that if person's children do not do mitzvot, because of the sins of the parent the parent is punished for those lack of mitzvot and sins being done, up to 3 or 4 generations.
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Yechida is one of five levels of the soul often described in the teachings of Chassidus, which were only revealed about 250 years ago - which is likely when the concept (named as such) became mainstream. The five levels of the soul are mentioned in Midrash Rabba (Bereishis 14:9, Devorim 2:37), written in the 4th - 5th century - the earliest source I could ...
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http://www.chabadlibrary.org/books/default.aspx?furl=/admur/tm/11/15
איתא בזהר ח״א צא, ב. שאיש ואשה הם נשמה אחת, אלא שבירידת הנשמה לעוה״ז,
באה מחצית הנשמה בגוף של זכר, והמחצית השני׳ – בגוף בת־זוגו. ולכן נקרא
כל אחד מהם בלשון "פלג גופא" זח״ג ז, ב. קט, ב. רצו, א. , כיון שבכל אחד
מהם לבדו יש רק חצי נשמה. ועז״נ בראשית ב, כד, "על כן יעזב איש את אביו
...
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See Derekh HaShem here paragraph beginning with "והנה". A partial quotation:
כי אין נפש הבעלי חיים אלא דבר גשמי, מן הדקים שבגשמיות ― Although animals may have a soul, it is not a spiritual entity, it is the most fine of physical entities.
His sources include your possuk Koheles 3(21) *ורוח הבהמה *הירדת היא למטה לארץ. (see the Feldheim edition ...
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With respect to what constitutes destroying a soul:
Primarily it is referring to taking a life. There are other meanings, especially in the reverse (rescuing a soul), that refer to spiritual matters, but these are things having to do with one's spiritual growth and development. If you act as a mentor to someone who seems lost and wandering in life and ...
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Rabbi Shnuer Zalman of Liadi explains the idea of the Neshama Yesera in Torah Ohr (Parshas Vayakel pg. 87). The discourse is elucidated in the Chassidus Mevue'res series (Shabbos pg. 23), and is adapted in English here.
The basic explanation is as follows: Midrash Rabba writes that the soul is called by five names: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Chaya, and ...
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First of all, like Shalom noted, these issues with souls and spirituality are not associated with Yemos HaMashiach according to the view we adopt from the Rambam and many others.
I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for, but perhaps the following will help you:
The brain, or what one might call the "intellect" is definitely a core part of what we ...
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neshama yeterah doesn't literally mean "an extra soul", it means "extra soul" as if the amount of soul that you have is continuous. the conceptualization is for example that you have less soul when you are tired or angry and more soul when you are at rest. see footnote 5 on neshama yeterah in the tenth chapter of The Sabbath by Heschel here.
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HaRav Musafi writes in his Sefer (Shivat Sion) that when someone says Hashkava for someone after the first year of their death it can Has WeShalom have a negative effect and may Has Weshalom lead to the Neshama to get tortured. He also says that when someone reads the Haftara "Lezecher Nishmat" someone and makes mistakes it can also negatively effect the ...
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I would take Time magazine and Kurzweil with a large grain of salt. Kurzweil think because computers have increased in certain physical measurements that they'll soon be just like humans. But there's a lot more to a human than just RAM and GHz. So far, all computers have been able to do is carry out lots extremely precise instructions very quickly. But they ...
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R' Natan Slifkin has done a great deal of writing on this topic in the past few months, in the context of analyzing whether brain death should be considered Halachic death, on his blog. Here are three posts that deal specifically with the "seat of the soul."
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