The Yalkut Reuveni, a late Kabbalistic anthology, preserves one of the strangest Jewish teachings about the soul: gilgul, transmigration. Souls, this tradition says, do not vanish at death. They are sent again into new bodies to finish unfinished work.
The Yalkut teaches that the soul of Eve passed through a chain of righteous women. First into Sarah, the mother of Israel, who began to repair what Eve had let slip. Then into Hannah, who prayed silently at Shiloh (1 Samuel 1). Then into the Shunammite woman who hosted Elisha (2 Kings 4:8). Then into the widow of Tzarfat (Zarephath) who fed Elijah.
The tradition offers a mystical reading of a puzzling verse. When Hannah was accused of being drunk while she prayed, she answered, “I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit” (1 Samuel 1:15). The Kabbalists heard in that phrase an echo of Eve — the original sorrow of the first woman, still lingering in Hannah’s soul, still asking to be healed.
Rahab’s soul, the tradition continues, passed first into Heber the Kenite, then afterward into Hannah as well. Eli the priest bore the soul of Jael, wife of Heber, who slew Sisera.
And sometimes, the Yalkut adds with startling generosity, the souls of pious Jews pass into Gentiles — so that those souls, from within other nations, might speak kindly of Israel and plead on her behalf. As the rabbis taught: “The pious of the nations of the world have a portion in the world to come.”
Every sorrow, the Kabbalists say, is an old soul asking for one more chance.