Jewish peoples believe in reincarnation????

Elder Berry Wrote:
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> Jewish peoples believe in reincarnation????

This is complicated to explain.

I think it is safe to say that most Jews (worldwide, and throughout history) do not "believe in reincarnation"--but they don't "believe" in anything (otherwise) specific either.

To most Jews, what happens after death (in the "olam haba"--the "world to come") is not of great interest, nor is it something to concern oneself about. If one is a mensch in this life, and conforms to their own understanding of what it means to be "a good person," and to a lesser extent, "a good Jew," then what will be, will be.

To most Jews, concerning yourself about what happens after death would be somewhat comparable to worrying about whether the sun will come up tomorrow--it probably will (it has been rising for all of the life of this planet), and if it turns out that the sun does NOT come up tomorrow morning, then that person will deal with that situation at that time.

Once a Jew surpasses a certain level of "informed-regular-people" understanding, however, [the baker or the farmer begins, on his/her own initiative, to study deeper and more scholarly Jewish subjects], that person begins to think about, and deal with, the more difficult issues of existence and similar subjects.

This usually means (at least in the protracted "beginning") the study of Kabbalah (the more abstruse and mystical parts of Judaism).

And those who study Kabbalah commonly, and effectively nearly "universally," DO believe in "gilgul," which in English is called reincarnation.

[I grew up in a reincarnation-believing family, and I, personally, could not have converted to Judaism if reincarnation was no part of Judaism and the Jewish people. To me, reincarnation is SO logical that, without some kind of intellectual acceptance of it, I could not, in good conscience, have converted to Judaism.]

As to this rabbi: He is extremely controversial within Judaism. Just because HE says that something is so-and-so, doesn't mean that Jews as a whole agree.

Secondly: It is obvious, from what he says, that he is not considering all the Jews who lived during ancient times (especially Roman and Greek) where "pornography" was literally the way street signs were designed. (Carved phalluses were used as direction markers for streets and locations.) Pornography in the ancient world was intentionally dramatic and extremely colorful (with full walls within houses painted in all kinds of bawdy scenes). EVERYONE saw pornography all the time as they lived their daily lives, so by this rabbi's "understanding," most of the Jews who lived in the Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern areas of the globe should have been born blind, because they (even infants being carried around) constantly saw pornography just about everywhere they went in their previous lifetimes.

This rabbi is intellectually well above being intelligent enough to understand my point here--so I don't understand why he thinks he can profess this kind of absurd intellectual sloppiness--but the answer may be: only a very small percentage of Jews will ever become aware of what he says, because within Judaism his potential, sympathetic, audience of Jews is quite small.

On the other hand, he is demonstrating a keen grasp of how to get press attention, so perhaps his statements don't have a thing to do with reincarnation after all.

From the perspective of a p.r. effort, his currently-professed views on pornography and gilgul have obviously achieved success.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2019 12:16AM by Tevai.

Honest question: what about reincarnation do you find "SO logical "?

All the available scientific evidence is once the brain goes in a human, what makes us, well, us goes with it.

Red Wrote:
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> Honest question: what about reincarnation do you
> find "SO logical "?

Honest answer: I was born in (near "downtown"/central) Los Angeles, and raised in the San Fernando Valley, to relatives on the maternal side of my family who were proud descendants of Southern slaveholders (and a step-grandfather who, when he was a young man, and an adult attorney, in Kansas, was KKK), and grew up listening to endless "reminiscences" of how WONDERFUL my slaveholding ancestors had been, and HOW MUCH their slaves had loved them, and how utterly saddened and bereaved their slaves had been when they lost their beloved owners during Emancipation. [You can take a barf break here if you need to.]

Even as a little kid (like four or five years old), I knew this was wrong. When I would try to talk about it, or ask questions, I was told that I was just being obstinate, or was being a b*tch, because I just couldn't accept that the slaves my blood family once owned had been over-the-top giddy at their good fortune to be owned by my family.

