Page - 111 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

Deconstructing Gilgul, Finding Identity | 111www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 105–121 a new spiritual level. the hasidic tsaddik there often played the specific role of a wise individual who knows someone’s past life and can help untangle present biographical constellations.27 Also, souls that have been connected by kinship, marriage or common experience in their past existence may meet again in an- other life and help each other perform the remaining tasks of redemption and purification.28 from the 13th century on, speculation that parts of the soul were reincar- nated began to spread.29 these ideas were grounded in a medieval Judaistic differentiation of the soul: nefesh as the vegetative and life spending soul, ru- ach as the animalistic spirit and neshama as the rational soul.30 the Kabbalah also differentiates between each of these souls, making them hierarchical lev- els of spiritual development and completing these levels with two other souls, chay-ya and yichida, the highest reachable levels.31 these concepts form the origins of the associated idea of sparks of the soul, which may be reincarnated separately,32 generating the additional concept of soul sparks’ inhabiting a liv- ing person and besieging his or her own soul. With parallels to the two principal grounds for reincarnation – a bad soul returning for purification, and a just soul to help others – both the whole soul and sparks can influence an existing per- son in two directions: the Zohar contains the idea that at a crucial moment an individual might additionally be inhabited by a just soul that has already been to Paradise and now returns to further the efforts of that individual to fulfill a command and purify his or her soul;33 the same support can be given by the sparks of the souls of the just. In Hasidism that role may be played by a tsaddik who returns and impregnates the soul of a living individual to further spiritual development,34 a positive form of impregnation called ibbur. A negative form of impregnation also exists, however, and may take place when an individual turns to the dark side of life and sins. he or she then may open his or her soul to impregnation with the whole soul or spark of a wicked one.35 Popular Jewish culture of the 17th century coined the term dybbuk for that negative form of impregnation.36 in both cases the impregnation can last a whole life or only a certain period.37 27 Grözinger 2005, 739–742. 28 Grözinger 2005, 742. 29 scholem 1956, 78–79, 80–81. 30 scholem 1956, 81. 31 Pinson 1999, 35. 32 scholem 1956, 78f, 80, 83. 33 scholem 1956, 86. 34 Scholem 1956, 89; Pinson 1999, 109. 35 Scholem 1956, 88; Pinson 1999, 115. 36 Scholem 1956, 88; Pinson 1999, 116–117. 37 scholem 1956, 86.