Reincarnation in Judaism vs Buddhism: From the Rebbe to the Dalai Lama

Exploring the fascinating differences between Jewish and Buddhist perspectives on rebirth, featuring groundbreaking scientific research and the search for reincarnated spiritual leaders.

On June 12, 1994, the famed Jewish leader - known simply as The Rebbe or "Teacher" - of the global Chabad-Lubavitch movement passed away or was "removed" from the world. His loss was a great tragedy and continues to be deeply felt amongst his enormous, leaderless community over twenty years later —- many of whom view the Rebbe as the Jewish Messiah and pray for his speedy return.

The Question of Spiritual Succession

But what if the "eighth Rebbe" was reborn as a child in Brooklyn, Kfar Chabad or another Jewish community around the world? And if reincarnation (or "gilgul" meaning "turning" in Hebrew) is a fundamental belief of Orthodox Judaism, why wouldn't we search for the reborn 8th Rebbe just as Tibetan Buddhists discovered and are led by the reincarnated 14th Dalai Lama, 17th Karmapa and others?

Key Term: Gilgul (גלגול) In Jewish mysticism, gilgul refers to the process of soul transmigration or reincarnation. Unlike some Eastern concepts, gilgul emphasizes the multi-faceted nature of the soul and its unique expression in each lifetime.

In answering this question, we will reveal key differences in the reincarnation doctrines of Jewish mysticism and Tibetan Buddhism (on my first 30-day meditation retreat, see my last post). But before diving into these comparisons, let’s consider some of the reasons people believe in reincarnation nowadays regardless of their religious background.

The Scientific Case for Reincarnation: Dr. Ian Stevenson's Research

Probably the most popular scientific research supporting the idea of reincarnation is that conducted by the late psychiatrist (and fellow McGill graduate) Ian Stevenson (1918-2007) and his successors at the University of Virginia . Stevenson traveled around the world interviewing children between roughly the ages of two to six who had memories of past lives. Some of these details, which he was able to subsequently confirm, included memories of names, places and circumstances of death that would be highly improbable for a child to invent —- such as the case of “James Leininger, an American boy who remembered being a fighter pilot in [World War Two in] Japan.”

What made Stevenson's work particularly compelling was his rigorous methodology and intellectual honesty as a trained scientist. Unlike previous writers in this unusual field, he approached each case with rigor, meticulously documenting children's statements before attempting to verify them, and cross-referencing details with multiple independent witnesses. Importantly, Stevenson consistently published data that didn't support his hypotheses and maintained for many years that his research did not prove reincarnation – rather, he argued it merely suggested that conventional scientific explanations were insufficient to explain all his findings. Over the years, he made a notable effort to interview children from cultures that did not accept reincarnation, thus making the children’s claims more counterintuitive (and not merely imbibing their parents’ beliefs). In many cases, the children displayed knowledge of intimate family details, obscure historical facts, or technical expertise that would be extremely difficult to acquire through normal means at their age.

After collecting thousands of cases, Stevenson’s work yielded several intriguing patterns: One of the most striking was the high concentration of cases involving violent or sudden deaths – roughly 60% of his documented cases featured traumatic ends like accidents, murders, or suicides. Even more mystifying were his discoveries about physical marks and traits. Stevenson documented hundreds of cases where children bore birthmarks or birth defects that corresponded precisely to fatal wounds or injuries from their purported previous lives – for instance, a small round birthmark matching the entry wound of a bullet, paired with a larger irregular mark on the opposite side matching the exit wound. He also noted cases where children displayed phobias or intense emotional reactions to stimuli connected to their alleged past-life deaths, such as a fear of water in children who recalled drowning.

In spite of his findings, unsurprisingly, the legacy of Stevenson’s groundbreaking research into the field of “parapsychology” remains controversial. As quoted in the recent NYT piece, a contemporary psychiatrist Harold Lief described his work as follows: “Either Dr. Stevenson is making a colossal mistake, or he will be known as the Galileo of the 20th century.”

Another critic of Stevenson, the moral philosopher Paul Edwards (1923-2004) published a book-length rebuke (1996) of his research and more broadly the concept of “reincarnation and the related doctrine of Karma.”

Amongst dozens of philosophical and scientific rejoinders in his book, Edwards argued that “there are other more basic reasons for rejecting reincarnation. One of these concerns personal identity. Neither of the two criteria for personal identity—bodily continuity and memory—are satisfied in alleged cases of reincarnation. There is also the altogether fatal problem of specifying a credible way in which a person can come to inhabit another body after its original body has died.”

Edwards’ two arguments are, in other words, that even according to Stevenson’s findings, children with memories of a past life have lost these memories around the age of eight. Past eight, even these special children are like the rest of us —- with no meaningful conscious memories of a past life (it is true that some adults may attest to past life experiences in states of hypnosis, but at this point of development the adult brain is viewed with greater suspicion and capable of greater invention). How can we speak of a continuity of personal identity, therefore, if both body and mind appear to be born for the first time?

