Receiving a New Soul Upon Sleeping in Yerushalayim

 

As is known, every Jew receives an additional soul on Shabbat (see Beitza 16a and Ta'anit 27b).  Our Rabbi, Ha-Rav Tzvi Yehudah Ha-Cohain Kook (Sichot Ha-Rav Tzvi Yehudah – Eretz Yisrael p. 30, 228-230 and Sichot Ha-Rav Tzvi Yehudah – Vayikra, p. 149 and Devarim, p. 33, 208) brings an incredible idea from Rabbi Avraham Azulai, the "Chesed Le-Avraham" (Ma'ayan Shelishi, Ein Ha-Aretz, nahar 12): "It is not so popular and well-known, one should therefore pay close attention to it and understand it…when a Jew comes to Eretz Yisrael, on the first night he sleeps there, it is as if his soul disappears and returns in the morning.  Did you think that the same soul returns?  This is a mistake.  You should know that now, after you have absorbed the air of Eretz Yisrael, that you have breathed the air of Eretz Yisrael and it (the soul that comes in the morning) was created by it.  The soul which returns is a new soul.  You have been renewed!"  Maran Ha-Rav Kook explains in his book "Orot" (Orot Yisrael 7:18) what is embodied in this new soul: The communal soul of the Jewish People, which only resides in an individual when he is in Eretz Yisrael.  Immediately upon a person's arrival in Eretz Yisrael, his individual soul is nullified by the great light of the communal soul which enters him.  Every "Oleh Chadash" therefore loses his individual soul and receives a communal "Klal Yisrael" soul in its place.  Ha-Rav Tzvi Tau – Rosh Yeshiva of Har Ha-Mor - clarifies this idea in "Le-Emunat Itenu" (vol. 2, p. 77-92): one who enters the Land of Israel merits a new soul, and this is not at all dependent on his personal level.  You live without your consent, you are a Jew without your consent and you become "Eretz Yisraeli" without your consent.

Ha-Rav Yitzchak Dadon writes in the book "Imrei Shefer" (p. 256) that Ha-Rav Avraham Shapira – former Rosh Yeshiva of Mercaz Ha-Rav – once stated that, as the "Chesed Le-Avraham" writes, a person receives a new soul when coming to Eretz Yisrael.  He continued that when people come to Israel and hear this idea, they respond: But we are returning to America (or someplace else) and we will lose the special soul given to us!  Ha-Rav Shapira would reply with a concept from the Gemara: we have a tradition that from heaven they give, but they do not take away.  It is also related there (p. 255) that a Yeshiva student from outside of Yerushalayim once spent a Shabbat in the Holy City Yerushalayim.  He visited Ha-Rav Shapira and told him that he was a guest in Yerushalayim.  Ha-Rav Shapira responded jokingly that if you are a Yerushalami [Yerushalayimite] once, you are always a Yerushalami.  He explained this based on the teaching of the "Chesed Le-Avraham" regarding one who receives a new soul upon arriving in Israel.  He said that if this is so, it should also be true for one who arrives in Yerushalayim and ascends in holiness – he receives a new Yerushalayim soul.  He suggests that perhaps in order for this to occur one must sleep overnight within the walls of the Old City.