Despite a number of serious (and permanent) problems in my nuclear family, I was living a really superlatively good life compared to most of the people on this planet (beginning with: the black kids who had moved into the houses WE, our larger extended family, had once had lived in, as part of post-WWII white flight....when my extended family, thanks to the GI Bill and postwar prosperity, had moved en masse to the SFV).

So I got this intensely good life, with all of these amazing benefits (educational, financial, social-networking)...and the kids who were living in the house I once lived in on Santa Barbara Avenue (now: Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.), and in the houses my other relatives had once lived in, were living in poverty, barely scraping by, and going to schools which once (when my Mom was in secondary school) had been good, but were now lousy.

I grew up in the western San Fernando Valley, in places which had become literally mythical because they were so omnipresent and familiar on the movie screen (from the beginnings of the silent film era, through 1950s Western, and the "family film" and "teenage film" eras, in particular), among an assemblage of incredibly intelligent and creative people, who had (mostly) all used their GI Bill access to leap up the social, and financial, and creative ladders.

So what was the difference between me, who once lived in a particular house on what is now MLK Blvd., and the black kids who moved into that same house after me?

Why did I get all these enormous benefits in public school? Not only scholastic benefits (although these were substantial), but INCREDIBLE social networking benefits of all kinds: I went to school with all kinds of kids who were somehow associated with the industry (there were special rules at my junior high school for students who were employed in the industry: they could wear curlers in their hair on the days where they later performed that night (this being before the days of blow dryers), they were automatically excused from school on any days they worked, tests would be given specially for them if they missed taking them because of work....and the PARENTS of many of the kids I went to school with were known worldwide--and I am thinking here specifically of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, but there were many other actors and performers in the families of the kids I went to school with, as well as (beyond the before-the-camera people) double or triple numbers of families who worked either behind the camera, or were integral parts of the industry: agents, p.r. people, studio execs, etc.). (My uncle owned a company which provided power and lights to filming which was taking place on location--meaning: outside of the property confines of the individual studios.)

I had the most incredible benefits, ALL AROUND ME, ALL THE TIME, when I was growing up....and simultaneously, I never, EVER, forgot the kids who had moved into what had once been "my" house on MLK Blvd.

As I grew up, I paid attention to what I learned, as well as what I was being taught (not always the "same thing"), about the rest of my fellow Americans, and my fellow human beings around the planet--and I thought, continually, about "why" I (and my friends I was growing up with, and my neighbors, and those in my community, and in "my" Valley) had it SO GOOD (regardless of the particular problems in any given family), and why OTHER kids, in OTHER places on Earth, had it so bad: they were enslaved, sold as children into marriage or worse, they lived in near-starvation poverty, if they were girls they were constantly under attack, if they were the "wrong" [anything] they (girls and boys, both) were constantly under attack, their parents were murdered (or worse)...and I was living one of the best lives on the planet.

Why?????

When I reached the age where I started to really understand what I was being taught in Sunday School (Hindu/Vedanta/Advaita), and at home, about reincarnation, it made SO MUCH sense to me--there was some kind of logic involved somehow--there was some kind of ORDER going on--and, in the end of all of this overall, greater, process of "living," there was an inherent equality that prevailed.

Just like you can't "see" and understand a movie from a few isolated inches of physical film in your hand, you can't "see" and understand "a" life from only a limited number of lives (in any person's "Long History")--but if you have a few inches of filmstock from "Gone With the Wind" in your hand, you DO know that it is part of a much larger story arc--beyond, perhaps, your ability to "see" or comprehend at that moment, but THERE.

Within a framework of reincarnation, it all makes some kind of sense (whether we understand the individual dynamics or not).

WITHOUT a framework of reincarnation, life throughout human history, and around this planet, makes absolutely no sense at all.

At least to me.


> All the available scientific evidence is once the
> brain goes in a human, what makes us, well, us
> goes with it.

