Jewish tradition has a fascinating, almost cosmic answer: Adam.

It all starts with the creation of Adam. We’re told that after God formed him, He showed Adam something incredible: all the souls that were contained within him. Think of it like a vast, shimmering treasury of potential, holding within it all the future generations of humankind. That’s why, on Rosh ha-Shanah, the Jewish New Year and the anniversary of Adam's creation, the entire world is judged. Because, in a way, Adam is the entire world, containing all our souls.

But here's where the story takes a turn. After Adam's sin – eating from the Tree of Knowledge – the souls connected to him were affected. They "descended into evil," as some texts put it. But all was not lost. The tradition tells us that Adam’s soul originally contained six hundred thousand “old souls.” According to this teaching, when Adam sinned, these souls fractured into six hundred thousand "soul-roots." Ever since, these soul-roots have been reincarnating in the world, striving to rectify Adam's original transgression. It's a powerful image, isn't it? We're all connected, working to heal a wound that stretches back to the very beginning.

Now, there are different viewpoints on the details. Some say that even before Adam was fully formed, individual souls resided in different parts of his body. The Zohar, a central text of Kabbalah, offers rich and complex imagery around this idea. When Adam chose to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, these elevated souls, so the story goes, flew away from him, perhaps representing a loss of innocence or spiritual potential.

And there’s more! Some traditions, as found in Ginzberg's retelling in Legends of the Jews, suggest that there were also new souls within Adam’s soul, souls that had never been in the world before. These weren't revealed to Adam, and after his death, they separated from him. Where did they go? They now issue forth from the Etz Chaim (Tree of Life), as we find in Midrash Rabbah. This idea is wonderfully comforting: many angels are produced above to protect these holy souls from harm. It is said that a multitude of these living souls are generated, drawn down to those worthy of them.

So, what does it all mean? Since Adam was the first human, Jewish tradition emphasizes that his soul was the source of all subsequent souls. And how many souls are there in total? The number is often given as 600,000.

It’s a complex and beautiful idea. We are all, in a sense, fragments of Adam's original soul, forever striving to return to a state of wholeness and connection. A powerful reminder of our shared origins, and our shared destiny.