# Jewish Dopers - what do you think of gilgul (reincarnation)?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-what-do-you-think-of-gilgul-reincarnation/1017157>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [April 18, 2025, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-what-do-you-think-of-gilgul-reincarnation/1017157 "2025-04-18T01:04:41Z")\
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**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2025, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-what-do-you-think-of-gilgul-reincarnation/1017157/10 "2025-04-18T04:28:49Z")

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> [@Smapti](#):
>
> As part of this, I’ve been reading up on Judaism and Jewish history and lore in general, and just now while reading up on Sheol and various Jewish ideas of the afterlife I came across the concept of gilgul - the idea that a human soul can be reborn again and again, and not necessarily in human form, until it achieves a state of spiritual perfection similar to the Hindu/Buddhist concept of death and rebirth until one achieves Nirvana.

_Gilgul_ is only ‘like’ the Hindu and Buddhist concept of _samsara_ in the sense that it involves cycles of reincarnation, and are otherwise theologically and philosophically unconnected and not much alike in how they are observed or written about. Kabbalah is not a belief or practice in mainline Judaism, and Kabbalah interpretations are akin to Apocalyptic cults in Fundamentalist and Esoteric Christianity where there are a wide array of different interpretations and degrees of literal belief about which followers argue over minutia and trivia of things not actually found in any of the accepted texts.

Jewish scholars study at _yeshiva_ for many years to understand both the mundane and esoteric aspects of Talmudic interpretation and study of _mishnah_ as relates to both Jewish belief and cultural life. You appear to have skipped all of that in order to just dive head-forward into Lurianic Kabbalah (or whatever Kabbalah-istic belief system you are reading about), which is like celebrities and influencers adopting Buddhist or Native American mysticism without first understanding the historical, cultural, and practical contexts in which those ceremonies and belief systems were practiced and how they served their respective communities.

I don’t know what you are expecting to achieve through this other than some kind of mystical relief from what ails you or transcendence to some elevated plane of existence but it comes off as just grasping at superstitions without even taking the effort to understand the cultural and theological underpinnings of that system. I’m not religious and do not come from a Jewish cultural background so I don’t really care but I imagine that observant and most mainline Orthodox Jews would find your approach superficial, flippant, and appropriative.

Stranger

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