VITAL, RAB JAIM
The Portico of Reincarnations (Shaar HaGilgulim) explains how various biblical characters lived, died and were reborn as different individuals. It links reincarnation with the concept of tikkun on both a personal and global level. The mystical vision of reward and punishment, the Garden of Eden, the Messiah and many other Jewish concepts are presented. In this Portico of Reincarnations, Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Arizal, through his disciple Rabbi Chaim Vital (1543-1620) and his son Rabbi Shmuel, all of blessed memory, hundreds of years before the advent of modern psychology, presents us with a complex human being inhabited by different voices and wills possessing different metaphysical origins and missions to be fulfilled. At the same time, these different components of the being go through different evolutionary processes, which means that they do not necessarily remain united throughout the same life, and even less so when reincarnated. Thus, far from being about an 'eternal return' that empties each particular existence of meaning, this work is a hymn to the diverse and transcendent uniqueness of each life, a call to live it by exercising free will and assuming individual responsibility in the light of the Higher Will, with the firm promise that at the end of the road, both personal and collective delight and fulfilment await us on this and all planes of being. In the face of certain imprecise and amputated translations from other languages, an integral and complete translation from Hebrew into Spanish by Israel Diament, doctor in humanities, and revised by Rabbi Moshe Segal, was necessary.