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An unborn fetus in Jewish law is not considered a person (Heb. nefesh, lit. “soul”) until it has been born. The fetus is regarded as a part of the mother’s body and not a separate being until it begins to egress from the womb during parturition (childbirth).
- Dr. Fred Rosner
This is the soul referred to by Rabbi Judah and Antoninus, who debated whether it enters at conception or when the embryo begins to take form. And then there is the nefesh Elokit (“G‑dly soul”), which we are told enters at the time of circumcision or when the baby is given her Hebrew name.
- Yehuda Shurpin
According to the doctrine of original sin, each individual soul inherits the taint of its primordial ancestors. When St. Fulgentius in the sixth century was asked when that stain attaches to the person, he replied that it begins with conception.
- David Feldman
In its pre-physical existence, the soul is fortified with the divine wisdom, knowledge and vision that will empower it in its struggles to transcend and transform the physical reality. In the words of the Talmud: “The fetus in its mother’s womb is taught the entire Torah . . .
- Yanki Tauber
- No Existence Separate from The Body
- Dualism: The Body and Soul as Separate Entities
- Disembodied Spirituality
- The Soul as The Instrument of Perfection
- The Divine Origin of The Soul
The biblical conception, as noted, views the soul as part of the psychophysical unity of man, who, by his very nature, is composed of a body and a soul. As such, the Bible is dominated by a monistic view that ascribes no metaphysical significance to human existence, for it sees in man only his tangible body and views the soul simply as that element...
Once belief in the immortality of the soul, the revival of the dead, and the World to Come had become part of post-biblical Judaism, its religious view of man in relation to the world underwent a change. The religious significance of the world was no longer limited by concrete reality or by its psychophysical expression in a human entity, which con...
The dualistic conception of man, in which body and soul are diametrically opposed, bears within it, in addition to its metaphysical significance, the first stirrings of a religious striving toward the ideal of liberating the soul from the bonds of the physical, thereby enhancing its spiritual purity. This kind of outlook was entirely foreign to bib...
Medieval Jewish thought focused its attention on the one hand on the immortality of the soul and the relationship between body and soul, or between matter and spirit, and on the other on the hierarchy of the upper worlds and the theory of knowledge. The answers that were proposed for these problems were clearly influenced by the medieval interpreta...
In the Sefer ha‑Bahir, the creation and the molding and sustenance of souls is bound up with an erotic myth that speaks of sexual union between cosmic entities in the world of the sefirot (divine emanations) and of the process of creation in general. The text alludes, in highly symbolic language, to a system that was further developed in the Zohar ...
- Rachel Elior
Although Jesus may have been exceptional, Aquinas did believe that the embryo first possessed a vegetative soul, later acquired sensitive (animal) soul, and after 40 days of development, God gave humans a rational soul.
The soul is conceived of as divided into several parts, whose origin is in Divine Emanation, and is incarnated here on earth with a specific task to fulfill. The soul of the wicked, i.e., of he who has failed in his assigned task, is punished and purified in hell or is reincarnated again to complete its unfinished work. In certain cases ...
