I am no longer able to ascend to the heights of the angels. Some years ago, I lost much of my lower body mobility, and when the rest of the congregation soars toward heaven saying “kadosh, kadosh, kadosh,” I am the one making a choice: do I too rise to the heavens at the expense of being able to walk for the rest of the day, or do I keep my feet firmly planted on the ground? 

I remember when I first came into my own in terms of Jewish practice. I had not been raised observant, and felt that I stumbled through Judaism more than I walked or even crawled. I didn’t know the language, much less the prayers or melodies. I knew some of the stories, and that we ate matzah at Pesach (but not the word “Pesach”). And even as my soul ached to move into this spiritual home it so desperately craved, it also shrank from the feeling of unbelonging that followed me. 

I came to observance in college, and so the majority of my early experience revolved around Hillel, Chabad, and JLIC. My patient husband, raised Orthodox, was on the other side of the mechitzah, and I inevitably found myself pages behind the rest of the daveners, eventually giving up entirely on the idea of prayer and just trying to sound out whatever words I could until everyone else had finished. 

But my body was able to fill the gaps while my mind caught up. I taught myself how to make challah, pressing the dough with the entire weight of my body, beating it into submission. I catered elaborate kiddush lunches. I shokeled and bowed and knelt and tiptoed around the siddur before I even knew what I was praying. I danced and sang at the top of my lungs for Simchat Torah. My body was full while my soul was slowly learning to sate itself. 

And for many years, this was my Judaism. Walking to shul was a sacred meditation rivaling the transcendence of prayer. Shabbat was the taste of wine, the smell of candles, and the pleasant sleepiness of allowing myself to rest. Sukkot was shivering against the damp night air while nibbling greedily at the sheva minim. Pesach was crumbs getting into everything and making the entire world smell like matzah. I loved the spirituality of Judaism, but I loved being elbows-deep in the week’s challah dough even more. I was a Jewish body, and I was Jewish as a body, and I was Jewish because of my body. 

And then, I lost it. 

The body and the soul do not age together, and I think that there is an awkwardness at the transitional stages of both. In building my Jewish body, I had let my soul remain young, and it was time to grow up. 

I sobbed through my first Shabbat after my accident, after being told by an unsympathetic nurse in post-op that I would be lucky to walk again. I sobbed through the second, unable to stand even the pain of going in the wheelchair. I sobbed through my tenth, where I couldn’t balance on two legs long enough to knead my challah. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I prayed quietly to myself from the bed I was all but confined to and I let myself sob to Hashem, who had taken everything from me. As the ancient rabbis taught, although the gates of prayer might have been locked, “the gates of tears were not.” [1]

I had to start physical therapy. The therapist was kind and gentle, and talked me through the tears that welled up every time he bent my foot one protractor degree further. This might be where I should have been angry at Hashem, working on rebuilding atrophied muscles. I used to be proud of my strength. I worked in food service and retail for years, and glowed internally when people marveled at the heavy loads I, a five-foot-nothing girl, carried with ease. I swam all through college, and still remember the thrill of the speed at which I could butterfly through the water. I could dance and run and jump and enjoy every minute of being an embodied person. Now I was sad. Heartbroken, even. But somehow I wasn’t angry. I never got to that stage of grief. Maybe I never will. 

In the end it was my Jewish soul that saved me, though it had to break me first. With infinite time to sit, and indeed no power to do much else, I began to read. All I could think to read was Jewish literature, my soul completely starved for the things I used to, literally, run towards. It was a spiritual running now. 

I was ambitious at first, and dove straight into Maimonides’ code of law, the Mishneh Torah. That was a mistake, and scared me off for a week or two. I jumped into the daily Talmud cycle of Daf Yomi, which was somehow easier. But it didn’t tell me what I needed to know: how to keep my Jewish body even as I adapted to life in a different body. 

My entry into chassidus was, in retrospect, ridiculous. I wanted a daily reading program to give me some structure, and Chabad was more than happy to oblige. Their anthology for daily study called HaYom Yom existed, and I needed something fully-formed because I didn’t feel capable of creating anymore. There was an app, which made it easy. I leapt in. 

The Lubavitcher Rebbe (Menachem Mendel Schneerson, d. 1994) told me that I must care for my mental health, for “considering what is at stake — nothing less than the attainment of peace of mind and inner harmony… — every effort made in this direction is surely worthwhile and most rewarding.” [2] The rebbe said it, so I did. I began to write things down. Sometimes all I could manage for the day was, “I’m too sad to write today.” It was something. The rebbe told me that “The soul above awaits the time it will be privileged to descend into a body.” [3] It didn’t feel like a privilege to be trapped in my now-useless body, to be unable to chase my newly walking infant around the house at speed, to sit through the amidah services I could only attend sporadically. But the rebbe said it was, so I forced myself to feel it. 

