Reincarnation is not a concept popularly associated with Western religious traditions, and certainly not with Judaism. In fact, however, the Jewish mystical tradition of the kabbalah has long accepted reincarnation in various forms as a valid doctrine. This paper will examine the views of the kabbalah on reincarnation, or Gilgul as it is referred to in the kabbalah, beginning with an explanation of the nature and significance of the kabbalah and of reincarnation.
Judaic scholar Dr. David Sheinkin describes the kabbalah as "the secret, mystical part of Judaism . . . the basis for all the later Western (mystical) paths; all are in some sense derivative of it" (Sheinkin, 1986, pp. 8,9).
Writer Harold Bloom traces the origins of the kabbalah proper to 12th century Provence:
Scholem and others have traced its direct descent from the earliest Jewish esotericism, the apocalyptic writings of which the Book of Enoch is the most formidable. This earliest Jewish theosophy and mysticism centered about two Biblical texts, the first chapter of the prophet Ezekiel and the first chapter of Genesis (Bloom, 1975, p. 2).
Conversely, Judaic scholar Moshe Idel points out that despite the antiquity of the kabbalah origins, "no elaborate and detailed survey of the nature and history of this religious movement is known . . . until the period of the Renaissance" (Idel, 1988, p. 2).
Philosopher/theologian Steven T. Katz gives a telling description of the kabbalah:
The kabbalah is an extraordinarily intricate theosophical system filled with many borrowings from powerful and seductive non-Jewish sources, encompassing in all likelihood the most complicated mystical doctrine in existence, with worlds built upon worlds, and souls upon souls . . . The genius of the kabbalistic imagination was its ability to adapt essentially neo-Platonic and gnostic ideas in Jewishly creative and authentic forms, never allowing the gnostic theosophical ele...