Secondly, Stevenson was unable to pave the way for a credible scientific theory to explain the “logistics” of reincarnation. How can the memories or scars of one person enter the womb-enclosed body of a second, without positing the existence of “astral realms” or similar unprovable transfer mechanisms?

While empirical research like Stevenson's offers a scientific approach to reincarnation, truly the concept has resonated with people for deeper philosophical, emotional and moral reasons. The idea that souls require multiple lifetimes for spiritual growth, and that this process helps explain why suffering exists in a just universe, has appealed to religious thinkers across cultures. This theological framework for understanding the purpose of existence and the meaning of life takes distinct forms in different traditions, as we see when comparing Jewish and Buddhist perspectives.

Contemporary Jewish Views on Soul Transmigration

Historically speaking, the concept of reincarnation in Judaism is first attested to only in the 12th-century Kabbalistic work Sefer ha-Bahir. Such a late date has led such Jewish proponents of rationalism, such as Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin, to argue that “Gilgul entered Judaism for some mystical-minded Jews only in the Middle Ages” and hence is not a native expression of ancient Judaism.

Among much else, [the author of a PhD dissertation on reincarnation in Judaism] informs us that the twelfth-century kabbalistic work Sefer Bahir, which means “Book of Clarity,” is the first book that introduces the theory of reincarnation as a Jewish theological theory. It is an anonymous mystical work attributed to a 1st-century rabbinic sage Nehunya ben HaKanah because it begins with the words, “Rabbi Nehunya ben HaKanah said.” It is also known as the Midrash of Rabbi Nehunya ben HaKanah.

The book explains the mystical significance of many items. These include biblical verses, the shapes of the Hebrew letters, the biblical cantillation signs and vowel points added to the letters, the earlier mystic book Sefer Yetzirah, the use of sacred names in magic, and it introduces the idea of reincarnation.

In Drazin’s corner, is none other than the great medieval Jewish sage, Saadia Gaon (882-942):

“Yet, I must say that I have found certain people, who call themselves Jews, professing the doctrine of metempsychosis (reincarnation) which is designated by them as the theory of “transmigration” of souls. What the mean thereby is that the spirit of Ruben is transferred to Simon and afterwards to Levi and after that to Judah. Many of them would go so far as to assert that the spirit of a human being might enter into the body of a beast or that of a beast into the body of a human being, and other such nonsense and stupidities.”-“The Book of Beliefs and Opinions,” chap. VIII pp 259.

Saadia's strong rejection of reincarnation reflects the broader theological landscape of his era. As an independent scholar of early medieval Judaism, I concur with Drazin's conclusion that Jews of this period did not accept reincarnation. Moreover, a separate essay could be written on the complex theologies of reward-and-punishment that Jews of this era did accept, in which individuals are held directly responsible for their actions in the current lifetime (and hence in contradiction to the possibility of "fixing" one's sins in future rebirths).

To say that medieval Jews did not accept the doctrine of reincarnation is not to dismiss the vast subject of early Jewish views on the afterlife or the belief in the eternality of the soul first suggested by Philo of Alexandria. Eventually, through the growing influence of Jewish Kabbalah, the specific doctrine of reincarnation as the mechanism for the soul’s eternality gained acceptance and became thoroughly ingrained in much of contemporary Orthodox Judaism.

For Orthodox Jews, such a belief transcends rationality: As Rabbi Dov Ber Pinson writes in his book on the topic: "we have already established that the reason we do believe in reincarnation is not because we have found good reason for it, rather, because that is what God revealed to us in the Kabbalah, whose source goes back to Mount Sinai. Hence, any logical argument for or against this concept has no validity."

Efraim Palvanov has a helpful 3-part series on Reincartion in Judaism from an orthodox perspective.

A survey of brief, translated writings on reincarnation in Judaism has been helpfully collected on the Kotzk Blog by Rabbi Gavin Michal. He summarizes that: “while reincarnation is commonly accepted in Jewish thought today, the historical evidence suggests there isn't a single definitive Jewish approach to the concept, and it remains a matter of personal religious belief rather than unanimous doctrine.”

In spite of the technical truth of reincarnation in Jewish mystical belief - and its tendency to decipher which Biblical characters are reincarnations of other Biblical personalities - its broader understanding of the soul’s complexity does not allow for a reductive view of “Shimon” being reborn as “Reuven” and therefore in some sense Shimon and Reuven being the same person. As Pinson puts it:

Each person is a completely unique individual, never having existed before and never to exist again. The soul which they share with so many before them is a multifaceted soul, built of layers and layers of spiritual dimensions. Each incarnation manifests a completely unique and individual aspect of this complex soul, resulting in a new and heretofore unseen personality and spirit. Therefore, each person is unmatched and uncomparable to any person that ever lived.