It is a privilege to taste this kiddush, I would repeat firmly to myself, a parent admonishing the wayward child of my soul. It is a privilege to bless this meal. It is a privilege to keep kosher, to rest on Shabbat, to put on my right shoe and then my left even if I know I may never walk on their soles. [4] It is a privilege to be called down to this world to drag my soul back upwards through Torah and mitzvot. 

I went from one rebbe to another, and dipped into kabbalah with a thrill of transgression; I didn’t have the mandated expert chavrutah to tell me when I was veering off the path. Eventually I wound up at the 16th century R. Isaac Luria, also known as the Arizal, who finally explained to me what had happened to me in terms I could accept. 

I didn’t really arrive at his book Sha’ar haGilgulim on purpose. The Lubavitcher Rebbe quoted the Arizal a lot, and Wikipedia said that this was his most famous work, so I wanted to read it. In this kabbalistic text on gilgul (reincarnation), the Arizal explains that the human soul is rocketed back and forth between worlds like a slingshot. Each of us has different levels of purity within us. In order to merit Gan Eden, we must perfect every part of our souls and ascend. But the temptations of sin call us, and soon it is the case that every single soul has need of cleansing. [5]  

It’s often said that Jews don’t believe in hell, which is, for the most part, true. We do, however, believe in Purgatory. Specifically, there is a place called gehinom which is often described throughout Jewish literature as a crucible [6] - a place to burn off imperfections and help one ascend to the merits of an afterlife in the presence of Hashem. Appointments to gehinom last no longer than twelve months, [7] after which point it’s to be hoped that the soul is once again pure enough to merit Gan Eden. However, to the Arizal, even that is not so simple.

According to him, purgatory is not enough to cleanse the wicked of their sins: “they are required to reincarnate again to complete [their rectification], even if it is for something small that is missing.” [8] They are brought back into the world to try and repair the damage done by their sins, and to buy themselves another twelve months in gehinom so they can purify themselves further. 

As for the righteous, “when a tzaddik studies Torah… there is no possible judgement on him that he enter into Gehinom. Rather, he (goes through gilgulim) to clean up his sins so that he can enter into Gan Eden.” [9] Their only punishment is earthly suffering, and so they too return to earth to experience the pain of the separation from Hashem they had worked so hard to bridge in life. Either way, there seems to be no escape: we must return, because there is no one who does not sin. Maybe no one can achieve olam haBa at all, because the temptation of earthly sin is one we are perpetually failing to resist. Maybe this is why we need a Moshiach to break the cycle.

Gilgul burst the bubble that I had been cradling inside me for so long. I could see it so clearly now: I had died and come back to life. My old body was gone forever. I would never again do the things I had identified with. And maybe that was my sin, failing to see a new life as I grieved for the old one. Maybe that was why I was forced to go through the Purgatory of grieving and depression and come back to a new body. 

Or maybe I was not one of the wicked. Maybe my soul was too pure to completely die, and I was sent to a new, painful body to learn how to find joy again. 

In the end, it didn’t matter why. The real point - the real joy - was that I was back. This was my body now, newly remade, learning to walk again like an infant. I was both constrained and free to begin the cycle of Torah and mitzvot all over again. After all, there is no true failure in gilgul, just as there is no true failure in learning to walk. There is getting better, or there is staying in one place. There is moving toward joy, or there is lingering for a while in Gehinom until it's time to try again. There is despair over my current state, or there is aspiration toward a new one. I have no obligation to center myself on identifying with my past actions, good or evil. As the Lubavitcher Rebbe says, "presently my task is that my home and life be conducted with simplicity, wholeheartedness, and joy.” [10] 

Every day I can still walk is a gift. I try to stand for the amidah, though it sometimes costs me my mobility for the rest of Shabbat. Sitting down for the repetition as someone in early middle age feels like wearing a kippah in a non-kosher restaurant: what will people think? Maybe that pride is the sin I’m in this body to conquer. Maybe in the next cycle, I’ll dance for Simchat Torah again. Maybe I’ll ascend toward the angels, standing on tiptoe because that’s as close as we can get to Heaven. 

In the meantime, this is the body that Hashem gave me. It is a privilege for my neshama to be called down into it.