Pensamiento judío sobre I Samuel 18:7

The distinction between such terms as nefesh, ruach, and neshamah respectively is found already in Zohar on Parshat Acharey. We have discussed it in detail in Chapter six, where we described nefesh as equivalent to a primeval life force, an outgrowth of the body, yet abstract in nature. What is meant is man's ability to think, feel, perceive in a cognitive manner. Ruach, on the other hand is the spiritual force supplied by G-d. Neshamah is the synthesis created by nefesh and ruach together, through a righteous mode of life. Nefesh has then attached itself ever more firmly to ruach. It thus loses its erstwhile subservience to its physical master, its body. When Abigail said to David (Samuel I 25,29), "May the life force of my master be bound in the bundle of immortal life with the Lord your G-d," she did not use the term neshamah, but she said nefesh. This bears out our interpretation of the word nefesh and its loftiest destiny. In Jacob we find for the first time someone among the patriarchs who had achieved all three stages. He achieved the attachment of nefesh to ruach that results in neshamah. He became a spiritual personality that had absorbed and completely sublimated the purely physical nefesh. This is why we find Jacob called by three different names on three different occasions: 1) Jacob 2) Israel 3) Eyl (compare Genesis 33,20). The latter term is the name for his neshamah. This is a spiritual state achieved only by a select few in our national history. Rabbi Yochanan said wisely, "Our father Jacob did not die, since he had been able to convert even that which had an exclusively physical base into a spiritual force. The derivation from the verse "Do not fear My servant Jacob, do not be afraid Israel," then uses the first two names of Jacob to tell us that just as his descendants are alive, so is he himself alive. This, of course, is something that can be achieved by the masses, and they can thus assure themselves of immortality. This is the normal way with tzaddikim. Their prime life force is welded to their ruach so that it survives the demise of the body it once inhabited. Frequently such a synthethis is not achieved and demonstrated until the body does indeed decay. Rare indeed is the person of whom it can be said during his lifetime on earth that he has already achieved this degree of saintliness. When G-d gave Jacob the appellation Eyl on his return to the holy land, this was one of these few occasions. Because the listener had understood the gist of Rabbi Yochanan's remarks, he asked, "If so, what was the purpose of the eulogy and the elaborate embalming which seem to demonstrate that Jacob's death was no different from any other death?" On the contrary, instead of eulogizing him they should have composed hymns of thanksgiving! Concerning this problem, Aristotle already has stated that anything repeated often enough by enough people assumes a dimension of truth that is impossible to uproot. This is why King Saul was so upset about the praises sung about David, "Saul slew thousands, but David tens of thousands" (Samuel I 18,7). Therefore, Rabbi Yitzchak stated that he could prove from scripture something which for psychological reasons could not be demonstrated by human behavior. This verse is more authoritative concerning what happened to Jacob than the report about how his survivors treated his body after it had ceased to function. The manifestation of death observed by Joseph's brothers is not surprising, since the death of the bodies of even the most saintly people is a phenomenon that is inescapable, due to four basic causes. When the Talmud in Sukkah 29 describes four causes for the eclipse of the sun, it may refer not to the sun in our solar system, but may describe four reasons that cause the death of the bodies of those people whose spiritual light illuminates our lives just as the sun illuminates and gives warmth to the earth. The Talmud describes people as suns on several occasions, such as in Yuma 38, when the verse "And the sun shines and the sun sets," in Kohelet 1,5, is applied to the birth of potential Jewish leaders preceding the death of the existing Jewish leaders of the last generation. So, for instance, the prophet Samuel's light began to shine before the light of the High Priest Eli was eclipsed. Death itself is hinted as being due to the following four causes: 1) Failure to adequately eulogize leading Torah scholars. This is considered equivalent to removing vital juices from the body. This cause of death is the most serious one, since one does not relate the effect to the cause, not noticing the absence of the vital juices until it is too late. 2) The practice of sodomy. This shows that a person whose function in life is to be active, to initiate, is instead content to remain merely passive. When man becomes merely an object rather than a subject, the functions of his body have been usurped; therefore, death of such a person will not be long delayed. 3) Failure of the digestive system, something beyond man's control once he has ingested the food. The fact that this food is not converted into life sustaining energy, additions to the bloodstream etc., causes death. 4) The natural tendency of the soul to return to its father in Heaven, and to escape imprisonment in a body. This is expressed symbolically as being like a betrothed girl who is raped in broad daylight, and whose cries for help have gone unanswered. The body is helpless to resist the soul's efforts to return to Heaven. The prophet Elijah, who did not die a natural death, and the significance of stories in the Talmud about Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi, are discussed in Chapter 105.