Sin death and beyond

SIN, DEATH AND BEYOND: M.M.NINAN
believers in metempsychosis, were he not afraid lest they might exercise a pernicious
influence upon others ("Emunot we-De'ot," vi.).
Influence of Cabala.
The doctrine counted so few adherents among the Jews that, with the exception of Abraham
ibn Daud ("Emunah Ramah," i. 7), no Jewish philosopher until Ḥasdai Crescas even deemed it
necessary to refute it. Only with the spread of the Cabala did it begin to take root in Judaism,
and then it gained believers even among men who were little inclined toward mysticism. Thus
one sees a man like Judah ben Asher (Asheri) discussing the doctrine in a letter to his father,
and endeavoring to place it upon a philosophical basis ("Ṭa'am Zeḳenim," vii.). The cabalists
eagerly adopted the doctrine on account of the vast field it offered to mystic speculations.
Moreover, it was almost a necessary corollary of their psychological system. The absolute
condition of the soul is, according to them, its return, after developing all those perfections the
germs of which are eternally implanted in it, to the Infinite Source from which it emanated.
Another term of life must therefore be vouchsafed to those souls which have not fufilled their
destiny here below and have not been sufficiently purified for the state of reunion with the
Primordial Cause. Hence if the soul, on its first assumption of a human body and sojourn on
earth, fails to acquire that experience for which it descended from heaven, and becomes
contaminated by that which is polluting, it must reinhabit a body till it is able to ascend in a
purified state through repeated trials. This is the theory of the Zohar, which says: "All souls are
subject to transmigration; and men do not know the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He!
They do not know that they are brought before the tribunal both before they enter into this
world and after they leave it; they are ignorant of the many transmigrations and secret
probations which they have to undergo, and of the number of souls and spirits which enter into
this world and which do not return to the palace of the Heavenly King. Men do not know how
the souls revolve like a stone which is thrown from a sling. But the time is at hand when these
mysteries will be disclosed" (Zohar, ii. 99b). Like Origen and other Church Fathers, the
cabalists used as their main argument in favor of the doctrine of metempsychosis the justice of
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