What we know to be scientific evidence today will be eclipsed by the scientific evidence of a hundred years from now, or a thousand years from now.

Science "moves."

Our understanding of "what is" moves with it.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2019 08:44PM by Tevai.

I have seen a number of my past lives in dreams and some in 'past life regression guided meditations'.

Growing up Mormon this was hard at first to accept, however, I totally agree with the 'logical' aspect of it.

Why should someone be poor, rich, die early, die later, etc. etc. considering the '1 life idea'. That certainly wouldn't be fair. However, living many lives gives us the chance to 'experience' many things and 'learn' from them. I totally understand many humans 'claim' they would hate to come here again ---- however, I am not sure when they return and remember 'who and what' they are that 'claim' is easily 'laughed off' when they chose to reincarnate again.

There are blog sites where many tell of their 'regression', meditation, or dream experiences dealing with past lives. Very interesting.

Also, I believe you are correct, these people were not 'penalized' for anything. I believe they 'chose' it to 'experience' it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/17/2019 10:33PM by spiritist.

What a sick and twisted philosophy.

You can see the same thing among the mormons

https://thirdhour.org/forums/topic/67167-sin-and-sickness-are-they-related/

Notice this is in the gospel discussion section

Every religion has its hateful dickweeds. Mormonism gives the ones it has, like BY, a free pass. Judaism not so much.

in b 4 ~ OPie is reincarnated with no fingers as penance for this post ~

Another example of how fucked up religion is. All of them!

Okay. I'm totally blind (since birth), but I have listened to pornography on my computer. Does this mean that I will be totally deaf in the next life?

(I don't believe it, but I had to ask.)

blindguy Wrote:
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> Okay. I'm totally blind (since birth), but I have
> listened to pornography on my computer. Does this
> mean that I will be totally deaf in the next
> life?
>
> (I don't believe it, but I had to ask.)

blindguy, what the fringe-y, ultra-Orthodox rabbi said is bogus.

Please join the vast majority of Jews worldwide in ignoring our Jewish idiots.

I apologize for his ridiculous words.

JM Wrote:
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> n/t

Gilgul.

Google: gilgul



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2019 06:00PM by Tevai.

I wonder what Mizrachi's punishment will be for being an idiot?

Amyjo Wrote:
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> I wonder what Mizrachi's punishment will be for
> being an idiot?

Since sometime during when I was growing up, I have always been grateful that it is not me who is responsible for
making these kinds of decisions.

IRL, my hypothesis has been that there is some kind of natural law of "attraction" involved:

When someone does something stupid and "bad" results follow (trying to scale a highrise building without safety gear and falling off, or driving drunk at 100 mph on the freeway and crashing into a concrete barrier, or going into a defined disease zone without the proper vaccinations), there is a kind of "natural justice" involved in the outcomes.

My best guess is that something similar, in existence, attracts a specific person, with a specific Long History (all of their incarnations put together), to the "right" situation for that person to learn whatever lessons they most need to learn at that particular moment in their development.

In other words, it is not at all like a judge making a judgment from the bench and pronouncing a legal sentence in court, but more like there is a natural resonance (something like gravity) between the lesson (or lessons) which needs to be learned, and the reasonable potentials of a given infant's life situation.

This is my best hypothesis (and I have been thinking about this since I was about six years old).



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2019 05:56PM by Tevai.

I've wondered about my own life experiences and deja vu with certain individuals. I believe that we're destined to meet again, and I wish I knew what happened in our prior incarnations that did or didn't go so well - because in this incarnation they both died so very young and prematurely.

Destiny brought our lives together for a reason. One of them I was given signs that we'd be married in heaven (neither was LDS.) One was Catholic, and a Vietnam veteran. The other was Protestant and a nuclear scientist. Both were my early loves, but the 2nd one, the nuclear scientist, was one I had dreamt about the night before we met that he and I were on our third honeymoon. I was 20 when we first met.

