Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Life of the Soul: Jewish Perspectives on Reincarnation from the Middle Ages to the Modern Period

The Life of the Soul: Jewish Perspectives on Reincarnation from the Middle Ages to the Modern Period

Gondos, Andrea
Sachs-Shmueli, Leore

Hardcover

JudaismGeneral World History

ISBN13: 9798855800050
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: Dec 1 2024
Pages: 402
Weight: 1.68
Height: 1.06 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Offers a comprehensive and nuanced treatment on the topic of reincarnation in Judaism, covering a wide range of kabbalistic and philosophical sources.

The Life of the Soul surveys the wide-ranging theories Jewish mystics have offered to the vexing question - what precisely transpires after we die? A common element in their theories is that human life is a part of a larger ecosystem of being which also includes plants, animals, and inanimate things, like rocks. They further maintained that the soul does not perish with the demise of the body, but is rather renewed and recycled into new forms of embodied existence in the lower world. Each essay highlights how reincarnation, also known as metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls, is not a marginalized concept but is instead central to understanding a variety of perplexing issues in Judaism, including catastrophic events in Jewish history, theodicy, the rationale for biblical commandments, the complex identity of biblical figures, and the issues of sin, punishment, and redemption. Just as the concept of reincarnation is inherently about boundary crossing, its investigation similarly bridges diverse epistemic fields and disciplines-religion, philosophy, psychology, history, ritual, gender, and cultural studies. Weaving together kabbalistic speculations and Jewish philosophical ideas drawn from distinct geographical regions and historical periods, this book is poised to serve as a point of departure for future comparative investigations on the life of the soul in Judaism and Eastern religious traditions.

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