Faith
High and Low Souls
Question
Hello, Rabbi! I hope I will be able to present my question in a way that is understandable.
There are three partners in a person: the mother, the father, and Hashem. It seems to me that the parents are responsible for the body, and Hashem is responsible for the soul. So let us say that a soul is created from the very beginning as either perfectly righteous or wicked. Take, for example, Moshe Rabbeinu. From the moment he was born, it was already decided that he would be Moshe Rabbeinu. Hashem is the One who created the souls, so all the souls of the righteous and the wicked are from Hashem. Perhaps this is a mistaken way of looking at it.
Another point is that a soul comes into the world and receives all its conditions against its will. For example, Hashem determines into which family a soul is born, and so on. Whether the soul is born into a family of righteous Torah-observant people, or into another family. Is this because if a soul is high, meaning pure, then it deserves to be born into a family of righteous people? Or the opposite: a soul that comes into the world into a family of wicked people and into all the conditions that will bring it to be a wicked soul - is that because it is already a soul of a wicked person, and before it was created it was decided that it would be evil?
Hashem can know whether any soul is that of a righteous person or a wicked person, because He can see all the choices for good or bad that the soul will make throughout its life. So as I understand it, everything is from Hashem, including what the soul will be - of a righteous person or a wicked person.
I would be happy if this matter could be clarified for me. Thank you very much!!!
Answer
Shalom u-vrachah.
To explain the matter, I would like to expand a little, and with Hashem's help the matter will become clear. The souls of Israel are hewn from a spiritual place called a body; this body has, so to speak, hands, feet, a head, legs, heels, and so on. Each soul is hewn from a different place within this body, and the head has a special quality, while the souls of the hands have the special quality of the hands, and so on in this manner. High souls are souls from higher places, such as the head, and so on. However, every soul has free choice whether to sin or not, and every soul stands before difficult tests in order to merit its level in judgment. Therefore, Moshe Rabbeinu, who was the head of all the Children of Israel, was indeed destined to be Moshe, but on condition that he would not stumble in sin and would stand up to all the tests, and so too every soul has its destined place, and it must merit its proper place in judgment and not by kindness. No soul comes into the world in order to remain as it is; rather, it is obligated to pass through the crucible of refinement, to stand up to the tests according to its matter, and to succeed in them. Some of the high souls did not stand up to the test, such as Korach and the like, as explained at length in the works of the kabbalists. Moshe Rabbeinu merited standing up to all the tests, and therefore merited to be the head of the Children of Israel. It is also explained in the books that since there are souls that fall from their place as a result of not standing up to the test, and if so the world would not be lacking, lower souls that strive and rise elevate them to a higher level, and this is the meaning of the words of our Sages: Whoever merits takes his share and his fellow's share in Gan Eden. No soul is decreed to be a sinner. When a soul comes to a home of sinners, on the one hand it has the power to stand firm and emerge from the darkness through the special tools and powers that Hashem gives it; likewise, there is a special reason that this soul must specifically be reincarnated into a place of sin in order to repair its matters from a previous gilgul, and so on, or any other reason known to the Creator of the world. May you go from strength to strength - Binyamin Shmueli
