Second Reading: Moses’ Incarnations
“When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he was like a son to her. She named him Moses, for she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.’”
Moses as God’s Image in Adam
Now let’s turn to the story of Moses’ many reincarnations. We said that on the one hand Moses’ soul is eternal, meaning that it is super-temporal. On the other hand, Moses’ soul manifests or appears in every generation, and especially every fifty years.
Since Moses’ strongest characteristic is denoted by his statement, “And we are nothing,” his essential character trait is nothingness (related to his humility). Nothingness in this context goes together with Moses being the “man of Elokim” (ישִא יםִקֹלֶאָה), which we saw earlier, indicating that his soul is rooted in Elokim. Adam was created in God’s image, specifically, in “the image of Elokim” (יםִקֹלֱם אֶלֶצ). This is to say, that in a manner of speaking, Adam the first man was created in the image of Moses, as are all of mankind that continue to cling to the image of God in themselves. Indeed, the Arizal says that Adam reached the level of the wisdom of the world of Emanation and that is the same level that Moses reached. So the first manifestation of Moses’ soul was in Adam’s image of God.
Moses as Abel
Adam had two sons at first, Abel and Cain. In terms of their character, Abel belonged to the right axis of the sefirot, as he was a man of loving-kindness, while Cain belonged to the sefirot’s left axis, as he was a man of might and harsh judgment. Moses’ soul was manifest in Abel. Now, even though Cain killed Abel, it does not mean that he is entirely wicked. Cain also had goodness in him. This goodness appears from time to time in those righteous souls who also belonged to Cain’s spiritual lineage (such as Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law). Cain’s goodness will have a marked effect just before the coming of Mashiach (which the Lubavitcher Rebbe explained is the task of our generation) in the prophet Elijah whose task it is to announce the coming redemption.
Moses as Seth and His Descendants
After Cain murdered Abel, Adam and Eve had a third son, Seth, whom the Torah refers to as being “instead of Abel,” thus alluding to his being a reincarnation of Abel. Thus, Moses’ soul, which initially had been in Abel, returned in Seth. In fact, the Arizal notes that Moses’ name (in Hebrew, הֶׁשֹמ) is an acronym for Moses-Seth-Abel (לֶבֶהתֵׁשהֶׁשֹמ).
From Seth, Moses soul was reincarnated in Noah and then in Noah’s son Shem. Since the world started anew after the flood, Noah is in a sense like a second Adam. His son Shem is like Seth. And thus, the reincarnation in Noah and Shem echoes the initial manifestation of Moses’ soul in Adam and Seth. After Shem, Moses’ soul manifested as Moses himself.
Moses’ Later Biblical Reincarnations
After Moses passes away, his soul continues to reincarnate in other prophets. Among the early prophets, he incarnates as Achiyah the Shiloni who prophecized about the splitting of the nation into two kingdoms governed by King Solomon’s son Rechavam and the first king of the new Northern Kingdom, Yerovam. In the Book of Kings, we learn that not only did Achiyah prophecize the splitting of the nation, but he was also the one who gave Yerovam the legitimacy to pursue this split and to become the leader of the Northern Kingdom. He signed the constitution of the Northern kingdom, of Yerovam. As great as he was, because he gave legitimacy to Yerovam and his kingdom, the sages consider it to be an unconscious sin that he had to rectify. He did this by later coming back to teach Rabbi Shimon bar Yocahi and the Ba’al Shem Tov, the two great teachers of the Torah’s inner dimension. Even though Achiyah’s name means to sew together, he tore the kingdoms apart. Therefore his rectification was to teach the Torah’s inner dimension which unifies, by bringing the various and seemingly contradictory opinions of the sages together.
After Achiyah, Moses’ soul incarnated in the prophet Zecharyah son of Yehoyada. This is not the well-known author of the book of Zechariah (who lived at the time of the beginning of the second Temple). The one we are referring to was a High Priest, a prophet, and he was also a judge. He was in the time of Yo’ash, the king of Judah. As an infant, Yo’ash was saved by Zecharyah’s father (Yehoyada) and mother (Yehosheva) and hidden in a secret chamber just above the Holy of Holies in the Temple. His stepmother, Atalyah the woman who was the queen at the time, wanted to kill all the male lineage of Judah. In the end, Yehoyada led a revolution against Atalyah and Yo’ash became king at the age of 7. As long as Zecharyah’s father, the High Priest Yehoyada was alive, Yo’ash followed the Torah. But, once Yehoyada passed away, the ministers came and bowed down to him, claiming that he was a god for being able to survive in the Holy of Holies. This idolatry led to more idolatry throughout the nation. Yehoyada’s son was Zecharyah. Zecharyah chastised the people for leaving the way of God and worshiping idols. The king was so angry at him that he had the people kill him in the Temple.
His dying words were, “God should see this and demand [revenge].” This indeed happened right away, as in the next war Yo’ash was killed. But this was not the end of it. The sages relate that Zecharyah’s blood continued to boil for over 200 years until the Temple was destroyed by Nevuzadran. The latter asked what this boiling blood was. At first the Jews in the Temple would not tell him, so he started killing various things to see if it would stop boiling. When it did not, he continued slaughtering the sages of the generation, and then priests, and finally young children. But the blood would not stop boiling over. Nevuzaradan asked God: Do you want me to kill the entire Jewish people for this blood. God told the blood to stop boiling. Eventually because of what he saw, Nevuzaradan converted. The Arizal identifies Zecharyah with Moses.
This of course raises a lot of questions, beginning with how could God let Zecharyah be murdered and this whole terrible chain of events be set in motion? The answer is offered that when he chastised the people, Zecharyah who was Moses’ incarnation, actually abandoned his sense of absolute humility revealed by the fact that he stood “above the people” and chastised them.
The Partzuf of Moses’ Incarnations
After this incarnation as Zecharyah, Moses came back many generations later as Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Finally, he will come back as the soul of the Mashiach.
So altogether we saw that Moses has seven incarnations until he actually appears as Moses. Then he was Achiyah and then Zecharyah; then Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and finally the Mashiach. So altogether there are eleven different manifestations of Moses, which we can now correspond with the sefirot.
- Crown – image of Elokim
- Understanding – Abel
- Wisdom – Adam
- Knowledge – Seth
- Might – Shem
- Loving-kindness – Noah
- Beauty – Moses
- Acknowledgement – Zecharyah
- Victory – Achiyah
- Foundation – Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai
- Kingdom – Mashiach
(from a class given on the 7th of Adar 5777)
