http://rooster613.blogspot.pe/2011/03/do-animals-have-soulspart-i.htmlDo animals have souls?

(Part I)

Do Jews believe that animals have souls? I get

this question a lot lately. People want a quick yesor-no answer, but the problem is, the Hebrew
language has five different words that get translated
as "soul" (nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and
yechidah) and they mean different things in Jewish
mysticism (kabbalah). So before I can answer the
question, I need to define the five levels of the
soul. Sorting this out is not always easy, because
different commentators have interpreted these
terms in different ways throughout the centuries,
and they don't always agree. Here are the basic
definitions as I understand them:
1. Nefesh (NEH-fesh) the physical life force of the
body. All animals certainly have this, or they would
not be alive. For that matter, so do plants have
nefesh. This is also the word used by King David in
Psalm 25:20: "O guard my soul and rescue me."
Some modern versions of the Bible translate this as
"guard my life." In Jewish thought, to "guard your
soul" means to take care of your health and safety.

We are also commanded to take care of our animals

in the same way, giving them proper food, water
and shelter: "A good man takes care of his animals,
but wicked men are cruel to theirs." (Proverbs
12:10) So before we go any further, let's be very
clear that whether or not animals have souls in the
theological sense is irrelevant in terms of our
responsibility to care for them. One cannot argue
that animals are "things" and then go abuse them,
heaven forbid. (In fact, even "things" have a
netzotz -- a divine spark of holiness - within them,
but that's a whole other blog.)
2. Ruach (ROO-akh) literally means "wind" or
"spirit" and is the emotional level of the soul. In
Hebrew/Yiddish idiom, to do something "with ruach"
means to do it with feeling -- such as singing a song
or playing an instrument with "soul." Biologically, I
would associate ruach with the limbic system, the
"mammalian" part of the brain that controls
emotions. Maimonides, an important 12th-century
Jewish philosopher, clearly states in his Guide for
the Perplexed that when it comes to the love
between a mother animal and a mother human,
there is no difference, because love comes from the
emotional level. This is the reason the Torah forbids
slaughtering a baby animal on the same day as its
mother (Leviticus 22:28) because the mother might
see this and feel emotional pain. By extension,
Jewish law forbids slaughtering any animal in front
of another. (Shulchan Arukh Yoreh Deah 34:14)
Maimonides also argues that the commandment to
send away a mother bird before you take eggs or
young from a nest (Deuteronomy 22:6-7) is meant
to teach us compassion for the feelings of the

mother bird. I have chickens and believe me, they

do indeed get upset if they see you taking their
eggs. So clearly, from a Jewish perspective, birds
and mammals have ruach. Whether or not insects,
fish, reptiles, etc. have this level is up for debate.
Certainly they experience fear; otherwise, they
would not run or swim away. But does a snake feel
love?
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liady (the first
Lubavitcher Rebbe, 18th century) wrote in the
Tanya that humans actually have two souls: an
"animal" soul that they are naturally born with
(which seems to correspond to the nefesh-ruach
levels described above) and a "divine soul" which is
"a part of God above" and must be developed and
consciously focused on spiritual things. These two
souls have been compared to a rider and a horse;
when they work together, all is well, but if the horse
throws the rider, the lower body desires take over
and a person acts only on animal instincts. From
Rabbi Schneur Zalman's perspective, only humans
have the higher soul level, although his is NOT the
last word in the subject. This brings us to:
3. Neshamah (neh-SHAH-mah) is the word most
commonly used in colloquial speech for "soul" in the
usual sense, that is, an immortal soul that survives
death. But it is also the word used in Psalm 150
for "let everything that has a soul praise God."
Some translations render this as "everything that
has breath," because neshamah is etymologically
related to the word neshimah, meaning "breath."
Now, if everything that has breath is to praise God,
wouldn't that suggest that animals, too, have a
neshamah? In Psalm 148, everything in the

universe is praising God, even inanimate objects

such as the sun, moon and stars. So "praising God"
can't really be used as a criteria for whether or not
something has an immortal soul.
However, we should note that there are many
anecdotal stories of people encountering "ghosts" or
spirits of animals. So it does appear quite possible
that something in an animal survives death.
In kabbalah, neshamah is associated with the
higher levels of the mind and, interestingly, some
Jewish philosophers felt that we are not
automatically born with a neshamah, that we must
develop it. This is supported by modern brain
research. The more we use our brains, the more
synapses we develop among the neurons, and the
more intelligent we can become. Conversely, a
brain that is not stimulated will lose synapses and,
in some cases, fail to learn even basic language and
reasoning skills. "Use it or lose it" apparently
applies in both biology and theology.
Jewish philosophy has long regarded knowledge as
the only thing we take with us to the Next World,
which may be why developing the intellectual
neshamah is associated with immortality. But does
this mean we are developing a "soul," or simply
improving the physical brain? Hard to say. The fact
is, we can't really prove there is an immortal human
soul, anymore than we can prove -- or disprove -the existence of an immortal soul in animals. What
we can say is that humans do possess a level of
intelligence that is greater than even the higher
primates, and that we humans can develop a
conscious sense of right and wrong that animals