Imagine my surprise when I saw him the following evening as he stood up to announce the guest speaker at my first ever Eastern Idaho Volunteers in Corrections meeting. Even his voice was identical to the voice of the man in my dream the night before. His blonde hair glistening in the moonlight (in my dream,) standing on the tarmac at the airport as we waited to board our airplane, and he was looking down at me as he told me it was our third honeymoon.

It took me fifteen years after that bleeping dream to finally conclude it most likely meant that 'third honeymoon' meant third incarnation. That's because as a TBM which I was during those years I knew him when he was alive, it wasn't a notion I would've entertained.

Damn and damn. He grew up in Amish country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As a nuclear scientist he went agnostic I believe during college, so wasn't particularly religious when we met. He was a very good person though with a heart of gold, who just died way too young. He left two foster sons in his wake. He was a senior scientist at the time of his death, and only 29 years old. I've seen his spirit since he died, once. I've stopped receiving messages from him for a long time though I used to receive some from him shortly after he died.

Ah, I learned something new today. "Gilgul" = reincarnation

I assume Gilgal Sculpture Garden in SLC is a spelling variant of that. It is about a block east of Trolley Square in SLC, and for those of you who haven't seen the sphinx with the head of Joseph Smith, you really should drop by. However, for a cheap and easy virtual visit, check out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgal_Sculpture_Garden

When I first came to this board (over fifteen years ago), this is one of the first things I wondered about:

WAS "gilgal" related to "gilgul"?

For those who do not know: Hebrew can be written with, or without, vowels. Hebrew vowel signs DO exist, but in places and situations where Hebrew fluency is assumed, the vowels are not included unless it is important to emphasize something, or to make comprehension crystal-clear.

Children's literature, "easy" Hebrew for Hebrew learners (Hebrew learners of any age, including adults of all ages), religious texts, and poetry are usually voweled ("vocalized")....but newspapers (except those intended for Hebrew learners), popular audience magazines, fiction books, signage, etc., plus anything written by hand, are typically not voweled.

Because of this, mistakes in voweling can be easy to make.

[EDITED TO ADD: What I wrote in the paragraph below is incorrect, because I did not know that the words (which I erroneously thought were identical in "adult" Hebrew) are NOT, in fact, identical. There actually IS a "u" indicated in "gilgul," even in "adult" Hebrew. The "u" in this case is indicated by a "vav" (letter 'v'), which is silent as a 'v,' but it "carries" a literal dot on top, which is voiced as a "u"--so the "u" sound DOES exist in the adult word. "Gilgal" is another word entirely, and IS written G-L-G-L, with no vowels indicated at all.]

[EDITED TO ADD--PART TWO: I made another mistake, this time in the above paragraph, and I kind of "felt" it was a mistake when I wrote the words, but instead of checking it out, I ignored the inner nudge, which was correct: the dot near the vav (which is a short, straight, vertical line in most modern typefonts) is in the MIDDLE of the vav, on the left-hand side. The dot on TOP of a vav is also an actual vowel, but it is ANOTHER vowel sound. Plus: I realize "this all" sounds like gibberish, but it is, in actuality simple enough for four- or five-year-olds to learn and understand, and to fairly quickly learn to write correctly by themselves. As you are reading these words, little kids of kindergarten and first grade ages are doing exactly this in many different places around this planet, and many of them do not yet actually speak Hebrew, they are learning the first few lessons.]

In this case: "G-L-G-L" (the word in standard, "adult" Hebrew), equals "G-L-G-L"--and it is easy to, by mistake, mentally or mechanically insert an erroneous "a" in place of a correct "u" (especially so because the sounds can be pronounced so similarly).

Thanks, Brother of Jerry.

This was an excellent catch!!



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 03/17/2019 07:26PM by Tevai.

Well, that explains so many people needing glasses.

Little joke here, bahahaha

I get to watch free porn in this life because I was blind in the previous one.

Ok...