A creative analogy for this understanding is provided by Rabbi Simon Jacobson, who suggests an shift in perspective: What if the person is like a refrigerator, powered by electricity (the soul)? When the fridge is unplugged (death), the electricity still remains, but conventionally we only consider reality from the perspective of the fridge and not electricity.

According to these descriptions of the soul in Jewish mysticism, the soul is eternal and in a sense “borrowed” by each person before being reborn again and again. But, crucially, while we are in a sense related to past and future reincarnations of our soul, such a relationship does not hinder our individual personality and specific divine mission in each rebirth.

Having explored Judaism's complex and sometimes contradictory views on reincarnation, with its emphasis on the multi-faceted nature of the soul and rejection of simple one-to-one rebirth, let's turn to the markedly different approach taken by Tibetan Buddhism, where the identification and education of reincarnated masters forms a cornerstone of religious practice and leadership.

Finding the Lama: Tibetan Buddhist Approaches to Rebirth

In 1935, two years after the death of the 13th Dalai Lama, a high lama responsible for finding the next Dalai Lama had a detailed vision at a sacred lake in Tibet. There, in the crystalline waters of Lhamo Lhatso, he witnessed the Tibetan letters Ah, Ka, and Ma, followed by a three-story monastery with turquoise and gold roof tiles, and finally a small house with distinctive architectural features including odd gutters. A search party was sent to a remote Tibetan village and based upon these letters, and after determining other clues and performing tests, the 14th Dalai Lama was discovered. He would be formally enthroned and embark on his rigorous religious education in 1939 at the tender age of four, preparing him for his role as Tibet's spiritual and political leader.

The rest, as they say, is history.

While reincarnation is foundational to Buddhist thought from its earliest teachings, the Tibetan practice of identifying “Tulkus” - specific individuals that can be identified as the same person reborn - is a later development, starting around roughly the 13th century. Some scholars believe that the Tulku system - based in the Buddhist belief in reincarnation - developed as an organic solution to the challenge of monastery succession and the inheritance of political power in a celibate monastic system.

Contemporarily, several of the major lineages of Tibetan Buddhism (such as the Gelug school, led by the Dalai Lama) are led by reincarnate lamas, while others (such as Sayka whose monks have children) are succeeded by a biological (male) line. Occasionally, as in the case of the Karma Kagyu school led by the Karmapa, there are disputes over who the true reincarnate child is (and both Ogyen Trinley Dorje and Trinley Thaye Dorje are recognized as the Karmapa by a significant number of followers).

In the 20th century, significant damage was done to Tibetan Buddhism’s succession system as a result of the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Thus, in 1995, after the Dalai Lama recognized six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th Panchen Lama, Chinese authorities took the child and his family into custody (where he has not been seen since) and installed their own candidate, Gyancain Norbu - creating an unresolved dispute that continues today. The missing Panchen Lama, a key figure in the recognition of the next Dalai Lama, threatens the stability of the whole future of governance for Tibetan Buddhists.

In recognition of these threats and other worries, the Dalai Lama suggested in 2019 that he may instruct his followers upon his death not to seek his reincarnation: "There is no guarantee that some stupid Dalai Lama won't come next, who will disgrace himself or herself. That would be very sad. So, much better that a centuries-old tradition should cease at the time of a quite popular Dalai Lama."

Beyond the important issue of reincarnating high lamas - the concept of reincarnation is woven into the fabric of everyday spiritual life for Tibetan Buddhists (very much unlike most Orthodox Jews). In a key way, the entire goal of Tibetan Buddhism is to perform practices aimed at ensuring auspicious rebirths and preventing a descent from the earthly realm (a relatively good one) to a lower realm. In this way, the intention of acts like meditating, lighting butter lamps or hanging prayer flags is made with the aspiration to benefit all beings —- meaning that they too be reborn in higher realms and eventually reach supreme enlightenment.

Practical Implications for Modern Life

With these contrasting approaches in mind, I wonder to what extent an Orthodox Jew, Tibetan Buddhist or another’s views on reincarnation make a real difference in the way our lives are lived right now —- beyond how we recognize our community’s spiritual leaders.

Intriguingly, Ian Stevenson made perhaps a surprising declaration in a 1999 NYT interview:

I don't expect any great moral transformation. On my first trip to India I met a respected Indian monk, a swami. I told him I had come out to see what evidence there was in India for reincarnation. He remained silent for a long, long time. Then he said, ''We here in India regard it as a fact that people are reborn, but, you see, it doesn't make a difference because we have just as many rogues and villains in India as you have in the West.''

If what the swami said is true, that people are going to act as villains (and presumably righteously) regardless of the doctrine of reincarnation, is it merely another philosophical idea far removed from our lives?

Join the Discussion

At this point, I would like to hear from you in the comments: would you act differently if you knew for sure that this life is just one episode in a long series? What would you like the story of this episode to be in the overall arc of the series? Are Stevenson’s empirical efforts convincing?

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