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Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: "The transmigration of the soul"

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz:

We believe that the Law has at least 600,000 different paths within it for individuals to enter.

There is what is called the “private gate” for each of us.

And we each have to find our own gate.

The search for my own particular gate can be a very arduous one.

A man may search for years and find only doorways that are not his.

He may go on through all his life without really finding it.

That is the basis of the transmigration of the soul, which is, contrary to what so many nice people wrote, a part of Judaism.

It is a part that is not publicized very much—intentionally.

In the beginning of the sixteenth century one of the books of the Responsa dealt with this problem and concluded, “We believe in it—we don’t publicize it.” 

In The Strife of the Spirit, “The Private Gate”