lack. (A lion may kill prey, but he does not

murder.) Most Jewish thinkers also maintain that
humans are the only beings with free will, who can
consciously choose to know their Creator.
is generally connected not only with intellectual
pursuits, but also with moral responsibility. In
Yiddish, to have a "Jewish soul" (yiddische
neshamah) means to have a sense of proper
humanity and compassion. In other words, to be a
mensch -- an upright person of true integrity and
honor -- the highest compliment one can give in the
Yiddish language.
4. Chayah (KHAI-yah) literally means "living." It is
used in the Torah in Genesis 2:7 , where God
breathed the breath of life into Adam and then
Adam "became a living soul (nefesh chayah)." Note
that this term combines nefesh, the life force of the
body, with chayah, "living." But isn't a body with
nefesh already living? In the biological sense, yes.
So chayah must add another dimension to human
existence.
In kabbalah, chayah refers to a higher spiritual
level, something like a collective consciousness,
where all members of humanity are connected
together. The word adam literally means "human
being" -- homo sapiens -- in Hebrew, and only later
in the story does it become the name of a specific
man. Adam Kadmon -- the Primal Adam -- is often
pictured as a hermaphrodite cosmic being who
contains all the souls of all the humans who ever
were or will be born. He/she is the chayah level of
the human species. (In Jungian terms, the species
archetype.)

(This section was updated on 12/31/15,

incorporating some feedback from readers.) Do
other species also have a chayah level? Not in the
human sense. But if we regard chayah as the
species archetype, then each pair of animals in Eden
would be the species' chayah. Nefesh chayah is
used in one other place, namely Genesis 1:20,
which seems to support this. The full phrase is is
"yishr'tzu hamayim sheretz nefesh chayah" which is
translated variously as "let the waters swarm
(teem) with swarms of living creatures," or with
"moving creatures that have life," etc. So the focus
is on them being alive, which is what I said the
nefesh level was, i.e., the life force of the body.
They are all created by direct command, not by
having the "breath of life" breathed in separately.
Thjis is a main difference between animals and
humans. Everything else in the Eden story is
created by God simply speaking it into existence:
"Let there be light -- and there was light." Only in
the case of humans does God "breath the breath of
life" into them directly. Again I stress: This does
not mean that other creatures don't have life. And
we have already demonstrated that many creatures
have feelings. But Judaism does take the direct
"breathing in" of Adam's nefesh chayah to mean
that there is something different about humans as
compared to the rest of creation. Rabbi Natan
Slifkin, known as the "zoo rabbi" and author of Man
and Beast, clearly states that humans are the only
beings that have a "divine soul" in this sense. But
on the other hand, he also devotes many pages to
our responsibility toward animals as stewards of the
earth. So do numerous other Jewish

commentators.
5. Yechidah (yeh-KHEE-dah) means "unity" and
comes from the same Hebrew root as echad, "one"
as in "God is One." Yechidah does not appear in the
Bible as such, but is a kabbalistic term developed
in later Jewish mysticism. Yechidah is the level of
the soul where we can "touch God."
Judaism does not teach that we can become God or
merge entirely with God as some mystical systems
do (although some Hasidic thinkers came pretty
close to that.) We Jews are not pantheists. But
there is a level where we can experience oneness
with God's Creation and, through this experience,
get a "taste" of the oneness of God. Humans all
over the world have reported this type of
experience.
Do animals also experience oneness with God? It is
impossible to say, because they cannot tell us.
Some Jewish thinkers (as well as others) maintain
that animals -- and, in fact, all created beings
except humans -- automatically do the will of God
because they were created that way, with no free
will to do otherwise. In that sense, they may be
more in tune with God than we are. At the same
time, they do not seem to have the same level of
creativity that comes with our free will.
In conclusion: There is no clear yes-or-no answer
to this question. Whether or not you believe
animals have souls depends on how you define
"soul," and Judaism does not speak with one voice
on the subject. One thing Judaism does clearly say,
however, is that animals are living beings with

feelings, that they were created by God, and that

we are commanded to care for them properly.
(That's three things, actually, but you know what I
mean.)
This being the case, why is it that
Western civilization -- much of which is based on
the Bible -- has become so callous toward animals
and the environment? The fault lies not with
Judaism, but with a non-Jewish philosopher named
Rene Descartes -- "the father of modern philosophy"
-- who lived in the 1600s and believed that animals
are nothing but automatons, unfeeling machines
that cannot feel pain. This is not in accord with
Jewish thought but, unfortunately, a lot of Jews, as
well as many Christians and others, have adopted
Cartesian attitudes over the centuries -- a topic we
explore in Part 2 of this series.
Posted by Yonassan Gershom at 8:29 AM
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